Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right and Gloria Tsang cross the road in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei)2025-09-09T02:05:23Z HONG KONG (AP) At her wedding, Jaedyn Yu felt her fathers tears marked a subtle yet touching shift in his attitude toward love between two women.Yus family initially struggled to accept her partner after they fell in love in 2019. Seeking both family recognition and legal rights, the couple decided to marry. But rather than waiting for Hong Kong to establish its framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships, citing the uncertain timeline, they opted to marry via Zoom with a U.S. officiant in May and held their ceremony in Bali, Indonesia. Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right, and Gloria Tsang look at their wedding photos in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right, and Gloria Tsang look at their wedding photos in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Their concern proved prescient. Despite the top court ruling in favor of recognizing same-sex partnerships in 2023, the governments proposed framework, unveiled in July, has met fierce opposition in the legislature. If passed, the bill would allow residents who already have formed unions overseas to register their partnerships locally and receive rights in handling medical and after-death matters. Lawmakers are set to resume the debate Wednesday, with their vote determining the future of the citys same-sex couples. Yus wife, Gloria Tsang, said while the proposal was better than nothing, it would only benefit those who are privileged enough to afford overseas marriages and navigate foreign marriage policies.The original purpose of law is to protect everyone, Tsang said. Decades of progress Jimmy Sham, gay rights activist and former pro-democracy district councillor, holds rainbow flag as he poses for photographs in front of the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Jimmy Sham, gay rights activist and former pro-democracy district councillor, holds rainbow flag as he poses for photographs in front of the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More The fight for same-sex rights has taken years to gain traction in Hong Kong. The city decriminalized gay sex in 1991. Stay up to date with similar stories by signing up to our WhatsApp channel. Prominent gay rights activist Jimmy Sham said that in the past some gay and lesbian people stayed on the sidelines or concealed their identities at events about gay rights. But in 2005, after groups upholding traditional family values ran newspaper advertisements deemed to undermine gay and lesbian rights, more people emerged to mark International Day Against Homophobia, he said.Pride parades,among other events, later took to the streets and gained support beyond the LGBTQ+ community. In 2009, the government introduced a cohabitation relationship definition in a revision to the domestic violence law, extending protection to same-sex couples, in a move that Sham said showed political wisdom. Some celebrities have come out publicly and now many same-sex couples are seen holding hands in the streets, he said. Surveys showed 60% of respondents supported same-sex marriage in 2023 in Hong Kong, up from 38% in 2013, according to a report by university researchers. The city also hosted Asias first Gay Games in 2023. LGBTQ+ activism in Hong Kong is still making considerable progress despite a government crackdown following massive protests in 2019.In recent years, multiple judicial challenges have won same-sex couples equal rights in some areas including dependent visas, civil service and subsidized housing benefits.In 2023, the top court ruled in a legal challenge brought by Sham that the government should offer a framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships by October 2025. It did not grant full marriage rights to same-sex couples. That victory mattered deeply to Sham who, at the time, had been in jail since 2021 for the citys biggest national security case. The court ruling showed he could still make an impact even behind bars, he said.Suddenly, I felt those emotional issues being swept away, and Im back, said Sham, who was released from jail in May. Bill faces fierce resistance A rainbow flag is posed for photos in front of the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) A rainbow flag is posed for photos in front of the court of final appeal in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More While many same-sex couples and advocates find the governments proposed framework for recognizing same-sex partnership limiting, some still support its passage in the face of opposition from various lawmakers. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Priscilla Leung described the bill as opening a paradox box, while her colleague Holden Chow worried the framework would effectively amount to recognizing same-sex marriages. Another legislator, Junius Ho, said the bill would harm countless generations of our descendants.The government also reported 80% of 10,780 public opinion submissions opposed the bill, mainly citing concerns over traditional family values and the marriage system. Those backing the bill agreed the government should respect the spirit of the rule of law. Hong Kong Marriage Equality, a non-governmental organization, said the submissions did not accurately reflect public sentiment. It noted about half of the publicly viewable submissions against the bill used standardized templates, which suggested strong mobilization by specific groups.The government maintained the framework would not equate to marriage and argued that requiring overseas registration would provide an objective way to verify committed partnerships. It said the proposal represents the greatest common denominator deemed acceptable to the public.Erick Tsang, the secretary for constitutional affairs, told lawmakers that the government must fulfill its positive obligations under the ruling, otherwise it would violate the rule of law. The cost of rejection Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right and Gloria Tsang cross the road in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right and Gloria Tsang cross the road in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Sham warned vetoing the bill could damage Hong Kongs international status. It would make the whole world question Hong Kongs human rights stance, whether it wont even accept such basic protections for sexual minorities, he said. Pro-Beijing lawmaker Paul Tse, who is inclined to support the bill, said the opposition seen in the legislature was greater than he had expected given the bills limited scope. If lawmakers vote the bill down, the city would face a mini constitutional crisis as the judicial, administrative and legislative branches would be in a deadlock. The government would then need to report to the top court and seek time to work out other solutions, he said. Sham previously proposed decoupling the registration system from overseas marriages to address concerns from conservative groups, but Tse cautioned that such a mechanism might trigger more concerns as some people might consider it closer to local marriage.Equality appears distant for same-sex couples Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right, and Gloria Tsang wear their wedding rings in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, right, and Gloria Tsang wear their wedding rings in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More In Hong Kong, the daily life of same-sex couples is still in many ways different to that of their straight peers. Yu has to think carefully about telling colleagues about her wife, unlike some of her foreign friends who share such details casually, while Tsang ponders whether to introduce her partner to those who are not close to her. Picking a place for getting married overseas also was a challenge. The pair dont hold high expectations about the bills passage. Tsang likened the lawmakers comments to a return to antiquated mindsets, saying the acceptance level might be lower than she had imagined. Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, left, and Gloria Tsang play drums in a band room in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, left, and Gloria Tsang play drums in a band room in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, left, and Gloria Tsang exercise in a gym in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Same-sex partners Jaedyn Yu, left, and Gloria Tsang exercise in a gym in Hong Kong, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Chan Long Hei) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Despite the bill not being perfect, she said it would be a pity if it were vetoed as it would mark a step backwards after taking a step forward. Equality means providing safeguards regardless of your background, your gender, or your position, Yu said. KANIS LEUNG Leung covers Hong Kong, Macao and mainland China for The Associated Press. She is based in Hong Kong. twitter RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Brazil's former President Jair Bolsonaro stands at the entrance of his home where he is under house arrest in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Luis Nova)2025-09-09T04:04:19Z BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) A panel of Supreme Court justices is set to decide this week whether former President Jair Bolsonaro is guilty or not of plotting to overthrow Brazils democracy and hang onto power illegally after his 2022 electoral defeat.The far-right ex-president is facing five counts at trial for allegedly conspiring to stage a coup after his narrow loss to current President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, a leftist who first won the presidency two decades earlier.If convicted by the five-judge panel in the verdict expected Thursday or Friday, Bolsonaro could be sentenced to decades behind bars. Bolsonaro has always denied any wrongdoing, repeatedly calling the trial a politically motivated attack.Dozens of Bolsonaro loyalists gathered Monday evening outside his Brasilia home. They prayed for him, criticized the Supreme Court justice overseeing the case Alexandre de Moraes and sought to exert pressure on lawmakers to approve some kind of amnesty for the embattled ex-leader. Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet said last week in court that Bolsonaro led a multipronged plot to cling to power illegally that included casting doubt over the countrys electronic voting system and encouraging a Jan. 8, 2023, riot Gonet described as intended to force an army takeover. Prosecutors have pointed to evidence that Bolsonaro assembled top Cabinet and military officials to discuss issuing an emergency decree aimed at suspending the election outcome of October 2022 in order to investigate alleged voting fraud. But defense lawyer Celso Vilardi vehemently noted the decree was never issued.The planning is not the execution. No matter how detailed the planning may be, it is the act of violence that actually consummates the crime, Vilardi told the justices at the televised proceedings. Bolsonaro ordered a transition.Bolsonaro did not act against the democratic rule of law, he added. Bolsonaro called himself the victim of a witch hunt, using the same expression as U.S. President Donald Trump in defending his right-wing ally. Trump has directly tied a 50% tariff on Brazilian goods to his allys judicial situation and is expected to be closely watching the trial outcome.On Sunday, tens of thousands of Bolsonaro supporters took to the streets. In Sao Paulo, his wife Michelle Bolsonaro said in a speech that he loves the country. The trial resumes Tuesday with the judicial panel reviewing any final requests from the parties. Then, each of the five justices is to vote on Bolsonaros guilt or innocence, with a majority of three votes enough to convict. If one of the justices requests a longer review, the verdict could be delayed for up to 90 days, but court experts have said thats unlikely.Bolsonaro is charged with five counts: attempting to stage a coup, involvement in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law and two counts involving destruction of state property.A guilty verdict on the coup plot charge alone carries a sentence of up to 12 years. In the event of a guilty verdict, each justice can recommend a sentence. If recommendations differ, a single justice chosen among the panel would determine an average of the prison time and possible fines. Court sessions are scheduled every day through Friday. Seven other close allies of Bolsonaro are being tried alongside the ex-president, including Walter Braga Netto, his former running mate and defense minister, and Paulo Srgio Nogueira, another former defense minister.Deemed a flight risk, Bolsonaro is wearing an ankle monitor and remains under house arrest. He did not appear in court last week due to ill health, Vilardi told journalists. The ex-president needs an unspecified medical procedure, Vilardi told the judge Monday, suggesting Bolsonaro might not attend court this week either.The trial marks a historic moment in Brazil: For the first time, high-ranking military officers and a former president accused of plotting against democratic rule are standing trial. Despite pressure from the White House, Brazils Supreme Court has kept the trial on track. Observers said any U.S. sanctions against Brazilian authorities could be announced after the trial, further straining their fragile diplomatic relations.Government officials or other Supreme Court justices could be sanctioned, like De Moraes already was late July, said Oliver Stuenkel, a professor of international relations at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a think tank and university. The reaction could also involve broader visa restrictions for government officials, or more tariffs, Stuenkel said. Its quite unpredictable.On Saturday night, Lula delivered a national message ahead of Sundays Independence Day celebrations saying Brazil will not be anyones colony, taking an indirect swipe at the Trump administration. Dorgelina Souza Oliveira de Medeiros, 72, wants Trump to put even more pressure on Brazil to help free Bolsonaro. For more than a week she has joined other supporters of the former president close to his home despite the fact many of them believe he will be jailed anyway.His sentence was ready before this trial began. We want amnesty for all so those jailed can be released, those in exile can come back, de Medeiros said. We are suffering, but I trust God that things will change. I hope that even in this trial there could be a miracle. ___Hughes reported from Rio de Janeiro.___Follow APs coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america MAURICIO SAVARESE Savarese is a reporter since 2004, with a vast experience covering soccer and politics. English, Espaol, Portugus, some French and a bit of Italian. twitter instagram facebook mailto

Riot police use a water cannon on protesters outside Parliament in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)2025-09-09T02:00:29Z KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) Nepals prime minister resigned Tuesday following violent protests against a ban on social media platforms and government corruption.Khadga Prasad Oli said he was stepping down immediately.His resignation came after protesters set fire to the homes of some of Nepals top political leaders in opposition to a social media ban that was lifted early Tuesday, a day after deadly anti-government protests when police opened fire and killed 19 people.Local reports and videos shared on social media showed protesters attacking residences of the top political leaders in and around Kathmandu. A curfew was imposed in the capital and other cities, and schools in Kathmandu were closed.The houses set on fire included those of Sher Bahadur Deuba, leader of the largest party Nepali Congress, President Ram Chandra Poudel, Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak and leader of the Communist party of Nepal Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal. A private school owned by Deubas wife Arzu Deuba Rana, who is the current foreign minister, was also set on fire. The mass protest and attack on parliament Monday began as opposition to the ban on social media platforms but were fueled by growing frustration and dissatisfaction against the political parties among the people who blame them for corruption. Focus turns to governmentI am here to protest about the massive corruption in our country, said Bishnu Thapa Chetri, a student. The country has gotten so bad that for us youths there is no grounds for us to stay back in the country.Our demand and desire is for peace and end to corruption so that people can actually work and live back in the country, he said.Several protests were reported Tuesday despite the indefinite curfew in the capital.Punish the murders in government. Stop killing children, the protesters chanted while police used loudspeakers urging them to return home. The protesters anger turned toward the government led by Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, who has increasingly becoming unpopular.We are here to protest because our youths and friends are getting killed, we are here to seek that justice is done and the present regime is ousted. K.P. Oli should be chased away, said Narayan Acharya, who was among the protesters outside the battered wall of the parliament building Tuesday.Protester Durganah Dahal said they needed to protest the deaths caused by police acting on behalf of the prime ministers government. As long as this government is in power, the people like us will continue to suffer, Dahal said. They killed so many youths yesterday who had so much to look forward to, now they can easily kill us all. We protest until this government is finished.Several widely used social networks, including Facebook, X and YouTube were blocked in the Himalayan nation last week after failing to comply with a new requirement to register and submit to government oversight. Police response becomes deadlyMondays rallies against the ban swelled to tens of thousands of people in Kathmandu and crowds surrounded the Parliament building before police opened fire on the demonstrators. Nineteen people were killed.Stop the ban on social media. Stop corruption, not social media, the crowds chanted, waving national flags. Mondays rally was called the protest of Gen Z, which generally refers to people born between 1995 and 2010.Seven of those killed and scores of the wounded were received at the National Trauma Center, the countrys main hospital.Many of them are in serious condition and appear to have been shot in the head and chest, said Dr. Badri Risa. Families waited for news of their relatives while people lined up to donate blood.Oli said in a statement he was forming an investigating committee to submit a report in 15 days and that compensation would be given for the lives lost and free treatment for the wounded.Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak also resigned at an emergency Cabinet meeting late Monday. Social media restrictions at heart of unrestThe violence unfolded as Nepals government pursues a broader attempt to regulate social media with a bill aimed at ensuring the platforms are properly managed, responsible and accountable. The proposal has been widely criticized as a tool for censorship and for punishing government opponents who voice their protests online.The bill includes asking the companies to appoint a liaison office or a point of contact in the country. Rights groups have called it an attempt by the government to curb freedom of expression and fundamental rights.The registration requirement applied to about two dozen social networks widely used in Nepal. Neither Google, which owns YouTube, nor Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, responded to requests for comment from The Associated Press. Elon Musks X platform also did not respond.TikTok, Viber and three other platforms have registered and operated without interruption. Nepal in 2023 banned TikTok for disrupting social harmony, goodwill and diffusing indecent materials. The ban was lifted last year after TikToks executives pledged to comply with local laws, including a ban of pornographic sites that was passed in 2018.

