US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in the statement: “As the indictment lays bare, the Sinaloa cartel, and other drug trafficking organisations like it, would not operate as freely or successfully without corrupt politicians and law enforcement officials on their payroll”.

GAIL Porter has slammed Katie Price online for all to see, claiming she cruelly mocked her hair loss.

The 90s pin-up, 55, lost her hair as a result of alopecia, which she developed in 2005.

Now Gail has claimed that Katie made a horrible remark about her in the past when introducing her to one of her boyfriends.

Taking to the comments section of an Instagram post by Sky TV showing the trailer for Katie’s upcoming tell-all documentary, Katie: Nothing to Hide, Gail made a direct comment about the star.

Referring to Katie, Gail claimed: “The person who introduced me to one of her boyfriends and said ‘this is Gail. She used to be pretty when she had hair… Google her. Thanks.’”

The comment has amassed nearly 100 likes to date as well as a flood of replies from other Instagram users.

FAMILY TIME

Princess & Junior Andre enjoy day out with Harvey while mum Katie is in Dubai

GETTING LIPPY

Katie Price shows off new ‘butterfly lips’ as star gets pout pumped up again

One response said: “Whhhhhat?!,” in clear shock.

A second reads: “That must have been awful for you. I hope you’re okay x.”

A third person added: “So sorry she said that! You are beautiful.”

Gail was a model in the late 90s, most known for her pin-up content in “lad-mags” such as FHM.

This was the same decade when Katie launched her glamour modelling career under the pseudonym of Jordan.

She regularly starred in the pages of magazines and newspapers including The Sun, The Daily Star, FHM, Loaded, and Playboy.

Katie’s tell-all documentary is in the process of production, and is being made by Louis Theroux.

The four-part docu-series promises it will have “intimate access” to the model and the mini series will go “beyond the headlines”, with Sky already promising that it will be absolutely “jaw-dropping”.

Speaking about the production Arron Fellows, co-founder and creative director at Mindhouse, said: “Katie’s 30 years in the spotlight have been truly extraordinary.

“This series doesn’t shy away from – in Katie’s own words – ’the good, the bad and the ugly’; and this is an unexpected re-appraisal of a woman many people feel they have already figured out.

“The team have spoken to a range of contributors who have crossed paths with Katie at different junctures of her life – through the ups, the downs and everything in between.

“In doing so have crafted a series that is as jaw-dropping and unpredictable as it is tender and surprising. I can’t wait for people to see it.”

The series is set to air on Sky and streaming service NOW sometime this summer.

LONDON — In the world of diplomatic faux pas, it could have been a lot worse.

At Tuesday’s state dinner honoring King Charles III and Queen Camilla, President Trump said that during a private meeting earlier in the day the British monarch had agreed with him that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons.

“We’re doing a little Middle East work right now … and we’re doing very well,” Trump told the audience. “We have militarily defeated that particular opponent, and we’re never going to let that opponent ever — Charles agrees with me, even more than I do — we’re never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon.”

While many Britons would agree with the president’s sentiment, the comment triggered mild consternation among pundits in the U.K.

By convention, people aren’t supposed to relay private conversations with the monarch. That is partly because the king has to remain above the political fray, but also because the sovereign doesn’t have the ability to wade into a public debate and correct the record if he’s misquoted.

“Generally, as a matter of protocol, I think I would expect discussions between heads of state to be sort of behind the scenes, in those closed meetings, for those to be sort of kept private,” said Craig Prescott, an expert on constitutional law and the monarchy at Royal Holloway, University of London. “And, you know, this was something that the U.K. government wanted to avoid.”

There had been a fair amount of jitters before the king’s trip to the United States, which comes amid Trump’s very public frustration with U.K. Prime Minster Keir Starmer over his failure to support U.S. actions in the Iran war.

Like all royal visits, this is a carefully choreographed diplomatic event carried out at the request of the U.K. government, which hopes that warm relations between the king and Trump can help repair the rift.

But Trump is an unconventional leader who has a penchant for breaking protocol, and there were concerns about just what he might say or do.

At least in this case, the king’s comments seemed clearly within the bounds of existing U.K. government policy.

“The King is naturally mindful of his government’s long-standing and well-known position on the prevention of nuclear proliferation,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement designed to provide context to the president’s remarks.

Prescott said that “in a sense, this was always the issue, just what Trump would do or say — would he put the king in an embarrassing position?’’ Prescott said.

“You always had that sort of issue of what he would post on social media,” he said. “And I think, you know, this could have been much, much worse.”

Before the state dinner, Charles gave a speech to a joint session of U.S. Congress. The king received repeated standing ovations during the address, which celebrated the longstanding bonds between the U.S. and Britain while nodding to differences over NATO, support for Ukraine and the need to combat climate change.

Now, from the U.K. government’s point of view, the trip is shifting to safer ground as the king and queen leave Washington behind and head to New York, where the focus will be on the city’s creative industries, rather than politics.

The most difficult part of the trip may be over, Prescott said.

