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Nov 6, 2026 - World

Russell Brand, the comedian and Hollywood star turned right-wing podcaster, faces an investigation into the alleged rape of a 16-year-old schoolgirl after his rape conviction, and police warn more women may come forward.Brand, 51, is under investigation over the alleged rapes of two more women, The Independent reported, after a London jury on Thursday convicted him of raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others.One of the women says she was 16 when Brand sent a car to collect her from school for sexual encounters, according to the report.Police have questioned Brand as a suspect over both allegations and sent files to prosecutors, who decide whether to bring charges, a Metropolitan Police spokesperson said.Brand has acknowledged having sex with a 16-year-old when he was 30, but he has insisted since 2023 that his relationships were consensual. A woman with a similar account first spoke out in 2023 in Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary “Russell Brand: In Plain Sight.” She said she was 16 and Brand was 30 when their three-month relationship began in 2006, and that he became controlling and abusive, Deadline reported.She also told The Times of London that Brand raped her, NBC News reported.“Russell engaged in the behaviours of a groomer, looking back, but I didn’t even know what that was then, or what that looked like,” she told the paper.In a video posted the day before the documentary aired, Brand denied the allegations and said his relationships at the time had always been consensual.In April, Brand addressed the 16-year-old allegation when conservative commentator Megyn Kelly pressed him on her show, Rolling Stone reported. He thanked Kelly for letting him address her anger, which he called “entirely legitimate,” Variety reported.“I did sleep with a 16-year-old when I was 30. When I was 30, I was a very different person,” Brand said.He said the age of consent in Britain is 16 and that consensual sex with “a strong power differential,” like the one fame gave him, “involves exploitation.”Kelly is now disputing the jury’s verdict.“Utterly charming guy, sweet, interesting, funny, and I had a very difficult time believing that he was capable of rape, as I do right now,” Kelly said on her show after the verdict, The Daily Beast reported. She called the conviction a “travesty” and said the woman Brand was convicted of raping “pursued him aggressively.”The new files follow two earlier rounds of charges: Brand was first charged in April 2025 over allegations from four women. Charges involving two more women were added that December, the Met said at the time.“When you achieve a conviction in something and it receives a level of publicity as well, it gives people the courage to come forward,” Detective Superintendent Andy Furphy, who led the three-year investigation, told The Independent. “So in the Russell Brand case, I think it’s a possibility there are more victims out there,” he added.Prosecutors previously reviewed two other allegations against Brand but found they did not meet the evidence standard needed to bring charges, The Independent reported.The Met asked anyone who wants to speak to detectives or make a report to contact its investigation team.Brand, who denied all the charges, was cleared of two other rape counts and one count of attempted indecent assault, NPR reported. He will be sentenced Monday, and the judge has warned the sentence will likely be “significant.”

Nov 6, 2026 - World

Paul Mackenzie convicted over deaths of children and one adult after followers were ordered to starve themselves and their familiesThe leader of a Kenyan doomsday sect has been sentenced to 200 years in prison for the murders of 190 children and one adult in one of the world’s worst cult disasters in recent history.The sentence, comprising 100 years for murder by starvation and 100 years by direct homicide, came two weeks after the court in Kenya’s coastal city of Mombasa found the cult leader guilty of the crimes. Continue reading...

Nov 6, 2026 - World

President Donald Trump's feud with Pope Leo XIV came back to bite Republicans in a big way, according to a new analysis.Catholic voters backed Democrats for Congress 50 percent to 49 percent in Tuesday's midterm elections, according to the NBC News exit poll, Christopher Hale wrote Thursday in his Substack newsletter, Letters from Leo.Two years earlier, the same poll had Catholics favoring Republicans 59 percent to 39 percent, Hale noted, citing Religion News Service. The 21-point swing in the margin arrived in the first midterm since the Chicago native was elected pope.Catholics accounted for about one in five ballots, according to Hale, who wrote that Democrats won the national House vote by roughly 13 points and recaptured the Senate.Hale tied the shift to the GOP's open hostility toward the pontiff. In April, Trump branded Leo "weak" on crime and "terrible" on foreign policy, Vice President JD Vance warned him to be careful opining on theology and House Speaker Mike Johnson lectured him on "something called the just war doctrine," Hale wrote."Seven months later, Catholic voters had their say," he wrote.Trump's standing with the group had already cratered by October, when his approval among Catholics sat at 30 percent, down from 47 percent when he returned to office, according to Hale.Younger and nonwhite Catholics powered much of the change. Citing Will Martino's reporting in America magazine, Hale wrote that Democrats won 65 percent of Hispanic Catholics and 65 percent of Catholics under 29, along with 87 percent of Black Catholics. Catholic women also favored Democrats, while white Catholics and Catholic men still tilted Republican.Vance, a Catholic convert, blamed the Republican collapse on the war in Iran, Hale wrote, while Washington University political scientist Ryan Burge told America the economy was the culprit. Hale argued both were describing the same break, pointing out that Leo spent the year urging Americans to end the war while the White House waved him off.Hale cautioned that exit polls are early estimates and the Catholic figure could shift by a point or two once voter-file studies come in. But he argued no such adjustment would wipe out a move of that size.He ended with a rallying cry. "Just as God raised up a pope from behind the Iron Curtain to help defeat communism, God has raised up a pope from the Americas to defeat MAGA authoritarianism," Hale wrote. "Over the next two years, our task is to send MAGA to the dustbin of history."