This is a locator map for Yemen with its capital, Sanaa. (AP Photo)2025-09-09T02:16:19Z DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) A ship likely cut cables in the Red Sea that disrupted internet access in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, experts said Tuesday, showing the lines vulnerability over a year after another incident severed them. The International Cable Protection Committee told The Associated Press that 15 submarine cables pass through the narrow Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern mouth of the Red Sea that separates East Africa from the Arabian Peninsula. Over the weekend, authorities in multiple countries identified the cables affected as the South East AsiaMiddle EastWestern Europe 4, the India-Middle East-Western Europe and the FALCON GCX cables. On Tuesday, that list expanded to include the Europe India Gateway cable as well, said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at the firm Kentik. Initial reporting suggested the cut happened off the coast of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, something authorities in the kingdom have not acknowledged, nor have the companies managing the cables. Early independent analysis indicates that the probable cause of damage is commercial shipping activity in the region, John Wrottesley, the committees operations manager, told the AP. Damage to submarine cables from dragged anchors account for approximately 30% of incidents each year representing around 60 faults. Madory also told the AP that the working assumption was a commercial vessel dropped its anchor and dragged it across the four cables, severing the connections. Cabling in the Red Sea can be at a shallow depth, making it easier for an anchor drag to affect them. Stay up to date with similar stories by signing up to our WhatsApp channel. Undersea cables are one of the backbones of the internet, along with satellite connections and land-based cables. Typically, internet service providers have multiple access points and reroute traffic if one fails. However, rerouting traffic can cause latency, or lag, for internet users. Madory said it appeared at least 10 nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East had been affected by the cable cut. Among those nations were India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Nobodys completely offline, but each provider has lost a subset of their international transit, Madory said. So if you imagine this is like an equivalent to plumbing and you lose some volume of water coming down the pipes ... and now you just have less volumes to carry the traffic.Cable security also has been a concern amid attacks by Yemens Houthi rebels on ships over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. In early 2024, Yemens internationally recognized government in exile alleged that the Houthis planned to attack undersea cables. Several later were cut, possibly by a ship attacked by the Houthis dragging its anchor, but the rebels denied being responsible. JON GAMBRELL Gambrell is the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press. He has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006. twitter instagram mailto

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the southern Russian city of Volgograd, Russia, April 29, 2025. (Alexander Kazakov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)2025-09-08T17:00:54Z PRAGUE (AP) A spy network being built in Europe by Belarus was broken up by intelligence services from the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, the Czech counterintelligence agency said Monday.The Czech agency, also known as BIS, said in a statement that a team of European agents discovered spies in several European countries from Belarus KGB security agency. BIS said that a former deputy head of Moldovan intelligence service SIS who handed over classified information to the KGB was among them.The Czechs also expelled a Belarusian agent who was operating under the cover of a diplomat. That person was given 72 hours to leave the Czech Republic, the Czech Foreign Ministry said Monday.The Czech agency said that Belarus managed to create the network because its diplomats are able to freely travel across European countries.To successfully counter these hostile activities in Europe, we need to restrict the movement of accredited diplomats from Russia and Belarus within the Schengen (borderless) area, BIS head Michal Koudelka said in a statement. The agency didnt immediately offer more details. Romanias anti-organized crime agency, DIICOT, said on Monday that it implemented an arrest warrant for a 47-year-old suspect on treason charges. The suspect had previously held management positions within Moldovas SIS. The suspect allegedly disclosed state secrets to Belarusian intelligence officers that would likely endanger national security, DIICOT stated. The Romanian agency added that, between 2024 and 2025, the Moldovan suspect who wasnt named met twice with Belarusian spies in Budapest, Hungary, and that there is reasonable suspicion that the meetings involved transmitting instructions and exchanging payments for services provided.The ongoing international investigation has been supervised by the European Unions judicial cooperation agency, Eurojust. Belarus is led by authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Lukashenko let Russia use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for Moscows full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and later allowed the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear missiles.

by Jake Pearson ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. Last month, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans, he served notice of a coming federal crackdown.Banks who have denied customers access to accounts, loans or credit cards on the basis of political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities, he said, would now feel the full force of government regulators. Violators could find themselves facing fines, consent decrees or other disciplinary measures in an effort to stamp out politicized or unlawful debanking.The cause hits close to home for the president, whose family business sued Capital One earlier this year, alleging, without providing evidence, that hundreds of its accounts were closed in the summer of 2021 as a result of political discrimination.Even so, the administration may find it difficult to enforce the presidents order for one simple reason: Seven months of aggressive cost-cutting and government downsizing has left the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the primary regulators that Trump tasked with carrying out his banking directive, a shell of an agency.In fact, CFPB leaders appointed by the president are awaiting final court approval to fire the majority of the bureaus remaining staffers, a move that would leave just a skeleton crew in place and likely end dozens of investigations into alleged corporate malfeasance. Since February, most staffers have been under a stop-work order that has effectively stalled the bulk of its probes including ones into debanking. Among them are investigations into why JPMorgan Chase and Citibank freeze and close bank accounts, respectively, according to people familiar with the matters. Work was also suspended on inquiries into whether two little-known companies that banks use to screen prospective customers have wrongly flagged some as too risky to serve, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive matters.Court records show that one of those firms, Regulatory DataCorp, provides reports on customers to Capital One the very financial institution that Trumps family business has accused of debanking. (A Capital One spokesperson declined to comment, but the bank has disputed the Trump businesss claims of political discrimination and moved to dismiss its lawsuit, writing in court papers that it was false that the bank closed Trump accounts because it disagreed with the presidents views.)In dismantling the CFPB, the Trump administration has portrayed the agency as an industry antagonist and an example of government overreach. But Luke Herrine, a consumer law expert at the University of Alabama School of Law, said that Trump officials, in their haste to shrink the federal bureaucracy, didnt really consider whether there were some aspects of the CFPB that might be useful for their projects and what they might have to do to preserve them.In fact, days before he was sacked by the Trump administration, then-CFPB head Rohit Chopra told a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society that the government needed to do more on debanking and advocated for due process rights for customers as well as more real, clear, bright-line prohibitions on what information banks can use in deciding to freeze or close accounts. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. To be sure, Trumps executive order directs a host of regulatory agencies to take action, and some of them, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, have already begun making changes to their bank examination processes to address the presidents concerns. But the CFPB is the only one that is specifically charged with protecting consumers, hundreds of whom file complaints each month alleging theyve been denied access to the financial system. A spokesperson for the CFPB didnt respond to an email and call seeking comment. But a recent decision by the agency sheds some light on how bureau officials may be interpreting Trumps order.Last month, the CFPB cited the order as it dropped a Biden-era probe into a company that provided loans for customers to buy firearms and pets, saying the investigation was politically motivated; the services were marketed to conservatives and Donald Trump Jr. was a board member of the firms parent company. Though the company had previously reached deals with regulators in California and Massachusetts over its lending practices, the CFPBs chief legal officer wrote in a recent letter that the case represents precisely the kind of unconstitutional targeting barred by Trumps debanking directive.Banks make decisions about who to serve based on a number of factors, including the financial and reputational risks of doing business. They also must follow laws and rules requiring them to know their customers and prevent money laundering.But leaders in both political parties agree that Americans are sometimes unfairly denied credit or accounts by big financial institutions. The issue became something of a cause celebre in Republican circles after former President Barack Obamas Department of Justice launched a crackdown on unscrupulous payday lenders and other high-risk businesses, in part by urging the payment processors and banks that provide those enterprises access to the financial system to be more diligent in looking for signs of fraud. The former president of the American Bankers Association asserted that the program was compelling banks to deny service to unpopular but perfectly legal industries by threatening penalties, a message that Republicans amplified as an example of Obama-era government overreach. Their argument gained steam when the firearms industry discovered its retailers had been listed as a high-risk merchant in an obscure FDIC newsletter, according to Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, who has written that the whole affair has taken on symbolic and mythic proportions in partisan discourse about regulation. Many conservative activists and party leaders now claim that some Republicans are being rejected as customers because of their politics and even at the behest of government regulators. No evidence has emerged to support the claim and indeed, as Reuters recently reported, just 35 of the 8,361 detailed complaints filed with the CFPB about closed bank accounts since 2012 included terms such as politics, conservative or Christian. Complaints of discrimination are also increasingly leveled by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, many of whom backed Trumps presidential campaign. Their narrative gained traction in 2023 when regulators warned banks about the risks associated with digital assets, an act some in the crypto industry billed as a revival of the Obama-era crackdown.Getting a sense of the scope of debanking was in part what the CFPB was exploring in its inquiries when Trump took office in January, the people familiar with them said. At JPMorgan, for example, about a million customers accounts are frozen each year, they said, though the justification for doing so varies and in many cases its done in response to fraud. The CFPB investigations into Regulatory DataCorp and another screening company, LSEG World-Check, were looking in part into whether customers had been denied accounts or had seen their accounts closed after the companies wrongly flagged them as problematic, generating false positives or outright mistakes in dossiers compiled by analyzing vast news and public records databases, the people said. The CFPB had issued subpoenas in its inquiries, which were still in the early stages, said the people familiar with the probes.A company spokesperson for World-Check said we have not understood World Check to be under review by any agency for potential denial of credit. A spokesperson for Moodys, which acquired Regulatory DataCorp in 2020, didnt return a call and email. A JPMorgan spokesperson said the bank wasnt aware of the CFPB investigating so-called politicized debanking, as it is discussed in the recent Executive Order and Citibank declined to comment. In a statement released after Trump issued his executive order, a coalition of bank industry groups said the directive would ensure all consumers and businesses are treated fairly, a goal the nations banks share with the Administration but one that hasnt been met because regulatory overreach, supervisory discretion and a maze of obscure rules have stood in the way. Part of the problem is that the whole debanking process is cloaked in secrecy, since financial institutions are subject to a constellation of regulations and laws including one called the Bank Secrecy Act that require them to refer potentially suspicious activity to the Treasury Department in confidential reports they cant talk about. That can be frustrating for customers who are not told why theyre being cut off and it provides an opportunity for outsiders to offer their own conclusions, experts said. Whats more, international best practices counsel financial institutions to give people in high-profile positions, who are called politically exposed persons, along with their immediate family members and associates, an extra due-diligence scrub since they are deemed more susceptible to bribery or corruption. A 2023 New York Times series exploring debanking documented various instances in which banks flagged what turned out to be benign transactions as unusual, freezing accounts for fear of not complying with various rules that bar financial institutions from facilitating money laundering, terrorism or fraud.Banks have expressed a desire for more clarity from their regulators on when they should boot customers and whether they can provide more information about the reasoning behind their decision.As it stands, banks tell affected customers little to nothing. In that vacuum, Republicans have often ascribed political bias as the motivation without providing concrete evidence to back it up, said Stevenson, the debanking expert.Ironically, the Trump administration quashed an effort that could have shed more light on debanking when it abandoned a legal case earlier this year. Under former President Joe Biden, the CFPB had sought to amend its exam manual to give its bank examiners more leeway to scrutinize financial institutions for potentially discriminatory practices, court records show. The Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups sued and a district court blocked the agency from doing so, arguing the bureau had exceeded its authority. The Biden-era CFPB appealed that ruling, but the Trump administration dropped the case before it was decided.

How does MAHA turn some health-conscious people against all health care? We found out.

The compulsion to zero in on the president keeps us from understanding the era fully, and from glimpsing what it might become.

Displaced Palestinians fleeing northern Gaza carry their belongings along the coastal road toward southern Gaza, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, after the Israeli army issued evacuation orders from Gaza City. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)2025-09-09T05:47:28Z DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) The Israeli military urged a full evacuation of Gaza City on Tuesday morning ahead of its planned expanded offensive in the northern city, where hundreds of thousands of people struggle under conditions of famine. The announcement was the first warning for a full evacuation of the city in the current round of fighting. Previously, the military has warned specific sections of Gaza City to evacuate ahead of concentrated operations or strikes.Associated Press reporters saw more cars and trucks than previous days passing from northern to southern Gaza on Tuesday, laden with supplies and people, but no widespread evacuation.Israel says multiple towers destroyed in Gaza CityDefense Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday said Israel had demolished 30 high-rise buildings in Gaza, which it accused Hamas of using for military infrastructure.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel destroyed at least 50 terror towers that he said are used by Hamas. It was unclear if the towers Katz referred to are in addition to those announced by Netanyahu, who called the demolition of the high-rises only the introduction, only the beginning of the main intensive operation the ground incursion of our forces. Over the past days, Israel has destroyed multiple high-rises in Gaza City, warning that Hamas has installed surveillance equipment in them. The demolitions are part of Israel ramping up its offensive to take control of what it portrays as Hamas last remaining stronghold, urging Palestinians to flee parts of Gaza City for a designated humanitarian zone in the territorys south. Palestinians take cover during an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025, after the Israeli army issued a prior warning. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun) Palestinians take cover during an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Sunday, Sept. 7, 2025, after the Israeli army issued a prior warning. (AP Photo/Yousef Al Zanoun) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Despite warnings, few Palestinians have left Tuesdays warnings were the most widespread evacuation warnings in the current round of fighting, though Israels previous warnings to leave specific neighborhoods have had little impact on a population that is exhausted from multiple displacements and unclear if moving to southern Gaza will really be safer. There are an estimated 1 million Palestinians in the area of north Gaza around Gaza City, according to both the Israeli military and the United Nations, around half of Gazas population of 2.1 million. As of Sept. 7, a coalition of humanitarian groups tracking movement in northern Gaza recorded an estimated 97,000 displacements in north Gaza since the start of the military offensive on Aug. 14. Of those, nearly 50,000 movements were recorded of people fleeing south. Others were people moving within northern Gaza.The data from the coalition, called the Site Management Cluster, tracks movement from eyewitness accounts, social media posts and information from partners on the ground, because access to northern Gaza is restricted. Military spokesperson Col. Avichay Adraee warned last week that the evacuation of Gaza City was inevitable, saying families who move south would receive humanitarian assistance. But aid groups warned there was little infrastructure to support them.Dr. Rami Mhanna, managing director of Shifa Hospital, said although the situation in Gaza City was tense, the facility still operates and receives patients. So far, things are as usual, he told The Associated Press, two hours after the Israeli military ordered the evacuation of Gaza City. But the atmosphere is tense and there is great psychological pressure on the staff and patients.He said he didnt notice displacement in and around the hospital.UN says families cant afford to move The United Nations humanitarian agency said many families cant evacuate even if they want to, because displacement sites are overcrowded and because it can cost more than $1,000 to move to southern Gaza, a prohibitive cost for many. A U.N. initiative to bring temporary shelters into Gaza said that more than 86,000 tents and other supplies were still awaiting clearance to enter Gaza as of last week. Mirjana Spoljaric, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, warned last month that a mass evacuation of Gaza City was impossible in a safe and dignified way. Spoljaric said no area in Gaza can absorb such a massive evacuation given the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and the extreme shortages of food, water, shelter and medical care. The U.N. agency that oversees Palestinian refugees said Tuesday said that Israeli attacks on residential towers in Gaza City had displaced dozens of families, with many of them having been left on the streets without shelter or basic necessities.COGAT, the Israeli defense body overseeing humanitarian aid to Gaza said 1,500 humanitarian aid trucks primarily containing food entered Gaza last week, and there are plans to bring in 100,000 tents in the coming weeks, many of which are currently waiting in Jordan. The tents needed to be adapted to swap metal poles, which COGAT said were repurposed into rockets used by militants, with plastic poles. 6 Palestinians die of malnutritionSix Palestinian adults died of causes related to malnutrition and starvation in the Gaza Strip over the last 24 hours, the territorys Health Ministry reported Tuesday. It brought the death toll from malnutrition-related causes to 259 since late June, when the ministry started to count fatalities among this age category, it said.Another 140 children died of malnutrition-related causes since the start of the war in October 2023, the ministry said.The war in Gaza began when Hamas-led militants abducted 251 people on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed some 1,200 people, mostly Israeli civilians. Forty-eight hostages are still inside Gaza, around 20 of them believed to be alive.Israels retaliatory offensive has killed at least 64,522 Palestinians, according to Gazas Health Ministry, which does not say how many were civilians or combatants. It says around half of those killed were women and children. Large parts of major cities have been completely destroyed and around 90% of the population of some 2 million Palestinians have been displaced.__Magdy reported from Cairo and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writer Julia Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.___Follow APs war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war SAMY MAGDY Magdy is a Middle East reporter for The Associated Press, based in Cairo. He focuses on conflict, migration and human rights abuses. twitter facebook mailto