“If this is the only controversy arising out of this phase of the state visit, I think overall this has been an enormous success for the king and the British government, because the king was able to make some quite pointed remarks in Congress and it hasn’t really yielded any sort of negative reaction from the president.”

“In a sense,” he said, “you get the feeling that the king rather charmed Washington with his speech to Congress and, you know, his very witty speech at the state banquet.”

Kirka writes for the Associated Press.

Organisers of a Gaza-bound aid mission say their vessels are being intercepted by Israeli military speedboats in Greek waters west of Crete, more than 1,000km from Israel. Crew members of the Global Sumud Flotilla say communications have been jammed and an SOS issued.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took office last year amid a flurry of aggressive actions by his country’s southern neighbour. A recently sworn-in United States president, Donald Trump, slapped tariffs on Canadian exports and threatened to make the US neighbour the 51st state.

The actions were particularly damning as Canada had deep trade and security ties with the US, not only sending nearly 80 percent of its exports to that market, but also often following lockstep on geopolitical policy and strategic moves.

All that was thrown aside when Trump took office, and Canada, under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was one of the first countries he slapped with tariffs.

After a year of dealing with a mercurial and unpredictable US president, experts applaud Carney as “standing strong and resolute”, not just in the face of Trump’s threats, but also against internal critics.

“The most notable aspect of the last year was both a bullet dodged and a savvy bit of statecraft to avoid a rush to do a deal on trade and invest with the US the way many other countries did,” said Brett House, a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

“Commitments from this president are absolutely worthless, and the biggest accomplishment of the first year has been standing strong and resolute in the face of internal critics,” House told Al Jazeera.

Indeed, Carney has used Trump’s attacks on allies and others to refocus Canada’s foreign policy and place in the world.

With the US no longer the anchor of a rules-based order, and with there now being a “deep rupture” caused by changes in Washington, “Carney has aimed to build at home and diversify abroad, as Ottawa’s dependence and long ties have now become a source of weakness,” said Vina Nadjibulla, the vice president of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.

“And he’s doing this at a speed, scale and ambition that we haven’t seen in recent years” in Ottawa, Nadjibulla said.

‘Rupture’ in global order

Some of that stance was evident in January, when Carney, in a speech in Davos, said there was a “rupture” in the global rules-based order and that Middle Powers like Canada and others had to rise strategically to address geopolitical tensions.

But it was visible in his actions even before Davos, when he had reached out to countries that had historically been important trade partners but where relations had been frozen due to political tensions under his predecessor, Trudeau.

For instance, Carney invited Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the G7 meeting in Canada to initiate a reset of ties with New Delhi that had been in a deep freeze since Trudeau alleged in 2023 that India was involved in the killing of a Sikh separatist activist on Canadian soil.

Carney also recalibrated Canada’s relations with China, which had been tense since Canadian authorities arrested a key official of Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei as she was transitioning through the Vancouver international airport in December 2018. China retaliated against the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, which was carried out at the request of US authorities, by detaining two Canadians.

Carney has also deepened relations with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others, making sure to align on security and economic issues, and has drawn Canada closer to Europe, Nadjibulla pointed out.

Domestic push

In the lead-up to elections last year, Carney “positioned himself as a centrist, a moderate, and went to great lengths to distance himself from the image of Justin Trudeau,” said Sanjay Jeram, the chair of the political science department at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada.

“He hasn’t shown much interest in discussing things outside the economy, international relations and trade, and even when asked, has avoided those questions and steered the conversation back to what he believes is his true purpose. Or that could be his political strategy, or a bit of both.”

Under that pragmatist persona, “Carney takes the world and the economy as it is, rather than what we hope it to be”, which allows him to be judged on pragmatist metrics, Jeram said, referring to criticisms that Carney is overlooking concerns related to political interference or human rights in his dealings with foreign partners.

“Canadians have bought that [stance] so far,” Jeram added.

Indeed, Carney’s approval ratings are up. According to a March Ipsos poll for Global News, 58 percent of Canadians approve of him, up 10 percent from a year before, while 33 percent do not.

While there has also been significant movement on paper to remove federal barriers to facilitate business and trade within the country, there have also been concerns about certain policy pushes. A major projects bill, for instance, is meant to fast-track big infrastructure projects, but critics are concerned that it undermines the importance of consultation, especially with the Indigenous communities whose land these projects could go through.

“Carney recognises we need more of infrastructure to be able to diversify trade,” the Asia Pacific Foundation’s Nadjibulla said.

As he settles into his second year, Carney’s main challenge will be to see if he can deliver on his first-year announcements.

One of his biggest challenges this year will be a successful conclusion of the review of the trade pact between the US, Canada and Mexico, known as the USMCA, which starts on July 1 and which has helped shield Canadian exports from US tariffs.

The “US has signalled that a successful review could hinge on Canada lining its external tariffs in line with US tariffs, but that’s at cross purposes with Canada’s efforts”, said the University of Toronto’s House, especially as Canada has lined up deals with China on electric cars and agriculture.

Nadjibulla added that “2026 will be harder, because it will be about implementation and delivery, especially against the US-Canada dynamics.”