Nov 5, 2026 - World

A federal judge warned the Trump administration she would start contempt proceedings if it deported Iranian detainees without first notifying her court, according to court records unsealed Thursday that reveal secret U.S. talks with Iran about deportations during the war, the Associated Press reported.“We are at war with a country where the President of the United States has said, as recently as two or three days ago, if not yesterday, that it is essentially lawless,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said at the Oct. 15 hearing, pointing to Trump’s own accusation that Iran had killed tens of thousands of protesters.Reyes then asked whether the administration still planned to send people back to a country the U.S. was bombing, where she said they faced “a serious threat of certain death.”“Yes, your honor,” DOJ lawyer Dimitar Georgiev-Remmel replied. “The government is executing lawful orders of removal.”Reyes required the administration to alert the court when deportation plans are finalized and give five days’ written notice before carrying them out. In a filing Wednesday, the DOJ argued the threat of sanctions effectively turned the notice requirement into an injunction, according to the report.The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, which brought the lawsuit, said Thursday Iranian consular officials had told at least 12 ICE detainees in the past week that they would be flown to Iran through Pakistan. The group said U.S. immigration authorities had given those detainees nothing in writing.The lawsuit alleges that U.S. immigration officials shared confidential information about Iranian asylum seekers with Tehran. The Department of Homeland Security has denied sharing asylum application records with Iran."Activists abroad have expressed concern about deportees returning to Iran, whose theocracy has been cracking down on intellectuals and where the government vociferously cracks down on any dissent," the AP reported Thursday.

Nov 5, 2026 - World

First lady Melania Trump faced a torrent of outrage after lavishing praise on a Kremlin official whose past has haunted Ukrainian families.Melania Trump hosted Russian and Ukrainian representatives at the White House on Thursday, where she thanked Russian human rights commissioner Yana Lantratova, saying her "dedication brings hope and dignity to those devastated by war," according to a video posted by journalist Aaron Rupar.Ukraine's security service accused Lantratova in 2024 of helping deport children from occupied Kherson to Russia, the Ukrainian news outlet Babel reported.The gathering followed a humanitarian ceasefire in the occupied city of Oleshky that the White House credited Melania with helping broker, the Associated Press noted.BBC local radio correspondent Euan MacDonald laid out the international penalties and Ukrainian charges Lantratova faces, asking if Melania was seriously thanking Lantratova, "who is under international sanctions by the EU, US, UK, and other nations, and who has been charged in absentia in Ukraine for her alleged role in facilitating the unlawful transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied territories to Russia?""What a disgusting spectacle," MacDonald blasted. "Shame on America."Nicolas Tenzer, a French foreign policy expert, similarly pointed out that Melania was "praising a person sanctioned by the EU, the UK, Ukraine...and the US for her active role in the deportation and forced russification of Ukrainian kids."Former U.S. ambassador Luis Moreno echoed the ire, lamenting, "You know, all kidding aside. FLOTUS not only invited this war criminal who kidnaps Ukrainian children to Russia, into the White House, but she's honoring and praising her. Beyond disgusting."Branislav Slantchev, a political science professor at the University of California San Diego, turned his fire toward the Trump administration for cozying up to Moscow."This entire f— administration is trying to normalize relations with the war criminals who created the humanitarian disaster these two are now 'solving,'" Slantchev railed.Retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts, a former International Space Station commander who now comments on politics, declared that "the Trump family and MAGA admiration of Russia and Putin is one of the most disgusting episodes in American history."