In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talk during joint press conference with Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, Friday, Sept. 5 2025. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)2025-09-09T09:51:31Z KYIV, Ukraine (AP) A Russian glide bomb struck a village in eastern Ukraine as older people were lined up to receive their pensions on Tuesday, killing at least 21 and wounding nearly two dozen others, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a regional official said.The bomb hit the village of Yarova in the Donetsk region, Zelenskyy said in a post on Telegram.Frankly brutal, he said of the attack, urging the international community to make Russia pay economically for its full-scale invasion through additional sanctions.The world should not remain silent, Zelenskyy wrote. The world should not remain inactive. The United States needs a reaction. Europe needs a reaction. The G20 needs a reaction. Strong action is needed so that Russia stops bringing death.With U.S.-led peace efforts making no headway in recent months, Russia has escalated its aerial barrages of Ukraine. On Sunday, Russia hit the capital, Kyiv, with drones and missiles in the largest aerial attack since the war began on Feb. 24, 2022. The glide bombs are retrofitted Soviet weapons that have laid waste to eastern Ukraine for months. Some of them now weigh 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), which is six times bigger than when they were first used in battle in 2022. Donetsk Gov. Vadym Filashkin said that 21 people were killed and 21 others wounded in the attack, which struck a line of older people waiting to receive their pensions. This is not warfare. This is pure terrorism, he wrote on Telegram.Emergency responders were at the scene, he said.Yarova is located less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the front line.The territory was already occupied by Russia in 2022, but was then liberated by Ukraines armed forces in a counteroffensive later the same year.___Follow APs coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

An Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store on March 14, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)2025-09-09T05:00:08Z Apple on Tuesday will unveil its next line-up of iPhones amid a global trade war thats added a potential price increase to the usual intrigue surrounding the annual evolution of the companys marquee product. The new iPhones will be the first to be released since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and unleashed a barrage of tariffs, in what his administration says is an attempt to bring overseas manufacturing back to the U.S. a crusade that has thrust Apple CEO Tim Cook into the hot seat.If Apple follows the same naming scheme since the products 2007 debut, the new models will be called the iPhone 17. But the Cupertino, California, company recently deviated from tradition with its naming formula for the iPhone operating system. When the next version of its iOS system was previewed at its developers conference in June, Apple revealed the free update will be called iOS 26 in reference to the upcoming year a marketing technique that automakers have embraced for decades. Regardless, these new iPhones are still expected to be made in Apples manufacturing hubs in China and India, much to the Trump administrations consternation. Both Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly insisted that iPhones be made in the U.S. instead of overseas. Its an unrealistic demand that analysts say would take years to pull off and would result in a doubling, or even a tripling, of the iPhones current average price of about $1,000. Stay up to date with similar stories by signing up to our WhatsApp channel. Cook tried to placate Trump by initially pledging that Apple would invest $500 billion i n the U.S. over the next four years, and then upped the ante last month by adding another $100 billion to the commitment. He also gifted Trump a statue featuring a 24-karat gold base. That kind of diplomacy has helped insulate Apple from Trumps most severe tariffs. However, the iPhones being brought into the U.S. still face duties of about 25%, stoking speculation that the company will reveal its first across-the-board price increase in five years in an effort to preserve its hefty profit margins. Since 2020, Apple has charged $800 for its basic iPhone and $1,200 for its top offering, but analysts now believe the company may raise prices by $50 to $100 on some of the new models. If Apple does announce price increases, it will come just weeks after Google held steady on prices for its new Pixel smartphones.Whatever Apple ends up charging for the next iPhone, the new line-up isnt expected to be much different from last years model the first to be designed for a wide range of new artificial intelligence features. While the iPhone 16 has proven to be popular, the models didnt sell quite as well as analysts had anticipated because Apple failed to deliver all the AI-fueled improvements it had promised, including a smarter and more versatile Siri assistant. The Siri improvements have been pushed back until next year.That has lowered the expectations for this years line-up, which will likely include the usual improvements in camera quality and battery life on top of a slightly redesigned appearance. The most significant new twist could be the introduction of an ultra-thin iPhone dubbed Air a moniker Apple already slaps on like its sleekest iPads and Mac computers. The relatively minor updates to recent iPhone models are raising questions about Apples ability to innovate in the fast-moving era of AI, said Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson. Apple is reaching a tipping point, and I expect 2026 and 2027 to be pivotal years.Apples AI follies, combined with its exposure in Trumps trade war, have weighed on the companys stock, while the market values of Big Tech peers like Microsoft, Nvidia, Meta Platforms and Google parent Alphabet have been surging.Although Apples stock price is still down by 4% so far this year, the shares have been bouncing back in recent months amid signs it wont be as hard hit by the tariffs as once feared, and a highly anticipated court ruling cleared the way for the company to continue receiving $20 billion annually to lock in Googles search engine as the default option on iPhones. MICHAEL LIEDTKE Liedtke has been covering technology and wide range of other business topics for The Associated Press since the turn of the century. twitter mailto

