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Oct 30, 2026 - World

Scottish detectives are investigating time that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell spent at Balmoral, King Charles’ private estate in Scotland.Police Scotland said it had received “information” and that inquiries into the disgraced royal’s time there with the late child sex offender were at a “very early stage," reported The Guardian.The Daily Express has reported that the inquiries relate to claims that women were trafficked to the estate.“We have received information and active inquiries are ongoing, but these are at a very early stage,” a Police Scotland spokesperson said. “All inquiries are evidence-led, with the needs of victim survivors at the heart of those inquiries.”Photos previously released by the U.S. Department of Justice appear to show Mountbatten-Windsor and Epstein on a shooting trip at Balmoral.The estate also appears in a string of cryptic emails released last year as part of the Epstein files. In August 2001, someone using the name “the Invisible Man” sent four emails to Maxwell, who has since been convicted of sex trafficking. In one, the sender said their “valet” had recently died and that they had “left the RN,” shorthand for the Royal Navy. Mountbatten-Windsor left the Royal Navy the month before.Another email from the same sender, dated Aug. 16, 2001, said they were at “Balmoral summer camp for the royal family” before asking Maxwell: “Have you found me some inappropriate friends?”In March 2002, Maxwell wrote to the Invisible Man that she had passed along a message to an unnamed person, beginning: “I just gave Andrew your telephone no.” She added that “Andrew” would be “very happy” if the person did some “two legged sight seeing.”The sender of the emails has not been confirmed.Several other British police forces, including the Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley Police and Surrey Police, have live investigations linked to the Epstein files. The National Police Chiefs’ Council said there is no national investigation at present.Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested in February on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations that he shared sensitive information with Epstein while serving as a U.K. trade envoy. He denies wrongdoing, and that investigation continues.

Oct 30, 2026 - World

There is no end in sight for the drivers of illegal mining, while police action appears ineffectiveCora Bailey has been encountering illegal miners ever since she first started treating injured animals in the townships around Roodepoort, west of Johannesburg, in 1991. But as the price of gold has soared, so too has activity in the abandoned mine shafts that mark the area.In late September, dozens of zama zamas – the name given to illegal miners in South Africa, meaning roughly “to take a chance” in Zulu – arrived to dig for gold across the dirt road from her charity, Claw (Community Led Animal Welfare). Continue reading...

Oct 29, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's administration quietly agreed to arm a foreign military unit with a gruesome human rights record, a new report revealed.The Trump administration agreed to send about $35 million in military aid, including armored personnel carriers, to Cameroon's Rapid Intervention Battalion, known as the BIR, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. U.S. officials and congressional aides told The Journal that State Department officials negotiated the aid alongside a deal for the Central African nation to accept deportees from the U.S. who aren't Cameroonian.The unit has a brutal past. A 2017 Amnesty International report accused the BIR of war crimes during its fight against the Boko Haram terrorist group, finding that members beat and drowned detainees and tortured some of them to death. Trump's first administration cut off some aid to the unit in 2019 and booted Cameroon from a U.S.-Africa trade pact over its forces' ongoing abuses, which Cameroon denied at the time.Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on the aid package earlier this year, according to The Journal. That stalled the deal for months until April, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio's team told her the administration was overriding her and pushing ahead.Shaheen this week tore into the arrangement as "grotesque" and said Rubio had let her down by signing off on it.In a statement, Shaheen argued that the U.S. has no business handing sensitive military gear to governments with shaky human rights records, let alone as payment for taking in people.Cameroon started accepting U.S. deportation flights in December and has taken in at least 36 people since, according to Refugees International, a humanitarian advocacy group. Some officials told The Journal the Trump administration intends to ramp up flights to African countries in the coming months. Around the time the aid was disclosed to Congress in January, the U.S. also steered $30 million to the United Nations refugee agency's operations in Cameroon, even as it slashed foreign aid elsewhere.The State Department wouldn't discuss the details of any agreement but praised its partnership with Cameroon on security and counterterrorism, and said it follows the Leahy Law, which prohibits military aid to forces tied to human rights abuses. Cameroon's embassy in Washington did not respond to The Journal's request for comment.

Oct 29, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump received a high-level military briefing Thursday as his administration considers launching another round of major attacks against Iran, according to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal.Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, made a rare in-person visit to the White House to discuss potential military operations, the Journal reported, citing U.S. officials and others familiar with the meeting.Cooper was joined by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chief Chairman Gen. Dan Caine. The meeting also covered other topics, according to the report.The unusual gathering came as the U.S. weighs “resuming major combat operations,” the Journal reported Thursday. It followed a separate White House meeting a day earlier when military leaders met with Vice President JD Vance.Vance has reportedly reached out to one of Iran’s most powerful hard-liners in an effort to revive peace negotiations, according to the report, suggesting the administration is still pursuing diplomatic efforts even as it considers new military strikes.But Trump himself recently raised the prospect of renewed strikes.“We may do another little Epic Fury,” Trump said at a rally last week, referring to the earlier U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran.The possibility of renewed strikes has also alarmed some lawmakers, including Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who said he had been briefed on some of the classified military planning and called the plans "insane.""It will lead to devastating escalation and the likely destruction of our commitment to the rule of law," Murphy warned.

Oct 29, 2026 - World

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) says he’s been briefed on the Iran war plan President Donald Trump is expected to launch after the midterms and calls it “insane,” the Daily Beast reported on Thursday.Murphy said he couldn’t share details. However, in a post on X, he claimed the plan would likely destroy the country’s commitment to the rule of law, adding that it “will not achieve objectives and will set off a new cycle of escalation.”At the Middle East Institute on Thursday, Murphy said he’d had a “fairly detailed conversation” about it and predicted it would prolong the conflict with Tehran. He acknowledged the public has heard it described as short in duration, but said the plan is “insane.”He noted reports that the Pentagon may be considering civilian infrastructure targets.Murphy said officials had been asked by the president to develop a plan, and that whether they think it will work, he couldn’t say. In his view, it would drag out the war and hurt U.S. security interests.He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations committees. His comments followed reports that Gulf nations were told to prepare for a brief but intense campaign after Nov. 3. The Wall Street Journal cited officials as saying Trump was weighing strikes on nuclear sites and civilian infrastructure. Trump has said he won’t strike Iran before the election.Trump's campaign against Iran has proven wildly unpopular, with the public largely seeing him as breaking a promise to avoid foreign entanglements, and with the Strait of Hormuz crisis driving up energy prices to uncomfortable levels.