An Apple logo adorns the facade of the downtown Brooklyn Apple store on March 14, 2020, in New York. (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File)2025-09-09T04:04:41Z BEIJING (AP) The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody and paralyzed in a hospital bed after a police beating with bricks.By then, surveillance was nothing new for the Yang family in rural China, snared in an intricate network based on U.S. technology that spies on them and predicts what theyll do.Their train tickets, hotel bookings, purchases, text messages and phone calls are forwarded to the government. Their house is ringed with more than a dozen cameras. Theyve tried to go to Beijing 20 times in the past few years, but masked men show up and grab them, often before they depart. And last year, Yangs wife and younger daughter were detained and now face trial for disrupting the work of the Chinese state a crime carrying a sentence of up to a decade in prison. Yet the Yangs say they are not criminals. They are simply farmers trying to beg Beijing to stop local officials from seizing their 1 1/2 acres of land in Chinas eastern Jiangsu province.Every move in my own home is monitored, Yang said, sitting behind black curtains that block him from the glare of police lights trained straight at his house. Their surveillance makes me feel unsafe all the time, everywhere. The AP obtained tens of thousands of pages of classified and internal documents that show how U.S. companies designed and marketed systems that became the foundation for Chinas digital cage. (AP Video/Serginho Roosblad, Marshall Ritzel) Across China, tens of thousands of people tagged as troublemakers like the Yangs are trapped in a digital cage, barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes by the worlds largest digital surveillance apparatus. Most of this technology came from companies in a country that has long claimed to support freedoms worldwide: the United States.Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built Chinas surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known, an Associated Press investigation found. They sold billions of dollars of technology to the Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Congress and in the media that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a brutal mass detention campaign in the far west region of Xinjiang targeting, tracking and grading virtually the entire native Uyghur population to forcibly assimilate and subdue them. U.S. companies did this by bringing predictive policing to China technology that sucks in and analyzes data to prevent crime, protests, or terror attacks before they happen. Such systems mine a vast array of information texts, calls, payments, flights, video, DNA swabs, mail deliveries, the internet, even water and power use to unearth individuals deemed suspicious and predict their behavior. But they also allow Chinese police to threaten friends and family and preemptively detain people for crimes they have not even committed. Petitioner Yang Guoliang pulls back the blackout curtain used to provide privacy from nearby police security cameras and lights during an interview at his home in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Petitioner Yang Guoliang pulls back the blackout curtain used to provide privacy from nearby police security cameras and lights during an interview at his home in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More For example, the AP found a Chinese defense contractor, Huadi, worked with IBM to design the main policing system known as the Golden Shield for Beijing to censor the internet and crack down on alleged terrorists, the Falun Gong religious sect, and even villagers deemed troublesome, according to thousands of pages of classified government blueprints taken out of China by a whistleblower, verified by AP and revealed here for the first time. IBM and other companies that responded said they fully complied with all laws, sanctions and U.S. export controls governing business in China, past and present.Across China, surveillance systems track blacklisted key persons, whose movements are restricted and monitored. In Xinjiang, administrators logged people as high, medium, or low risk, often according to 100-point scores with deductions for factors like growing a beard, being 15 to 55 years old, or just being Uyghur. Cellphone videos provided by the Yang family show how their every move is monitored, from an IV drip at a hospital, to their backyard, to being physically stopped at a bus station.(AP Video/Marshall Ritzel) Some tech companies even specifically addressed race in their marketing. Dell and a Chinese surveillance firm promoted a military-grade AI-powered laptop with all-race recognition on Dells official WeChat account in 2019. And until contacted by AP in August, biotech giant Thermo Fisher Scientifics website marketed DNA kits to the Chinese police as designed for the Chinese population, including ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Tibetans. While the flood of American technology slowed considerably starting in 2019 after outrage and sanctions over atrocities in Xinjiang, it laid the foundation for Chinas surveillance apparatus that Chinese companies have since built on and in some cases replaced. To this day, concerns remain over where technology sold to China will end up.For example, 20 former U.S. officials and national security experts wrote a letter in late July criticizing a deal for NVIDIA to sell H20 chips used in artificial intelligence to China, with 15% of revenues going to the U.S. government. They said no matter who the chip is sold to, it will fall into the hands of Chinese military and intelligence services.NVIDIA said it does not make surveillance systems or software, does not work with police in China and has not designed the H20 for police surveillance. NVIDIA posted on its WeChat social media account in 2022 that Chinese surveillance firms Watrix and GEOAI used its chips to train AI patrol drones and systems to identify people by their walk, but told the AP those relationships no longer continue. The White House and Department of Commerce did not respond to requests for comment.Thermo Fisher and hard drive maker Seagate promoted their products to Chinese police at conferences and trade shows this year, according to online posts. Officers stroll the streets of Beijing with Motorola walkie talkies. NVIDIA and Intel chips remain critical for Chinese policing systems, procurements show. And contracts to maintain existing IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft software and gear remain ubiquitous, often with third parties.What started in China more than a decade ago could be seen as a cautionary tale for other countries at a time when the use of surveillance technology worldwide is rising sharply, including in the United States. Emboldened by the Trump administration, U.S. tech companies are more powerful than ever, and President Donald Trump has rolled back a Biden-era executive order meant to safeguard civil rights from new surveillance technologies. As the capacity and sophistication of such technologies has grown, so has their reach. Surveillance technologies now include AI systems that help track and detain migrants in the U.S. and identify people to kill in the Israel-Hamas war. China, in the meantime, has used what it learned from the U.S. to turn itself into a surveillance superpower, selling technologies to countries like Iran and Russia.The AP investigation was based on tens of thousands of leaked emails and databases from a Chinese surveillance company; tens of thousands of pages of confidential corporate and government documents; public Chinese language marketing material; and thousands of procurements, many provided by ChinaFile, a digital magazine published by the non-profit Asia Society. The AP also drew from dozens of open record requests and interviews with more than 100 current and former Chinese and American engineers, executives, experts, officials, administrators, and police officers.Though the companies often claim they arent responsible for how their products are used, some directly pitched their tech as tools for Chinese police to control citizens, marketing material from IBM, Dell, Cisco, and Seagate show. Their sales pitches made both publicly and privately cited Communist Party catchphrases on crushing protest, including stability maintenance, key persons, and abnormal gatherings, and named programs that stifle dissent, such as Internet Police, Sharp Eyes and the Golden Shield.Other companies, like Intel, NVIDIA, Oracle, Thermo Fisher, Motorola, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Western Digital, creator of mapping software ArcGIS Esri, and what was then Hewlett Packard, or HP, also sold technology or services knowingly to Chinese police or surveillance companies. Four practicing lawyers said sales like those uncovered by AP could potentially go against at least the spirit, if not the letter, of U.S. export laws at the time, which the companies denied. American technology made up nearly every part of Chinas surveillance apparatus, AP found:MILITARY AND POLICE In 2009, Chinese defense contractor Huadi worked with IBM to build national intelligence systems, including a counterterrorism database, used by the Chinese military and Chinas secret police, the Ministry of State Security. Chinese agents sold IBMs i2 police surveillance analysis software to the same ministry and to Chinese police, including in Xinjiang, through the 2010s, leaked emails andmarketing posts show. IBM said it has no record of its i2 software ever having been sold to the Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang.SURVEILLANCE NVIDIA and Intel partnered with Chinas three biggest surveillance companies to add AI capabilities to cameras used for video surveillance across China,including Xinjiang and Tibet, until sanctions were imposed.NVIDIA said in a post dating to at least 2013that it collaborated with a Chinese police research institute on advanced surveillance technology.ETHNIC REPRESSION IBM, Oracle, HP, and ArcGIS developer Esri sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of geographic and mapping software to Chinese police that allows officers to detect when blacklisted Uyghurs, Tibetans or dissidents stray out of provinces or villages. As late as 2019, with detentions in Xinjiang well underway,Dell hosted an industry summit in its capital.Dell and then-subsidiary VMWare soldcloud softwareand storage devices to police and entities providing data topolice in TibetandXinjiang, even in 2022 after abuses there became widely known. IDENTIFICATION Huadi worked with IBM to construct Chinas national fingerprint database; IBM told AP it never sold fingerprinting-specific product or technology to the Chinese government in violation of US law. HP and VMWare sold technology used for fingerprint comparison by Chinese police, whileIntel partnered with a Chinese fingerprinting companyto make their devices more effective. IBM, Dell, and VMWare also promoted facial recognition to Chinese police. Chinas police and police DNA labs bought Dell and Microsoft software and equipment to save genetic data on police databases. CENSORSHIP AND CONTROL In 2016, Dell boasted on its WeChat account thatits services assisted the Chinese internet police in cracking down on rumormongers.Seagate said on WeChat in 2022 that itsells hard drives tailor made for AI video systems in Chinafor use by police to help them control key persons, despite facing backlash for selling drives in Xinjiang. For extended findings, click here.Everything was built on American tech, said Valentin Weber, a researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations who studied the use of U.S. tech by Chinese police. Chinas capability was close to zero.IBM, Dell, Cisco, Intel, Thermo Fisher and Amazon Web Services all said they adhere to export control policies. Seagate and Western Digital said they adhere to all relevant laws and regulations where they operate.Oracle, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and tech conglomerate Broadcom, which acquired VMWare and cloud company Pivotal in 2023, did not comment on the record; HP, Motorola and Huadi did not respond, and Esri denied involvement but did not reply to examples. Microsoft told AP it found no evidence that it knowingly sold technology to the military or police as part of updates to the Golden Shield. Stay up to date with similar stories by signing up to our WhatsApp channel. Some U.S. companies ended contracts in China over rights concerns and after sanctions. For example, IBM said it has prohibited sales to Tibet and Xinjiang police since 2015, and suspended business relations with defense contractor Huadi in 2019.However, sanctions experts noted that the laws have significant loopholes and often lag behind new developments. For example, a ban on military and policing gear to China after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre does not take into account newer technologies or general-use products that can be applied in policing.They also noted that the law around export controls is complicated. Raj Bhala, an expert in international trade law at the University of Kansas, said the issues the AP described fell into the kind of gray area that we put in exams.It would raise concerns about possible inconsistencies, possible violations, said Bhala, who emphasized he was speaking generally and not about any specific company. But I really stress possible. We need to know more facts.While German, Japanese and Korean firms also played a role, American tech firms were by far the biggest suppliers.The Xinjiang government said in a statement that it uses surveillance technologies to prevent and combat terrorist and criminal activity, that it respects citizens privacy and legal rights and that it does not target any particular ethnicity. The statement said Western countries also use such technology, calling the U.S. a true surveillance state. Other government agencies did not respond to a request for comment, including Chinas police and authorities in the Yangs province.This technology still powers the police database that controls the Yangs and other ordinary people. An estimate based on Chinese government statistics found at least 55,000 to 110,000 were put under residential surveillance in the past decade, and vast numbers are restricted from travel in Xinjiang and Tibet. Chinas cities, roads and villages are now studded with more cameras than the rest of the world combined, analysts say one for every two people.Because of this technology we have no freedom at all, said Yang Guoliangs elder daughter, Yang Caiying, now in exile in Japan. At the moment, its us Chinese that are suffering the consequences, but sooner or later, Americans and others, too, will lose their freedoms. AI analysis of people walking and commuting in Beijing. (AP Video/Marshall Ritzel) Selling surveillance superpowersBack when China was emerging from the chaotic violence of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, three in four Chinese were farmers, including the Yangs. They lived in a three-room home of tiles and pounded earth nestled among the lush, humid fields of the Yangtze River delta.After Chairman Mao Zedongs death that year, Beijings new leaders opened China to the world, and American tech firms like HP and IBM rushed in. But there were hard limits on how much change the government would accept. In 1989, the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests rattled Beijing, which sent tanks and troops to shoot students. Soon after, Beijing began planning the Golden Shield, aimed at digitizing Chinas police force.In 2001, the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks turbocharged interest in surveillance technology. One researcher claimed authorities could have foiled the attack by unearthing connections between hijackers through public information in databases. PHOTO ESSAY: Those caught in the dragnet of Chinas digital cage Former Xinjiang government engineer Nureli Abliz, and his son, Ilyon, 9, leave their refugee camp at the Tompkins Barracks, a former U.S. Army installation, in Schwetzingen, Germany, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman) Petitioner Yang Guoliang looks through documents at his home in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Former Xinjiang government engineer Nureli Abliz, a Uyghur Muslim, is reflected in a historical image of Mannheim's central square, as he prays in a hotel room during an interview in Mannheim, Germany, where he now lives in exile, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman) Yang Caiying, who is living in exile in Japan, shows a leaflet protesting Chinese state repression of her family outside the Chinese consulate in Nagoya, Japan, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Dake Kang) Petitioner Yang Guoliang rests in his bedroom in Changzhou in eastern China's Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) For full photo essay click here American companies cashed in, selling the U.S. billions of dollars in surveillance technologies they said could prevent crime and terror attacks.They spotted the same sales opportunity in China. Researchers warned surveillance technologies would be instruments of repression in the hands of authoritarian states. Yet IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and other American companies clinched orders to supply Beijings Golden Shield.China didnt have this kind of thing before, said Wang, a former Chinese police official in Xinjiang who asked to be identified only by last name for fear of retaliation. These concepts all came from the West.Soon, disturbing stories emerged. Chinese police blocked sensitive news, pinpointing dissidents with unnerving precision. They stalked adherents of the Falun Gong sect banned by authorities. Congress demanded explanations from tech companies.In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the Golden Shield as a sales opportunity, quoting a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an evil cult. A Cisco presentation reviewed by AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web. Followers sued Cisco, which is now petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the lower court ruling that allowed the lawsuit.At a human rights conference in February, then-Cisco lawyer Katie Shay said companies had a responsibility to understand how customers might misuse their technology for surveillance and censorship.A lot of people have suffered at the hands of their government, and I want to acknowledge that pain, said Shay, who left Cisco in June. I also will say that Cisco disputes the allegations of Ciscos involvement.Cisco told the AP it is committed to human rights, but the court allegations may open the floodgates for suits against U.S. corporations merely for legal exports of off-the-shelf goods and services.As Cisco was summoned before Congress, IBM partnered with a Chinese defense contractor on Phase Two of Chinas Golden Shield.Classified government blueprints obtained by AP show that in 2009, IBM worked with Huadi, the state-owned subsidiary of Chinas biggest missile military contractor spun off from Chinas Ministry of Defense, to build out predictive policing.Consolidate Communist Party rule, read the Huadi blueprint, which showed the databases would track hundreds of thousands of people online.In response to APs questions, IBM referred to any possible relationship it may have had with Chinese government agencies as old, stale interactions: ... If older systems are being abused today and IBM has no knowledge that they are the misuse is entirely outside of IBMs control, was not contemplated by IBM decades ago, and in no way reflects on IBM today.Back in 2009, Beijing needed the technology urgently to quash critics bonding online. Among them were the Yangs. A blue roof hut fitted with police surveillance cameras and lights are seen near the home of petitioner Yang Guoliang in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) A blue roof hut fitted with police surveillance cameras and lights are seen near the home of petitioner Yang Guoliang in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More In April that year, local authorities ordered the Yangs and more than 300 other families in their village off their land. Developers coveted their prime lakefront property for Western-style apartments and villas, with fountains, football fields and shopping centers.The Yangs had no idea police were installing systems that could target families like theirs. They just knew their land was being seized in return for just a unit in a five-floor walk-up, too many stairs for their elderly mother to climb.The Yangs and other farmers across China filed complaints.I discovered the way the government took our land was illegal, Yang Caiying said. They cheated us. Bank information, GPS locations, medical records, phone calls, even water and power usage are captured and analyzed to root out what the Chinese government considers potential terrorists. (AP Illustration / Marshall Ritzel) Bank information, GPS locations, medical records, phone calls, even water and power usage are captured and analyzed to root out what the Chinese government considers potential terrorists. (AP Illustration / Marshall Ritzel) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Predict and preventIn July 2009, three months after the Yang land was seized, riots erupted on the other side of the country in Xinjiang. Gory images of a Uyghur lynched at a toy factory spread online, angry Uyghurs took to the streets, and hundreds were killed.Once again, American firms pitched their technology as the solution.The government sent troops and cut Xinjiangs phone and internet connections. In secret meetings, officials concluded that police had failed to spot the danger signs because they couldnt identify Uyghurs deemed separatists, terrorists, and religious extremists, three engineers then working for the Xinjiang government told AP.At the time, Xinjiang police and data systems were already running on American technology including IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft, the engineers said, which AP verified by reviewing government contracts. But the databases were unconnected.So Xinjiang launched an ambitious initiative to fuse data from all available sources, including banks, railways, and phone companies, into a central database. Officials demanded complete information on all suspicious individuals and their relatives going back three generations, according to the engineers, who described specific meetings in which they participated. Two asked to remain anonymous, fearing for their family in China; the third, Nureli Abliz, is now in Germany.Soon, lucrative contracts went up for bidding. Among those seeking to profit was IBM.Prevent problems before they happen, IBM promised Chinese officials. In an August 2009 pamphlet, IBM cited the Xinjiang riots and said its technology could help the government ensure urban safety and stability.IBM executives fanned out across the country to court Chinese officials. In December 2009, they set up a new IBM Institute for Electronic Governance Innovation in Beijing. In 2011, IBM acquired i2, a software program designed to prevent terrorist threats. IBM touted i2s ability to analyze Chinese social media and licensed a Shanghai-based firm called Landasoft to sell it to Chinas police, corporate records show.Chinese police purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of products from companies like IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft to upgrade the Golden Shield policing systems, a leaked accounting ledger acquired by AP from a whistleblower shows.In the confrontation between the Chinese state and its critics, American technology tipped the scales of power.In 2011, thieves ransacked the Yangs house, hunting for their property deed. They didnt find it. Petitioner Yang Guoliang stands at his gate outside his home in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Petitioner Yang Guoliang stands at his gate outside his home in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Yang Caiying, who is living in exile in Japan, wears signs protesting state repression of her family outside the Chinese consulate in Nagoya, Japan, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Dake Kang) Yang Caiying, who is living in exile in Japan, wears signs protesting state repression of her family outside the Chinese consulate in Nagoya, Japan, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Dake Kang) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Petitioner Yang Guoliang smokes near a security camera his family installed inside their home in Changzhou in eastern China's Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Petitioner Yang Guoliang smokes near a security camera his family installed inside their home in Changzhou in eastern China's Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Two years later, bald men with tattoos and gold chains smashed down their door, shattered windows and flipped furniture to bully them out of their home anyway. Yangs mother dropped to the floor in terror. Doctors diagnosed a heart attack, but the Yangs didnt have money for a pacemaker.Furious, the Yangs sued local police. In June 2015, a judge ruled their land had been seized illegally. The Yangs celebrated.But just weeks after the ruling, officers identified human rights lawyers through the Golden Shield technology, cuffed hundreds of them and pressed them into police vans across China. One lawyer later recalled how police monitored his messages on human rights in WeChat before they grabbed him, shackled him to a chair, and tortured him.Overnight, Chinas budding rights-defense movement was dealt a fatal blow and with it, the Yangs case. The Yangs were called in and curtly told the judgment was being overturned, their lawsuit dismissed without trial.We really had too much faith in the law, you know? Yang Guoliang said, his hands clenched in fists. It turned out to be worthless. Analysts estimate more security cameras are installed in China than in the rest of the world combined. (AP illustration/Marshall Ritzel) Analysts estimate more security cameras are installed in China than in the rest of the world combined. (AP illustration/Marshall Ritzel) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Technologies of terrorIn the meantime, Beijing was transforming Xinjiang into the most heavily surveilled place on earth, sweeping around a million people into camps and prisons.When bombs tore through a train station in Xinjiangs capital hours after a visit by leader Xi Jinping in 2014, Xi demanded a crackdown.He was super angry, said Abliz, one of the engineers with the Xinjiang government. They concluded they werent surveilling Uyghurs closely enough.The next year, in April 2015, Abliz attended a closed-door exposition in Xinjiang. A booth ran by Landasoft, the former IBM partner, caught his eye.After years as a vendor of IBMs i2 police surveillance analysis software to Xinjiang police, Landasoft had struck out on its own, touting i2-like software it said could detain extremists before they caused trouble. The similarity was no coincidence: Landasofts software was copied from i2, according to leaked emails and records. In this two-image composite taken from screenshots, marketing materials obtained by the AP show IBMs i2 software, left, later being replicated by Chinas Landasofts iTap software to show how connections were drawn between individuals considered suspicious. (AP Photo) In this two-image composite taken from screenshots, marketing materials obtained by the AP show IBMs i2 software, left, later being replicated by Chinas Landasofts iTap software to show how connections were drawn between individuals considered suspicious. (AP Photo) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More The platform is developed based on i2, a Landasoft project manager wrote in an email.It used a proprietary data visualization system developed by i2. The software powered what was called the Integrated Joint Operations Platform, or IJOP, with the authority to trigger arrests.Abliz went numb.I thought then that this was the end of humanity, he said. Former Xinjiang government engineer Nureli Abliz, who saw firsthand how surveillance technology flagged thousands of people in China for detention, even when they had committed no crime, sits for a portrait in Mannheim, Germany, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman) Former Xinjiang government engineer Nureli Abliz, who saw firsthand how surveillance technology flagged thousands of people in China for detention, even when they had committed no crime, sits for a portrait in Mannheim, Germany, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Landasoft did not respond to repeated requests for comment. IBM said it cut ties with Landasoft in 2014 and was not aware of any interaction between Landasoft and the Public Security Bureau in Xinjiang.In the autumn of 2015, months after the Xinjiang expo, Landasoft signed contracts with Xinjiang police, emails show. Workers installed millions of cameras and wired over 7,000 police outposts, often built just hundreds of meters apart. Nearly 100,000 officers were recruited to pound on doors and collect names, addresses, fingerprints and face-scans.Though Chinese hardware was favored, foreign software was irreplaceable for its performance and compatibility with Chinas American-built systems, engineers told AP. That included server and database software from Oracle and Microsoft and cloud software from VMWare, which Dell acquired in 2016. In this image from a screenshot, a 2014 slide from an internal VMWare marketing presentation obtained by AP demonstrates how police in Chinas southwest Yunnan province used their cloud software to centralize data management and access across disparate police bureaus. (AP Photo) In this image from a screenshot, a 2014 slide from an internal VMWare marketing presentation obtained by AP demonstrates how police in Chinas southwest Yunnan province used their cloud software to centralize data management and access across disparate police bureaus. (AP Photo) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More In late 2016, the crackdown began. Internal documents, a leaked copy of the Landasoft software and interviews with 16 former Xinjiang police officers, officials and engineers reveal how the system worked.Landasofts software combined data fed into a central police database to compile a dossier on vast swaths of Xinjiangs population, tagging them with categories like went on pilgrimage or studied abroad. Administrators then questioned them, computed risk scores and decided who to detain.Hundreds of thousands of people were tagged untrustworthy, leaked messages show. Leaked documents show the IJOP flagged 24,412 people as suspicious in just one week in 2017, leading to most being detained.They thought it better to grab thousands of innocents than let a single criminal slip free, Abliz said.The technology was crude and flawed. Landasoft emails show engineers frantically fixing a software bug to release hundreds of people categorized as high-risk. And surveillance cameras often misidentified people, a former Xinjiang police officer found when he checked their ID cards.Yet officers were told computers cannot lie and that the IJOPs listed targets were absolutely correct, Abliz said. The softwares orders were often obeyed fearfully, unquestioningly.The tech companies told the government their software is perfect, Abliz said. Its all a myth. Many of the biggest American tech companies to a large degree designed and built Chinas surveillance state. (AP illustration Marshall Ritzel) Many of the biggest American tech companies to a large degree designed and built Chinas surveillance state. (AP illustration Marshall Ritzel) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Minority reportThe all-encompassing surveillance forced total compliance: Officers arrested colleagues, neighbors informed on each other.In May 2017, Kalbinur Sidik, a teacher now in the Netherlands, was summoned to her district government office in a yellow brick apartment building in Xinjiangs capital. A young Uyghur woman, fresh from college, rose and introduced herself as a local official. Sidik, the woman explained, was being appointed as the head of her building, responsible for collecting information on neighbors.Whats this data going to be used for? Sidik asked.The woman looked at a computer, with a Landasoft program running and lists of names and tags: Goes out at night, Overseas phone, unemployed. One button stood out: Push Alert.The woman clicked it, and the screen filled with names. These people, the woman explained, would be detained and interrogated for suspected ties to terrorism. Sidiks eyes widened.I hated her for what she was doing, Sidik said. I knew those people would disappear.Xinjiang officials issued arrest quotas, Sidik and five other former officers and administrators said. Sidik watched with horror as the number of people who attended her compounds weekly mandatory flag-raising ceremony shrank, from 400 to just over 100, as residents were arrested.At the district office, she observed the logos popping up on screens: Oracle, Microsoft, Intel. The AP found evidence of products from all three companies used in Xinjiangs policing and data systems during the crackdown, along with Esri, Seagate, Western Digital, NVIDIA, Thermo Fisher, and VMWare, then owned by Dell, which advertised cooperation with Xinjiang authorities on its website.Sidik asked her neighborhood official where it all came from.Weve spent a lot of money to import foreign technology, she recalls the official telling her.Among those caught in the digital dragnet was Parida Qabylqai, an ethnic Kazakh pharmacist at a military hospital in Xinjiang.In February 2018, Qabylqai was flagged by the IJOP for visiting her parents in Kazakhstan. At first, her boss thought it was a mistake.Youre a good person, you shouldnt be listed, she recalled him saying. Then he checked the IJOP and spotted her name.Its really serious! Youre going to end up in the camps, he blurted out in shock.An officer pressed a confession into her hands.What did I do wrong? Qabylqai asked.Just sign! the officer shouted.Qabylqai was cuffed, hooded, and whisked to a camp, where cameras watched her day and night, even peering at her naked body in the toilet. Guards barking over speakers ordered her not to speak or even to move.They did things to us that no human being should ever have to experience, she said. But they said my name was listed by the IJOP, so they didnt need to explain anything.Even enforcers of the system werent spared.In 2018, Liu Yuliang, a civil servant in Xinjiang, was ordered to the home of a young police officer in his village. He and dozens of others stood, silent, as the officer embraced his sobbing, pregnant wife.The officer had forced many people into the camps. Then he himself was flagged for detention.Too fearful to resist, Liu went along with the arrest, just as the young officer had done before him.Landasoft software alerted police when flagged people did anything labeled suspicious, like going out at night or logging on the internet repeatedly. Liu was sent to knock on doors, questioning residents whose eyes filled with fear.As police swept Xinjiang, Landasoft purchased software from Pivotal, a cloud company later acquired by Broadcom, emails show. And Landasoft registered accounts on both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in 2018, seeking to expand cloud offerings to police clients, emails show.AWS said Landasoft consumed very limited cloud services for a brief period and not for software in the Xinjiang crackdown. Microsoft said Landasoft used Azure services through a self-service portal retired in 2021, and that any Landasoft data was deleted.The Xinjiang government told the AP: There is absolutely no such thing as large-scale human rights violations.Liu eventually resigned and returned to his hometown in eastern China, trying to forget what he had seen and done. But he noted with unease the new cameras and checkpoints being installed around his home.Four days later, state security called and summoned him for questioning. The all-seeing surveillance apparatus had followed him home.The Xinjiang model is being copied everywhere, in every city in China, Liu said.In 2024, Liu left China, ignoring an airport officer who warned that wherever he went, he would be watched.This technology has no emotions, Liu said. But in the hands of a government that doesnt respect the law, it becomes a tool for evil. In this security camera video, police officers hold up Yang Li as she is returned to her family home after she was knocked unconscious by masked police after petitioning in Beijing, Friday, March, 8, 2024, in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province. (Yang Family via AP) Automated autocracyThe Yangs are still trapped by U.S. technology. IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, and Seagate servers, switches and drives power police systems targeting them, maintenance contracts dating to this year show. Intel and NVIDIA chips process data. Oracle and VMWare software run the database.But the harder the Yangs push, the harder the system pushes back.In February 2023, they went to the National Public Complaints Administration in Beijing with a letter. Two days later, police grabbed them from their hotel and drove them home.The Yangs persisted, trying to plead their case to Beijing. In the following months, they were seized at bus and train stations, beaten at a hospital and abducted by ambulance. Yang Li, right, and her mother, Xu Dongqing, pose for a photo in front of a gate outside the Forbidden City in Beijing in February 2023, on their first visit to the Chinese capital to petition the central government. (Yang family via AP) Yang Li, right, and her mother, Xu Dongqing, pose for a photo in front of a gate outside the Forbidden City in Beijing in February 2023, on their first visit to the Chinese capital to petition the central government. (Yang family via AP) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Last July, Yangs mother tried again. She carried a letter for Chinese leader Xi Jinping:Theyre using violence and kidnapping to bar me from petitioning and seeking medical treatment ... We beg you, General Secretary, to save us.Outside Beijings leadership compound, burly men in black tackled Yangs mother to the ground. She was jailed for over a month, questioned, strip-searched, force-fed medication and deprived of food and water. In October, she and Yangs sister disappeared. Petitioner Yang Guoliang stands in the room of his daughter, who has since been detained, which is covered with curtains for privacy from nearby police surveillance cameras in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Petitioner Yang Guoliang stands in the room of his daughter, who has since been detained, which is covered with curtains for privacy from nearby police surveillance cameras in Changzhou in eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province, Dec. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More The Yangs house is now the last left standing. The father lives alone.His relatives have cut contact, unnerved by the flock of police that tail him. Thousands of pages of documents stashed in drawers, stuffed in bags, and piled in boxes in a bathtub chronicle every step of their 16-year quest for justice.In April, Yang was sent criminal charges showing how much police had spent to stop the familys abnormal petitioning.The cost: About $37,000. Dotted Line with Center Square __Yael Grauer is an independent investigative tech reporter. AP journalists Garance Burke in San Francisco, Larry Fenn in New York and Byron Tau in Washington contributed to this report, along with Myf Ma, an independent investigative journalist, researcher and programmer in New York covering China.__Contact APs global investigative team at [emailprotected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/ DAKE KANG Kang covers Chinese politics, technology and society from Beijing for The Associated Press. Hes reported across Central, South, and East Asia, and was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative reporting in China. twitter mailto

On July 16, I stood among the sea of Little Monsters in Las Vegas, blown away by the opening night of Lady Gaga's Mayhem Ball tour. Mother Monster put on a show full of heart and symbolism. In the middle of it all, I realized I wasn't just watching Gaga's dazzling tale of dueling personalities; I was reliving my own journey in a way I'd never put into words.Well, here goes.I came out as a gay man in the 1990s, raised in a small Iowa town where, at the time, doing so could mean losing your family, friends, or more. The LGBTQ+ community was still recovering from the AIDS crisis and heartbreak following the murder of Matthew Shepard. I was a young reporter, dedicated to sharing the stories of others, all while keeping part of myself hidden. Covering Matthew's murder was one of the most painful experiences of my life. It triggered a pattern of destructive behavior that I would rather forget. In Mayhem, Lady Gaga held a mirror up to that messy path and the parts of me I used to hide, saying, "Look at this, it's all part of you."Mayhem opens with Gaga declaring, "This is my house." When she launched into "Born This Way," the years fell away. That song was my lifeline when being openly gay still came with a hundred unspoken warnings. Her message to love yourself wasn't just a lyric to me; it was permission. Mayhem reached into places I thought I'd already healed.At the heart of Mayhem stands Gaga's alter ego: the Mistress of Mayhem. She's the 'Lady in Red' who appears throughout the show, at one point towering over the stage in a giant crimson gown. Gaga uses The Lady in Red to represent her shadow: the part of yourself you've been told is too much. The part you keep in the dark because it scares you, and everyone else.For me, that shadow was the fear of being judged for being gay. When Gaga eventually faced the Lady in Red during "Million Reasons," joining hands instead of fighting her, it reminded me that the pieces of ourselves that we hide aren't the enemy. They're the missing half of the whole of who we are.Gaga built Mayhem like an opera, with deliberate nods to The Phantom of the Opera. During "Shallow," she climbed into a small boat rowed by the Lady in Red. In Phantom, the mask hides his deformities, but it also masks his fear and shame. Mayhem pulled that symbolism into the spotlight, and it struck me. My opera house had a phantom, too.Mayhem felt like a ritual. In "Bad Romance," Gaga appears in white feathers, wearing the dark hair of her shadow self, saying, "We are monsters, and monsters never die." It's a moment of defiance and acceptance. Then she returns in a T-shirt and no makeup for the encore, singing "How Bad Do U Want Me." It felt like she had peeled back everything to reveal her true, bare self. She left us with the powerful line: "The ritual of being yourself is a beautiful practice."Mayhem Ball wasn't just a concert; it was a sanctuary. A place where queer folks and anyone who's felt like an outsider could feel they belonged. Gaga has always called fans her "Little Monsters," and that night, I understood precisely why.I felt empowered, moved, and seen as I left the show. I also felt claimed. Claimed by my own history, shadows, and monsters. Gaga reminded me that those messy years of my life aren't stains to scrub out; they're proof that somehow, I made it through the worst of times. Like Lady Gaga, I declare: "This is my house," and I choose to live unapologetically as myself.Thank you, Lady Gaga.Perspectives is dedicated to featuring a wide range of inspiring personal stories and impactful opinions from the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. Visit Pride.com/submit to learn more about submission guidelines. Views expressed in Perspectives stories are those of the guest writers, columnists, and editors, and do not directly represent the views of PRIDE or our parent company, equalpride.

The NFL isnt known for its inclusivity, but the dancers cheering on the sidelines are a different story. This year, there are 71 male cheerleaders across 11 different NFL teams, and some of them are also queer.The Baltimore Ravens, which has had male cheerleaders since the late 90s, is now leading the charge by hiring 19 this year, with the New Orleans Saints a close second with 12. Although male cheerleaders have been around for decades, when the Minnesota Vikings added two new out gay male cheerleaders to their squad this summer, MAGA supporters took to the internet to level harsh criticism full of anti-LBGTQ+ hate at the rookie cheerleaders, Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn.But so far, the NFL isnt backing down, and currently, there are 26 male cheerleaders who are stunt performers, and the rest are categorized as dancers alongside their female counterparts. But who are the hottest gay cheerleaders who have captured the nation's and our attention?Randolph Rivera (Tampa Bay Buccaneers)See on InstagramRandolph Rivera joined the Bucs cheerleading squad as a dancer and stunt team member in 2021 after spending four seasons with the Baltimore Ravens coed stunt squad. The 31-year-old athlete is known for being able to shake his pom moms and show off feats of strength on the field as someone who can bench press 215 pounds. Rivera married his husband, Rene Alonso, in April 2025. Blaize Shiek (Minnesota Vikings)See on InstagramBlaize Shiek is one of two new cheerleaders to join the Minnesota Vikings squad, who faced a fierce backlash from conservatives angry about male cheerleaders. As a rookie member of the Vikings cheerleading squad, Shiek hit the field for the first time in August at the preseason opener.Louie Conn (Minnesota Vikings)See on InstagramLouie Conn was the second new male cheerleader the Minnesota Vikings announced this summer, unleashing a conservative internet firestorm. Despite the right-wing criticism, Conn lead the crowd during the third quarter against the New England Patriots last month.Napoleon Jinnies (Los Angeles Rams)See on InstagramIn 2019, Napoleon Jinnies, alongside Quinton Peron, became the first male cheerleaders in the NFL to perform during the Super Bowl. Both men are also gay. Peron has since retired, but Jinnies has been cheering for the Los Angeles Rams ever since. The classically trained dancer has also done some modeling, being featured in Abercrombie & Fitchs Fierce cologne campaign, but started off dancing in a show at Disneyland before trying out for the Rams.Eswinn Diaz (Lost Angeles Rams) View this post on Instagram A post shared by Eswinn (@energizer_bunny_)Eswinn Diaz started his career as a professional dancer by scoring a prestigious role with the Entertainment team at the Walt Disney Company. Since then, he joined the Rams cheerleading squad in 2022 and was able to perform in the Super Bowl during his rookie year with the team.Jose Capetillo (Los Angeles Rams)See on InstagramIn 2023, after three seasons with the LA Rams cheer squad, Jose Capetillo and Brendan Ryan became the first out gay men to ever become captains of an NFL cheerleading team. During his rookie season with the team, he performed at the Super Bowl alongside fellow gay Rams cheerleaders Eswinn Diaz and Ryan. Ryan has since retired, but Capetillo is still taking to the field to cheer for the Rams.Dalton Walsh (Philadelphia Eagles)See on InstagramRookie Dalton Walsh is one of three male cheerleaders now performing as part of the Philadelphia Eagles, all three of whom publicly stood up for Blaize Shiek and Louie Conn when the MAGA horde decided to hate on them online. Walsh, who has Tourettes Syndrome, has been open about how dance became his outlet. He also mentors younger dancers in local studios and teaches them that dance is as much about resilience and it about performance.

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02890-3Use computing royalties to kick-start biodiversity fund

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02814-1Researchers, funders, universities and governments must work together to build scientific collaborations that are resilient to changing geopolitics.

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02891-2Strengthen the science behind the Agreement on Fisheries Subsidies

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02893-0Life scientists: educate others to help strengthen biosecurity

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02892-1Creativity is essential to the ethos of universities

by Mila Koumpilova, Chalkbeat, and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicagos free daily newsletter to keep up with the latest education news. This summer, worried parents called the principal at Chalmers Elementary on Chicagos West Side to ask if the district had shuttered the school. They had noticed second-floor windows boarded up.But despite years of declining enrollment, the school wasnt closing. It was undergoing major renovations.Students returning to Chalmers last month found an expansive new engineering space, computer lab and arts studio. The teachers who greeted them had received special training. A cache of new technology 3D printers, computers and bee-shaped robots to teach students basic coding offered fresh possibilities.The influx of dollars and attention has lifted hopes at Chalmers, with officials at Chicago Public Schools and City Hall testing the idea that investing in high-poverty schools can reverse enrollment losses.But it could take years and millions of dollars to see if it works. Chalmers, in the historic North Lawndale neighborhood, served about 210 students last year in a building with capacity for 600. Just around the corner, about 210 students populated Johnson Elementary on a campus meant for 480. The local high school, Collins Academy, was down to 200 students. The schools serve mostly Black and low-income students. The enrollment slide at the three schools and others in the area was partly the result of decisions by previous mayors and public school administrations who labeled North Lawndales schools as failing and opened new ones many run by private entities that drew families away. About a decade ago, the district closed and overhauled Collins and fired educators at Chalmers and Johnson who had built relationships with families and temporarily handed the schools over to a private operator to try to turn them around academically. All the while, families have been leaving the neighborhood or having fewer babies, creating demographic challenges outside school officials control. Across the district, overall enrollment dropped by 70,000 in the past decade. That decline meant some schools in North Lawndale and elsewhere became tiny, costly to run and unable to offer a rich student experience.Three of every 10 Chicago schools sit at least half-empty, and closing or merging them remains a political third rail. Chicago officials, faced with pressure from the teachers union and community groups, have not confronted this challenge. And, as Chalkbeat and ProPublica reported in June, for years the district has largely left chronically underenrolled schools to struggle.Now, CPS and the city under new leadership are backing a different, community-led approach: spending at least $40 million to transform Chalmers, Johnson and Collins into science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, academies. The money is covering building upgrades, professional development, new educator positions and technology in the initiatives first two years.After years spent promoting better-resourced selective and magnet schools and opening up charters en masse, CPS is hoping to draw families back to the neighborhood schools that many of them abandoned.The district has held up the North Lawndale initiative as an example of working closely with local communities to find solutions to under-enrollment and as a model for other Chicago neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment and student losses. When we are successful in having high-quality programs, what we know from history is that more children will want to come, former CEO Pedro Martinez said at a press event at Collins last school year.Education experts say the North Lawndale experiment is promising, and locally, the project has drawn a lot of cheerleaders, roughly $1 million in philanthropic backing and no vocal opposition. But solving the citys enrollment challenge by trying to attract families to neighborhood schools is a daunting and uncertain task. New science and technology programs the district launched in other neighborhoods in recent years have not always brought a surge of students.Chicago still maintains a robust system of school choice, and the school-age population continues to shrink. Without an influx of new students from outside of North Lawndale, growing the three schools could mean siphoning students from other schools with their own enrollment woes.Preliminary data a few weeks into the school year shows flat enrollment, but the projects supporters say word about it is just getting out. A key challenge is ensuring the cash-strapped district keeps funding the new positions, staff training and facility upgrades after money for the first two years runs out.Ralph Martire, the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, which has criticized the districts spending in the past, says its tough to argue against programs that could boost student outcomes in high-poverty schools.Theres never a good reason not to invest in the education of kids whove been traditionally underserved, he said. The impact on enrollment thats really hard to predict. I dont know that we have the data to give a definitive answer.In any case, given that the initiative took seven years to launch and that it came with a high price tag, its likely not a solution the Chicago school district can readily replicate in other neighborhoods grappling with underenrollment.The question is how the district is supporting innovative models at scale, not how theyre supporting one-off alternatives alone, said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.Districts are trying all kinds of things work-based learning, dual enrollment, themed academies, small schools within schools and yet we still see these declines, Hahnel said. The education sector is really struggling right now to figure out what it takes to attract families. Chalmers is one of three Chicago Public Schools in North Lawndale shifting to STEAM programming, which adds the arts and social studies to the traditional STEM focus of science, technology, engineering and math. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) How Past Policies Drove Students AwayIn the name of school reform in the 2000s, Chicago officials under Mayor Richard M. Daley and later Mayor Rahm Emanuel enacted a series of policies that contributed to the shrinking of neighborhood schools, like those in North Lawndale.After the federal No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 and schools in some high-poverty areas did not perform well on annual standardized tests, many were labeled failing and in need of drastic reforms. Chicagos schools CEO at the time, Arne Duncan who under President Barack Obama led the U.S. Department of Education embraced opening independently operated, publicly funded charter schools.His administration maintained that was the fastest way to give vulnerable students a better experience and spur traditional public campuses to improve. In North Lawndale, families eager for higher-performing, better-resourced options have embraced the new schools or sent their children to CPS magnet or selective enrollment schools farther from home. In the 2005-06 school year, there were about 5,000 students living within the boundaries of North Lawndales 12 schools, and about 70% went to their assigned neighborhood school, according to a ProPublica-Chalkbeat analysis of district data. There were three charter schools open in the neighborhood.The most recent data, from last school year, shows there are roughly 4,000 students living within the boundaries of the 10 remaining neighborhood schools in North Lawndale, but only about 30% attend their assigned school. Meanwhile, the neighborhood is now home to seven charter schools among the highest concentration of them in Chicago and they enroll 2,800 students.Duncan declined to speak with ProPublica and Chalkbeat about Chicagos enrollment troubles.Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, watched all of this happening and said she grew alarmed by the emptying out of the neighborhoods public schools and outraged by the dearth of specialized programs they offered.By 2018, Allen-Green and a small group of other longtime North Lawndale residents and former educators had tackled an ambitious goal: give local families a high-quality neighborhood school theyd be eager to choose. Among these advocates was Areulia Davis, whose kindergarten class had met on the auditorium stage in an overcrowded Pope elementary in the 1960s. In 2013, shed seen a diminished Pope become one of 50 campuses shuttered in the countrys largest mass school closures.The group felt their mission was key to a broader Quality of Life Plan that North Lawndale leaders unveiled in 2018, which also included goals to increase affordable housing, improve safety and create more jobs.We wanted to bring the children of North Lawndale back to the schools of North Lawndale, Allen-Green said. Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, has worked to revitalize schools in North Lawndale and pushed for the STEAM program. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) Allen-Green and the other former educators pitched a plan to build a new state-of-the-art STEAM school. They say district officials urged them to include the consolidation of three underenrolled schools alongside the proposed $65 million construction project. The idea echoed what the district had just done in Englewood on the South Side at the time: closing several small high schools and replacing them with a state-of-the-art high school focused on science and technology.The North Lawndale group lined up almost two dozen high-profile partners, from the citys science museum to universities, to help with teacher training, field trips and other services.But their plan met with intense opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union and families at the three schools that would be targeted for closure. Shuttering schools would be especially disruptive to families amid the pandemic, and especially painful in a neighborhood still reeling from earlier closures, the union said.Allen-Green countered that she and other project backers had been on the front lines of opposing school closures in 2013. But, she argued, with unabated enrollment losses in the following years, it made sense to combine the resources of several tiny schools.Still, Allen-Greens group backed off and began formulating other plans without any closures. One finally stuck: give three existing schools Johnson, Chalmers and Collins a STEAM makeover. Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union employee and staunch opponent of closures who has promised to improve housing and draw families to places like North Lawndale, became a proponent once he took office. (Johnsons office did not respond to requests for comment about Chicagos efforts to address small schools.)By 2024, City Hall pitched in $10 million toward the $41 million project from a city pool of tax dollars for economic development.And when Johnson selected where hed ring the bell to mark the first day of school, the mayor chose Chalmers in North Lawndale. Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett said families are excited about the STEAM revamp. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) Doing Right by the Kids Weve Already GotLike other parents dropping off their children at Chalmers on the first day of school in August, Angela Dixon said she knew little about the schools transformation into a STEAM campus. She likes the school because of its proximity to her home and the supportive small school feel, which has helped her third grade son thrive.School leaders on the STEAM campuses say the overhaul, including a more student-led approach to teaching, is already generating positive buzz. Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett says hed like to see more students enroll, especially in the early grades. Still, Crockett, who gives himself two days at the start of the year to learn each students name, thinks the project will help even if it doesnt significantly boost enrollment.I dont quantify achievement by the number of bodies, he said. I want to do right by the kids weve already got.But for Allen-Green and other community members supporting the project, a major preoccupation this year remains selling the three schools to more families in the neighborhood. They are pushing the district to hang new banners promoting the campuses, polish their websites and pay for new school marquees.They hope Johnson and Chalmers will draw some students from outside the neighborhood. District officials say theyll be leaning on the three schools principals to drive these marketing efforts.But across the city, efforts to bolster neighborhood schools have run headlong into trends and attitudes unleashed by the district itself when it endorsed magnets, selectives and charters as stronger options. First image: A view of the skyline from a classroom at Johnson Elementary. Second image: Students wait in line to enter a classroom at Johnson. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica) In December 2023, the school board passed a resolution vowing to rethink school choice and prioritize neighborhood schools, nodding to their role as vital community hubs. It drew pushback and alarm, including from Black and Latino families on the districts South and West sides wary of CPS limiting their options. The district backed off from any moves that might be seen as undermining its magnet or selective enrollment programs. Still, the districts new five-year strategic plan includes a goal to increase the percentage of students attending schools within their neighborhood or community area.Some areas with underenrolled schools still have robust numbers of CPS students living in them. Martinez has held up the neighborhood of Austin as an example of an area that has enough students to fill bustling campuses, but many families instead choose schools elsewhere.If every student went to school in Austin that lives there, wed be overcrowded, he said at a City Club Chicago speech in June. (Martinez was fired after a clash with the mayor over the districts budget.)More than 1,500 potential students live within the boundaries of Austins local high school, but only 114 enrolled last year.An experiment in Englewood on the citys South Side, where population was dropping, sought to create an attractive new neighborhood high school while closing four small ones. The district built an $85 million modern STEM high school, and enrollment grew initially. But last year it slipped to about 630 from its peak of about 830 three years earlier. It had an attendance rate of roughly 65% and a graduation rate of about 62% for the 2023-24 school year, both significantly below the district average. Mistrust of neighborhood schools can run deep, said Blaire Flowers, a West Side mother of five. Families remain wary of high educator turnover, few engaging programs and lackluster graduation and other student metrics or they simply want the rich course offerings and extracurricular activities of schools elsewhere. After her own negative experiences as a student in the neighborhood, she has largely chosen North Lawndale charter schools for her children over the years.She thinks the STEAM initiative could be a game changer for local schools: Right now there are no programs in these high schools and elementaries that make students want to go there.But Flowers said she and other parents will wait for solid evidence that the makeovers are paying off in stronger student outcomes before considering these schools.Corey Morrison, executive director of the districts STEM Department, said CPS has brought coveted programs to dozens of its neighborhood schools in recent years. Some, like Peck Elementary on the citys Southwest Side, have earned recognition as exemplary STEM schools. But they havent shifted the demographic trajectories of their neighborhoods.Still, Morrison is hopeful about the prospects in North Lawndale.I just dont see how this doesnt draw the community because it came from the community, he said. Theyre telling us what they need and want, and were designing the very best version of that we can provide.

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People in car drive and a motorcyclist pushes is vehicle through a flooded road caused by heavy rain in Lahore, Pakistan, Monday, Sept. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/K.M. Chaudary)2025-09-08T08:26:40Z JALALPUR PIRWALA, Pakistan (AP) Rescuers backed by troops evacuated more than 25,000 people from a city in Pakistans eastern Punjab province overnight as rising rivers threatened to flood the region, officials said Monday.The emergency rescue operation in Jalalpur Pirwala began late Sunday and continued through the night, said Irfan Ali Kathia, director-general of the Punjab Disaster Management Authority. By Monday morning, about 25,000 residents from high-risk neighborhoods had been moved to safer areas.The latest evacuations from Jalalpur Pirwala came two days after a rescue boat capsized in floodwaters on the citys outskirts, killing five people. Fifteen others were rescued after the boat overturned Saturday, local officials said.Ghulam Shabir, a 50-year-old construction worker, said that he moved to higher ground near the city after floodwater entered his village, inundating homes and farmland. He appealed to the government to expedite rescue work as many people were still stranded in flooded villages. The government has deployed hundreds of boats, and thousands of rescuers and volunteers for evacuations in flood-hit districts. The Pakistan Markazi Muslim League, a volunteer group known for being among the first responders in natural disasters, is among those involved in the efforts, with members spread across the country. The groups spokesman, Taha Muneeb, said that floodwaters had already submerged all the villages surrounding Jalalpur Pirwala and had begun to seep into the city itself. Many residents refuse to leave, saying it is better to remain on their rooftops than to sit helpless on the roadside, he said. Survivors told reporters that many people remain stranded on rooftops and trees. I saw with my own eyes people perched on branches of trees, half-submerged in floodwaters, said Taj Din, who was among a dozen evacuees rescued by a boat. Punjab government spokesperson Uzma Bukhari said that theyre utilizing thermal imaging drones to locate stranded people in flooded areas, enabling them to be rescued by boat. She said that the government is doing its best to handle this situation.Though Pakistan hasnt issued any appeal for help, the Saudi government on Monday delivered 10,000 food packages and 10,000 shelter kits to the Punjab government for flood-hit families. The Saudi shipment came just two days after Washington also dispatched emergency supplies for Pakistans flood victims. Floods have so far affected more than 4.1 million people across 4,100 villages in 25 districts of Punjab province. Since Aug. 26, there have been at least 56 flood-related deaths, while more than 2 million residents have been moved to safety, Kathia said.The disaster management official told The Associated Press that displaced families were being provided with tents and food supplies. He said that the local administration, assisted by troops and police, was expediting evacuations in the city, which has a population of nearly 700,000. Mosques broadcast evacuation announcements as residents scrambled onto vehicles amid heavy rainfall. Punjab has been conducting one of its largest rescue operations, including with the aid of drones, since last month, when floodwaters inundated multiple districts after India released water from its dams. The surges swelled the Ravi, Chenab and Sutlej rivers, while torrential monsoon rains further raised water levels.Kathia said that Punjabs chief minister, Maryam Nawaz Sharif, is personally monitoring the evacuation effort from a central control room. The Pakistani army, police and rescue services are assisting, including helicopter airlifts from remote villages.Since late June, monsoon flooding has killed more than 900 people across Pakistan, according to the National Disaster Management Authority, or NDMA. Over the weekend, India again notified Islamabad through diplomatic channels of potential cross-border flooding, the agency said.Kathia said that surging waters have already displaced more than 2 million people across Punjab since Aug. 23, when heavy rains and dam releases began overwhelming rivers. Only about 60,000 of them are living in official relief camps, he said, while most sought shelter with relatives in nearby towns or set up makeshift camps along river embankments, waiting for the waters to recede. Evacuations are also underway in southern Sindh province, which faces growing threats as water continues to flow downstream into the Indus River and where more than 100,000 people have already been relocated from vulnerable settlements.Sindh was among the worst-hit regions in the catastrophic 2022 floods, which killed 1,739 people nationwide.___Babar Dogar reported from Lahore. Munir Ahmed contributed to this report from Islamabad.___This story has been corrected to show that the last name of the volunteer groups spokesman is Muneeb, not Munir.

Photo courtesy of Danny and Beatrice Cox. Design by Gander Newsroom. Why cant you fucking talk to me? Beatrice Cox screamed at her father. Why cant you look me in the eye? Why cant you call me by my name?It was 2021, and Danny Cox remembers looking at his child, then 22, and feeling a profound confusion. Growing up in the Catholic church and eventually becoming an Evangelical pastor, he remembered what he had been encouraged by different faith communities to believe about transgender people: mentally disordered, sinful and not made in the design of God.It had been six months since his daughter, Beatrice, had come out as a trans woman. In that time, Danny had failed to accept her identity, refusing to call her by her name or use her pronouns.As lead pastor of an Evangelical church in Troy, Michigan, he had long harbored doubts towards the mistreatment of queer people in Evangelical spaces. But when Beatrice came out to him as trans, he wasnt ready to confront the tension between his faith and his family.Though Danny, now 58, remembers reminding Beatrice that he loved her, he felt perplexed by her trans identity. I looked at my wife, and I'm like, What do I do? Because I don't understand this, he says.This dynamic is pervasive in conservative Christianity, especially among Evangelicals. A 2022 analysis found that 87% of white Evangelicals believe gender is determined by sex at birth. And according to a 2023-2024 survey from the Pew Research Center, 61% of Evangelicals believe homosexuality should be discouraged by society. These numbers may explain why nearly half of LGBTQ people are estranged from their families.Coming out was terrifying for Beatrice, now 26, who remembers being told in school that gay people were the enemies of God. Beatrice also worried about the cost of coming out in a religious community. To be uncloseted was to lose access to everything that mattered to me, she told Uncloseted Media and Gander Newsroom.But Beatrice was also afraid for her dad. She knew that as the lead pastor of an Evangelical megachurch, the consequences of having a queer child could be devastating. I knew that coming out would threaten his whole life and stability, she says.Before coming out as trans, Beatrice first came out as a gay man. Though she feared losing her family and community, she was met with a positive reaction from her father. I couldnt make eye contact. I was sobbing through it, Beatrice remembers. He gave the best possible reaction to that level of tenderness and vulnerability.On the surface, Danny was affirming. But on the inside, he struggled. It might be embarrassing to say, but truthfully, I remember saying, Lord, no problem to have a gay, bi, or lesbian kid. I can do the LGB, just please dont give me the T. Please dont give me a trans kid, because none of that makes sense to me.But a few years later, Dannys fears came true when Beatrice came out as trans.His response was nothing but confusion, says Beatrice. She recalls him repeatedly asking her what her new identity meant. The immediate support and validation that was there the first time she came out had disappeared.For the next year, we were actively adversarial, says Beatrice. For him, my being trans was insurmountable.Subscribe for LGBTQ focused, accountability journalism.Danny wouldnt acknowledge Beatrices identity as a woman. He worried it was impossible to be LGBTQ-accepting without violating Biblical principles. I was struggling theologically, he says.But his lack of acceptance was painful for Beatrice. I took that to be youre not with me. I had no idea what was going on with him.Though Beatrice and Danny were never completely out of touch during this time, their relationship was deteriorating. Danny describes a feeling of grief over having to say goodbye to the version of Beatrice he had previously known. There is a deep mourning that happens in parents lives when their kids transition and they have to adapt to a new version of their children.But just over a year after Beatrice came out, their tensions reached a boiling point. I was yelling at him, Beatrice remembers.After some back and forth, Danny broke down in tears. Im sorry Bea. Im sorry Bea. Im sorry Bea, Beatrice remembers her dad repeating over and over again.It was the first time he ever said my name, she says, adding that he struggled to get the words out through his sobs and was speaking just above a whisper. This moment led to a breakthrough, with Danny finally sharing with Beatrice the emotions he had been holding back for the past year.Im so scared for you. This world is not good, Danny told Beatrice while apologizing for the pain he had put her through. He told Beatrice he associated being queer with having a harder lifesomething he didnt want for his daughter. The top fear was for her safety. And then I had my own fears: What does this really mean? he remembers thinking. Though his apology didnt instantly undo the pain he had put Beatrice through after rejecting her identity, it built a foundation to begin repairing the relationship.I realized everything he was doing was out of fear and not hate, Beatrice told Uncloseted Media and Gander Newsroom, through tears. In that moment, all the delusions, all the bullshit, just shed away, and we're just human people, seeing each other for human people. And that's worth a lot. Not many people get that with their parents.When that moment happened, it was an instant healing because Beatrice could let her guard down, too, says Danny. Once I said Bea, its almost as if the veil was lifted.Subscribe nowSince that day, Danny and Beatrice have worked to heal their relationship. Danny left his church and is now being ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church, where gay congregants have had equal standing for almost 50 years. Danny proudly refers to Beatrice as his daughter, uses her correct pronouns and affectionately calls her by the nickname Bea.Photo courtesy of Danny and Beatrice Cox.I cant think of a word other than ferocious that describes what hes done, says Beatrice, referencing his allyship. Its extraordinarily brave and extraordinarily beautiful, she says, adding that she no longer carries any anger towards her dad. [Hes] a friend, a father, and a co-conspirator.Though the two of them have come a long way, Danny still carries guilt. Im ashamed that I stayed as long as I did, and Ive repented, he says. Since Beatrice came out, Danny has founded an organization called The Open Table Collective, which provides a space for people to wrestle with issues of faith. Through the collective, he and Beatrice now tell their story through public speaking events and on their own podcast in hopes of proving that religion doesnt have to be a barrier to accepting queer identities.Photo courtesy of Danny and Beatrice Cox.As far as Danny is concerned, parents of queer kids can do one of two things: They shun the person, or they go, Whoa, this is the person that I love, and I have to start reevaluating my life and the way that I think.To him, the most important thing is not to shut someone out just because of fear or a lack of understanding. If someone has a crack of curiosity, there's hope that love can prevail and that our human experience can bring us closer together.If objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, LGBTQ-focused journalism is important to you, please consider making a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Resource Impact, by clicking this button:Donate to Uncloseted Media

Nature, Published online: 09 September 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-02812-3Momentum is building for regenerative agriculture, a set of approaches that could help farms to weather the changing climate and make them more profitable.

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by Hannah Allam ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. In the weeks leading up to July 9, Ayman Soliman told friends he was terrified of losing the sanctuary hed found after fleeing Egypt in 2014 and building a new life as a Muslim chaplain at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital.Soliman, 51, was to show up at 9 a.m. on that date for his first check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since losing his asylum status. Hed been granted the protections in 2018 under the first Trump administration. Then, in the last month of the Biden presidency, immigration authorities moved to revoke them based on sharply disputed claims of fraud and aid to a terrorist group. Once President Donald Trump returned to office weeks later, court records show, immigration officials bumped up the terrorism claims and formalized the asylum termination June 3.By the time of Solimans ICE appointment, friends said, he was distraught over the prospect of being returned to the regime that had jailed him for documenting protests as a journalist. He arrived at the agencys field office in Blue Ash, Ohio, accompanied by fellow clergy and a couple of Democratic state lawmakers.I didnt come to America seeking a better life. I was escaping death, he said in a video filmed just before he entered.Inside, Solimans attorneys said, he was shocked to find FBI agents waiting for him. They interrogated him for three hours about his charity work more than a decade ago in Egypt, the basis for the Department of Homeland Security accusations of illegal aid, or material support, to Islamist militants.His lawyer eventually emerged from the ICE office holding a belt and a wallet. Soliman had been swept into custody, joining a record 61,000 people now in ICE detention. As he awaits an immigration court trial Sept. 25, he is being held in a county jail run by a sheriff who posted a sign outside reading, Illegal Aliens Here.Legal observers are watching the chaplains case as a bellwether of the Trump administrations ability to merge the vast federal powers of immigration and counterterrorism. The case is also a reminder, they say, of sweeping post-9/11 statutes that both Republican and Democratic administrations have been accused of abusing, especially in cases involving Muslims. Material support laws ban almost any type of aid to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups, extending far beyond the basics of weapons, personnel and money. Prosecutors describe the laws as an invaluable tool against would-be attackers, but civil liberties groups have long complained of overreach.Over the years, successive administrations have faced legal challenges over how they wield the power; a milestone Supreme Court decision during the Obama administration upheld the laws as constitutional. Now, however, there are particular fears about the material support sledgehammer, as one legal scholar put it, in the hands of Trump, who has been openly hostile toward Muslims and determined to deport a million people who are in the United States without permission.These statutes are written extraordinarily broadly with the unstated premise that discretion will be exercised responsibly. And one thing this administration has shown is that it doesnt understand what it means to exercise discretion responsibly, said David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor who argued high-profile material support cases and served as national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.At issue are DHS allegations that Solimans involvement with an Islamic charity provided material support to the Muslim Brotherhood. But neither the charity nor the Brotherhood is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and an Egyptian court found no official ties between the groups.The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged the issue, said it would revoke Solimans asylum if a preponderance of the evidence supports termination after a hearing, according to the December notice. At the time, court records show, the material support allegation was listed as a secondary concern after more common asylum questions about the veracity of official documents and his claims of persecution in Egypt.Once Trump came to power weeks later, Solimans attorneys said, the material support claims metastasized, with U.S. authorities declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a Tier III, or undesignated, terrorist group and adding new arguments about ties to Hamas. The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist political movement, renounced violence in the 1970s, though Hamas and other spinoffs are on the U.S. blacklist. In addition to the Egypt-related concerns, DHS filings about Soliman had noted warrants for murder and terrorism in Iraq a country Soliman says hes never visited.By elevating the national security argument, Solimans lawyers said, DHS was able to bypass an immigration judge and order the chaplain held without bond as potentially dangerous. An established terrorism nexus means less transparency for immigrants and more power for the authorities.DHS is judge, jury and executioner, said Robert Ratliff, one of Solimans attorneys.The idea of Soliman as a secret militant has outraged residents who know him locally as the interfaith imam and the first Muslim on the pastoral care team at Cincinnati Childrens, a top-ranked pediatric hospital. Colleagues described a popular chaplain with nicknames for the tiny patients and soothing words for their bleary-eyed parents.Judy Ragsdale, the former pastoral care director who hired Soliman in 2021 shortly before retiring, said she wrote a letter to hospital leaders imploring them to speak out against the allegations that could return him to certain persecution in Egypt. He lost authorization to work in June, when his asylum was terminated.This is a Schindlers List moment, Ragsdale said she told hospital leaders. And if you dont stand up for Ayman, youre complicit in whats happening to him. Ayman Soliman, center, talking to children at a Cincinnati mosque. Soliman is in ICE detention and facing deportation to Egypt. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica. Faces blurred by ProPublica.) Some fear DHS is parlaying the scope and secrecy of counterterrorism laws into a weapon to boost the presidents mass-deportation mission.Immigrant rights groups say a sped-up campaign with fewer guardrails for due process is already leading to removals based on evidence that hasnt been fully vetted. If DHS is successful in test cases like Solimans, they say, material support claims could be more easily applied to immigration cases with even tenuous links to militant factions, including newly designated cartels.The White House referred questions to Homeland Security, which routed a request for comment to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; a spokesperson there said in a statement that the agency generally does not discuss the details of individual immigration cases and adjudication decisions.An alien even with a pending application or lawful status is not shielded from immigration enforcement action, the statement said. The FBI declined to comment.Jeffrey Breinholt, an architect of the material support statutes who spent three decades as a federal terrorism prosecutor, defends the laws as crucial to closing loopholes that were exploited by foreign militant groups and their domestic sympathizers.Breinholt, who retired in 2024, said he has no concerns about the widening scope as it converges with Trumps deportation push. The designation of cartels, he said, is a natural outgrowth of the success we have had with material support crime.To Cole and other critics, however, the Soliman case could be the canary in the coal mine.More Than a ChaplainWithin a few hours of Solimans detention, dozens showed up for an impromptu rally and news conference in the ICE center parking lot. That backup has since grown into a hundreds-strong campaign to refute the DHS allegations, which supporters call a resurgence of anti-Muslim fearmongering that has persisted across party lines since the 9/11 attacks 24 years ago this month.Any time you have a brown man or a Muslim man and you use the words FBI and red flag, you dont have to say any more, said Tala Ali, a friend of Solimans who heads the board of a Cincinnati mosque where he sometimes led prayers. Tala Ali, a close friend of Soliman and board chair of the Clifton Mosque where he sometimes led prayers (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Voices calling for Solimans release include parents who met him in the hospitals neonatal intensive care unit. The families are in disbelief that the chaplain theyd grown close to is now jailed in a high-stakes international case. They knew hed fled Egypt but said they were learning details of his ordeal through the campaign to free him.It would be very easy to be resentful and be angry with the world when you have to live through that kind of trauma, and hes not like that at all. Hes taking on other peoples trauma, said Heather Barrow, whose infant daughter, Mya, died in the NICU last year.She said Soliman stepped in to spare her grieving family the heartache of making funeral arrangements for a 5-month-old. He attended Myas celebration of life and, later, a butterfly release on June 7, which wouldve been her first birthday. A month later, he was in an ICE cell.I was like, how is this happening? He was just at our house, Barrow said.Another couple, Taylor and Bryan McClain, also came to rely on Soliman when their newborn, Violette, arrived at Cincinnati Childrens last year with life-threatening complications. The chaplain steadied them during their 271 days in the NICU, which Taylor said felt like a roller coaster in a tornado and its on fire. The McClains call him family.I say with full confidence: Violette is alive because of the advocacy that Ayman gave us, Taylor said one recent afternoon as she held her daughter, now just over a year old. Bryan and Taylor McClain with their daughter, Violette. Soliman was their chaplain in the neonatal intensive care unit at Cincinnati Childrens Hospital. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Letters to Soliman from children at Clifton Mosque (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Clergy members make up another bloc of support so many that they built a spreadsheet to divide visiting hours among imams, rabbis and pastors. Immigration advocates and Ohio civil rights leaders have added their names to petitions. So have University of Cincinnati student groups including the Ornithology Club and the Harry Potter Appreciation Club.More than a dozen people faced criminal charges stemming from a melee after a rally in Solimans support; demonstrators and police blame each other for the violence July 17.Two of Solimans fellow chaplains at Cincinnati Childrens, Adam Allen and Elizabeth Diop, said they lost their jobs for refusing to keep quiet about their jailed colleague. Meanwhile, the hospital, a cherished local institution, is taking heat for its silence. Solimans supporters launched a letter-writing campaign demanding a response from the hospital, which has said it does not discuss personnel issues.Signs appeared outside the hospital. Missing Chaplain, they said. Abducted By ICE. Adam Allen, a former chaplain at Cincinnati Childrens, says he lost his job for refusing to keep quiet about Soliman. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Cincinnati Childrens Hospital did not return messages seeking comment. In an internal memo published by The Cincinnati Enquirer, hospital CEO Dr. Steve Davis told employees that the lack of response should not be mistaken for a lack of caring or action. As a nonprofit, Davis stressed, the hospital has strict rules about activities that could be characterized as political.Solimans supporters press on. One recent Sunday evening, about 200 filled a Cincinnati church where preachers from several faith backgrounds urged them to demand his freedom.The trial that Imam Ayman is going through is our trial, Abdulhakim Mohamed, head of the North American Imams Fellowship, told the crowd. His justice is ours to own. The injustice is also ours to bear. Scenes from an interfaith service in support of Soliman (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Escape From EgyptSolimans entanglement with the Egyptian security apparatus began in 2000 when he joined fellow college students to protest repressive laws, he said in asylum papers.He was periodically locked up and intimidated after that, he said. The persecution worsened more than a decade ago during uprisings that remade the Middle East by toppling dictators including Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak but in some places spiraled into civil war.Soliman worked as a freelance journalist covering pro-democracy revolts in Egypt and neighboring Libya. Friends say he was also studying to become an imam and served on the board of a local chapter of the Islamic charity Al-Gameya al-Shareya, which is known for its network of hospitals and orphan programs throughout Egypt.The charity, whose name has multiple English spellings, launched in 1912 and is often described as one of the most established national Islamic organizations. Scholars have written that early leaders came from the Muslim Brotherhood, archenemy of Egypts current military leadership, but that ties ended around 1990 under government pressure.In the years since, researchers found, the group maintained smooth relations with the government as its more than 1,000 chapters nationwide encompass Egyptians of all political leanings. That delicate balance faltered briefly in 2013 when a military-led counterrevolution quashed the nascent democratic movement and deposed elected leaders who were part of the Muslim Brotherhood.Egypts military rulers declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization and shuttered any organization it suspected of ties. Al-Gameya Al-Shareya was among more than 1,000 civil society groups blacklisted in the crackdown, court filings say, and chapters suspected of helping the Brotherhood during elections were dissolved. The group resumed operations the next year, when an Egyptian court lifted the ban, ruling that the charity has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, according to news reports.Egypts return to zero tolerance for dissidents made Solimans activism dangerous, he said in court papers. As a journalist and Islamic scholar, he represented two fields the Egyptian government views as existential threats: a free press and religious organizing.Soliman fled to the United States in 2014 on a visitor visa and later filed a petition for asylum, describing how security forces over the years had locked him up on false charges and tortured him with electrical shocks. In one incident, his attorney said, Egyptian forces with machine guns stormed into an apartment where Soliman was asleep with his wife and young child. (Through attorneys, Soliman asked to withhold details about his family because they remain in Egypt.)For me, its life or death, Soliman later told a U.S. immigration officer of his need to escape.Officials in Cairo referred questions to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, which did not respond to requests for comment.The asylum application asked whether Soliman had belonged to political parties or other associations in his home country. Ratliff, the attorney, said Soliman marked yes and attached a statement that mentioned Al-Gameya Al-Shareya and his role in fundraising for the local chapter.Friends said Soliman rejoiced when he was granted asylum in 2018, under the first Trump administration, and sought permanent residency as the next step toward reuniting with his family. But the process stalled. Bureaucratic hurdle after bureaucratic hurdle, Ratliff said.Then came a more serious snag. In 2021, Soliman learned he was on a federal watchlist when a background check for a chaplain job at an Oregon prison showed that the FBI had flagged him, court papers show.His attorneys said they have no idea why. It couldve been about a specific piece of intelligence. It couldve been a misspelling or mistaken identity, simple errors that have landed ordinary Muslims on opaque war on terror watchlists that are nearly impossible to get off.Soliman, friends say, insisted on trying to clear his name. With the help of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, he sued government agencies including the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration. That route led to open-ended legal battles that yielded no clear answers and no green card.Instead, his place in the country became more vulnerable. In December, the final stretch of the Biden administration, Soliman received notice that the government intended to terminate his asylum based on inconsistencies in his claims of persecution and concern that his charity work made him inadmissible based on possible membership in a terrorist organization.Some of his friends are convinced it was payback for the lawsuits, but attorneys say theres no telling what triggered a review.What Ayman has experienced is something that, post-9/11, has been the reality of Muslims in this country, said Ali, his friend and advocate. All he did was try to get answers and accountability for what hed been put through. ICE parking spots outside of the Butler County Jail (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Big Claims, Little TransparencyContested asylum cases like Solimans were prime targets when Trump took office the next month and supercharged deportations, a top campaign pledge. Since his return to office, ICE arrests have doubled.Soliman was called to an asylum hearing in February, a month into the new administration, for a last shot at defending his eligibility. A DHS officer asked about claims in the Biden-era notice alleging discrepancies in date and number of times he suffered harm and raising doubts about a handwritten Egyptian police report and letters authenticating his journalistic work.A transcript shows Soliman explaining that he sometimes got confused when describing traumatic incidents from years ago in English, his second language. He said the police report was a rough translation included by mistake and submitted statements verifying his journalism.Then the DHS officers questioning took a turn: When did you start supporting Al-Jameya Al-Shareya?For the rest of the meeting, the transcript shows, the officer drilled down on Solimans knowledge of the charity: fundraising, chapter size, support for violence and whether he had been aware of a Brotherhood link.Another of Solimans attorneys interrupted when the immigration officer said the Brotherhood had been a Tier III group since 2012. Thats not how it works, the attorney countered only top-tier terrorist organizations like al-Qaida or the Islamic State are given dates of designation. Tier III, she said, is for undesignated groups and is determined on a case-by-case basis, with the burden of proof on the government.Counsel, Ill give you an opportunity at the end to make a closing, the DHS officer said.I understand, the attorney replied, but were talking about something factual.The next time Soliman heard from DHS was the official termination of his asylum, effective June 3. This time, there was no hedging in language that declared he was ineligible based on evidence that indicated you provided material support to a Tier III terrorist organization. A few weeks later, he was taken into custody and notified of his pending removal.Solimans legal team sued, arguing that he was stripped of asylum on illegal grounds because the designations had been made without proper findings and based on no new evidence.Court filings show DHS attorneys introducing, then withdrawing or amending, materials to build a case linking Soliman to the Brotherhood through the charity.It looked like, What can we put here to get to there? said Ratliff, a former immigration judge.Among the supporting evidence filed by the government are three academic reports by scholars with deep knowledge of Islamic charities in Egypt. Solimans legal team filed statements from all three balking at how DHS had cherry-picked their research.Steven Brooke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison detailed important mistakes of fact and interpretation. Neil Russell, an academic in Scotland, called the U.S. conclusions a mischaracterization of my findings. Marie Vannetzel, a French scholar who has conducted field research with Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, rebutted what she called a dishonest manipulation of my text and my work.Vannetzel wrote that she rejects the idea that Soliman, simply by virtue of his activity in the association, could be accused of providing material support to the Muslim Brotherhood.Observers of Cairos unsparing campaign to uproot Islamist opposition say the matter is clear-cut: If the charity survived the scrutiny of Egyptian intelligence, then its not Muslim Brotherhood. Its really striking that this group is not proscribed, said Michael Hanna, an Egypt specialist and U.S. program director of the nonprofit International Crisis Group.Solimans attorneys also criticized the governments assertion in court filings that he, as a board member of one local branch, wouldve been aware of any Brotherhood affiliation of chapters nationwide. If a Rotarian in Seattle commits murder, we dont go charging Rotarians in Des Moines with conspiracy, Ratliff said.Separate from U.S. attempts to tie Soliman to the Brotherhood was a puzzling footnote about Iraq that appeared in a later filing. Without detail, DHS attorneys alluded to warrants for murder and terrorism activities. Ratliff said a DHS attorney later confirmed to him in a phone call that it wasnt about Soliman, but didnt explain why it was there.The error remained uncorrected in filings until Sept. 3, when DHS attorney Cheryl Gutridge acknowledged in court that it was an inadvertent reference to another case, Ohio news outlets reported. The original wording suggesting that Soliman faced murder charges in Iraq had been included in the governments successful argument for keeping him in custody.DHS did not address questions about the Iraq reference.A close friend, Ahmed Elkady, said Soliman told him on a jail visit he was stunned to be linked to Iraq, a place hes never been: He said, How can I become a virtual terrorist? Ahmed Elkady said Soliman told him on a jail visit he was stunned to be linked to Iraq, a place hes never been. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) A Sheriffs ICE FiefdomAs he awaits trial in immigration court, Soliman is in custody at the Butler County Jail, about 30 miles outside of Cincinnati, past cornfields and a German social club and the Town and Country Mobile Home Park.For more than 20 years, this outpost has been the domain of Sheriff Richard Jones, a cowboy hat-wearing firebrand who keeps a framed photo of Trump in his office. In the run-up to the 2024 election, Jones mused that a Trump victory might put him back in the deportation business. From 2003 to 2021, the jail had been contracted to house immigration detainees until the arrangement dissolved in the Biden era. As predicted, the county entered into a new agreement with ICE in February, after Trump returned to power, to hold around 400 detainees: $68 a day per person, plus $36 an hour for the sheriffs office toward transportation.Jones celebrated the restored partnership by posting a fake image showing inflatable gators outside the jail, a nod to ICEs Alligator Alcatraz detention center in Florida. A Black Lives Matter group in Dayton issued a statement calling the sheriffs post an egregious act of cruelty and historical mockery.As it returns to deportation work, the jail still faces a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 2020 by two ICE prisoners who said they endured beatings and discrimination. One plaintiff, a Muslim, said a jailer called him a fucking terrorist and threatened to throw his prayer rug in the toilet. Jones has disputed the claims. Imams Mutazz Alabd and Ihab Alsaghier visit the Butler County Jail in hopes of seeing Soliman. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) The sheriff is in the news again because of Soliman. In court filings, the Muslim chaplain says he was denied access to a space where he could lead communal prayers and then placed in isolation for nearly a week with only an hour of phone access between midnight and 1 a.m.Solimans attorneys say in court papers that the episode was related to targeted harassment over his religion. The sheriffs office told local outlets that it respects religious freedom and said Soliman was placed in isolation because he was argumentative and threatening.After agreeing to an interview with ProPublica, Jones later decided he was no longer interested, the sheriffs spokesperson, Deputy Kim Peters, wrote in a text message.As he languishes in jail, Solimans empty apartment in Cincinnati has become a way station for an inner circle of supporters, who said they felt like intruders when they first gathered there. Soliman is known as an elegant dresser, but his apartment was in bachelor-pad disarray, a reflection of his long hours at the hospital and the abruptness of his detention, said his friends, also clerics. The imams laughed when one confessed that he first thought the FBI had ransacked the place. Solimans apartment has become a way station for supporters. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Over water bottles and energy drinks scavenged from Solimans fridge, they talked about the deportation threat. In Egypt, pro-government news outlets already have trumpeted the case as proof that Soliman was leading a secret Brotherhood cell in America.Despite Solimans predicament, they said, being in limbo here is preferable to the alternative.You think Im afraid of being here in jail? Soliman told fellow imam Ihab Alsaghier during a recent visit. Every moment Im alone, I imagine Im on a flight back to Egypt.

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Minnesota Vikings tight end Josh Oliver, right, is stopped short of the end zone by Chicago Bears defensive back Jonathan Owens during the second half of an NFL football game Monday, Sept. 8, 2025, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)2025-09-09T03:54:11Z CHICAGO (AP) J.J. McCarthys long-awaited debut for the Minnesota Vikings was looking more like a nightmare. Even so, coach Kevin OConnell could sense things were going to change. And he told his quarterback at halftime.You are going to bring us back to win this game, OConnell said he told McCarthy.McCarthy did just that in the fourth quarter, throwing for two touchdowns and running for another, and the Minnesota Vikings rallied for a season-opening 27-24 win over the Chicago Bears on Monday night.Chicagos Caleb Williams had his first career rushing touchdown and threw for a score in Ben Johnsons debut as the Bears coach.McCarthy delivered down the stretch after struggling through the first three quarters in his first meaningful game since Michigan beat Washington for the national championship at the end of the 2023 season. He sat out last year due to a knee injury after the Vikings drafted him with the No. 10 overall pick. Now, Minnesota is counting on McCarthy.I felt poise from the very beginning, OConnell said.OConnell, in fact, was so confident in his quarterback that he told McCarthy at halftime he was going to lead the Vikings to a win. The look in his eye was fantastic, OConnell said. The best thing was just the belief I felt from the team, from the unit, and ultimately, that doesnt get done without him in the second half.McCarthy felt empowered by his coachs prediction. That guy is one of the best if not the best coaches, in my opinion, in the National Football League, he said. Any kind of compliments or belief like that, it means the world. That just gave me the confidence to go out there and just execute the ball plays and have a fast arm and make quick, decisive decisions. And it worked out. Strong finishThings werent looking good for McCarthy after Nahshon Wright returned an interception 74 yards for a touchdown to give Chicago a 17-6 lead in the third quarter. But he turned it around in the fourth.McCarthy connected with Justin Jefferson for a 13-yard touchdown. His 2-point conversion pass failed.Minnesota then needed just three plays to grab the lead, with McCarthy throwing a 27-yard TD pass to Aaron Jones. The conversion pass to Adam Thielen put the Vikings on top 20-17 with 9:46 remaining.McCarthy made it a 10-point game with about three minutes left when he faked a handoff and turned up the right side for a 14-yard touchdown run. Chicago then went 65 yards for a score, with Williams throwing a 1-yard TD pass to Rome Odunze with just over two minutes remaining, but the Vikings hung on to beat the Bears for the eighth time in the past nine games.We dont win this game unless J.J. plays the way he did in the second half, OConnell said. Most importantly, he kept the belief of this football team behind him, and now, we know its possible. You hope to not be in these circumstances very often. But this teams made of the right stuff.McCarthy completed 13 of 20 passes for 143 yards. He grew up in the Chicago area and the first game he attended at Soldier Field was against the Vikings 18 years ago. Jefferson and Jones each had 44 yards receiving.Will Reichard kicked two field goals, including a 59-yarder near the end of the first half that matched a Soldier Field record.Letdown for BearsWilliams, coming off a shaky rookie season after being drafted with the No. 1 overall pick, completed 21 of 35 passes for 210 yards and a score. The former Heisman Trophy winner also ran for a 9-yard TD in the first quarter. He said the way Johnson called the game was not the issue for the Bears.Its not a play-call thing, its not anything like that, Williams said. Its just being able go out there and execute the plays that are called and be able to execute them at a high level. Thats something that we take pride in and today that didnt happen.One thing the Bears will have to clean up is the penalties. They committed 12 for 127 yards.We made too many mistakes there late in the game, myself included, Johnson said. There were a number of things I could have done better, there were a number of things a lot of guys could have done better. InjuriesVikings: LB Blake Cashman left with a hamstring injury and will have an MRI. ... OConnell said CB Jeff Okudah would be evaluated for a concussion after he was hurt at the end of the game. ... S Harrison Smith (illness) did not travel with the team. ... OT Christian Darrisaw, coming back from a torn ACL last season, was inactive.Bears: The Bears were missing three important defensive players, with CB Jaylon Johnson (groin), CB Kyler Gordon (hamstring) and LB T.J. Edwards (hamstring) inactive.Up nextVikings: Host Atlanta on Sunday.Bears: Visit defending NFC North champion Detroit on Sunday.___AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFL ANDREW SELIGMAN Seligman covers Chicago sports for The Associated Press. He has been with the AP since 2005. twitter mailto

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