The BBC are to air a lost episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show, almost six decades after the initial broadcast, to coincide with Eric Morecambe’s 100th birthday

A long-lost episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show, first broadcast on the BBC in 1968, has been rediscovered and will be shown next month.

The episode, which first aired on September 16, 1968, will be re-shown decades later to coincide with when Eric Morecambe would have turned 100. BBC Four will also show a collection of sketches called The Perfect Morecambe and Wise to mark this moment.

The episode, which was thought to be lost forever, was discovered by Film Is Fabulous! – a charitable trust run by film collectors and television enthusiasts. It was found in the estate of a former television industry professional and has now been returned to the BBC.

This ‘lost’ programme is the third episode from Morecambe and Wise’s first series after returning to the BBC, following a period working with commercial television.

Noreen Adams, Director of BBC Archives, said: “Morecambe and Wise are one of the UK’s most loved comedy duos. Thanks to Film Is Fabulous! – We’re delighted to share this comedy gold that we thought was lost forever with viewers across the UK.”

The episode features sketches written by Sid Green and Dick Hills. Ann Hamilton appears as Pauline in a sketch set in a nudist colony, while Jenny Lee-Wright plays Eric’s niece, a balloon dancer. It also includes a musical performance from The Paper Dolls, who enjoyed hits in the 1960s.

Eric Morecambe’s daughter, Gail Morecambe, said: “What a lovely surprise this is, and I’m really looking forward to seeing it on a screen once again after so many years.

“It’s excellent to hear that skilled people are actively going through the Archives and discovering ‘lost’ programmes. Not just Morecambe and Wise, of course. I am especially thrilled that it coincides with my father’s centenary year. Really wonderful.”

Eric Morecambe’s son, Gary Morecambe added: “I’m so thrilled and surprised by the discovery of a Morecambe and Wise show that hasn’t been seen since 1968. I honestly didn’t think there was anything out there left to find, and when something like this comes out of nowhere, it’s really quite wonderful.

“Hats off to Professor Justin Smith and his team, whose dedication and hard work brought this gem back to us. I’m very excited about seeing it for the first time since I was twelve years of age.”

The Morecambe and Wise Show ran for nine series and became a regular fixture at Christmas on the BBC with a festive special, before moving to ITV for four series.

* The lost episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show will air on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on Thursday May 14 from 8pm.

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WASHINGTON — Making his first appearance before Congress since the Trump administration went to war in Iran, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced withering questioning from skeptical Democrats Wednesday over a costly conflict being waged without congressional approval.

The war has cost $25 billion so far, according to Pentagon numbers presented to the House Armed Services Committee during the contentious hearing, ostensibly focused on the administration’s 2027 military budget proposal, which would boost defense spending to a historic $1.5 trillion.

While Republicans focused on the details of military budgeting and voiced support for the operation, Democrats pivoted to the ballooning costs of the war, the huge drawdown of critical U.S. munitions and the bombing of a school that killed children. Some lawmakers also questioned President Trump’s dealings with allies and his shifting justification for the conflict.

Hegseth dismissed the criticism as political and rebuked lawmakers who pushed him for answers.

“The biggest challenge, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless, feckless and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” Hegseth said.

Democrats press about reasons for war

Wednesday’s hearing stretched nearly six hours as Democrats and some Republicans questioned Hegseth over the war and his ouster of several top military leaders.

In one tense exchange, Hegseth told Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) that Iran’s nuclear facilities were obliterated in a 2025 attack by the U.S., prompting Smith to question the Trump administration’s reasoning for starting the Iran war less than a year later.

“We had to start this war, you just said 60 days ago, because the nuclear weapon was an imminent threat,” said Smith, the ranking Democrat on the committee. “Now you’re saying that it was completely obliterated?”

Hegseth responded by saying that Iran “had not given up their nuclear ambitions” and still had thousands of missiles.

Smith said the war “left us at exactly the same place we were before.”

Democrats accused Hegseth of misleading Americans about the reasons for the conflict and said rising gas prices are now threatening the pocketbooks of millions of people in the U.S.

“Secretary Hegseth, you have been lying to the American public about this war from day one and so has the president,” said Rep. John Garamendi of Walnut Grove, who called the war “a geopolitical calamity,” a “strategic blunder” and a ”self-inflicted wound to America.”

Hegseth blasted Garamendi’s remarks.

“Who are you cheering for here?” he asked the lawmaker. ”Your hatred for President Trump blinds you” to the success of the war.

Hegseth defends firings of officers

The Defense secretary faced intense questions from Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.) about his decision to oust the Army’s top uniformed officer, Gen. Randy George, one of several top military officers to be dismissed since Trump’s reelection.

Houlahan said George was deeply respected by both members of the military and Congress and asked why Hegseth fired him. Hegseth’s response that “new leadership” was needed failed to satisfy Houlahan.

“You have no way of explaining why you fired one of the most decorated and remarkable men —” Houlahan began before Hegseth interrupted her. “We needed new leadership,” he repeated.

The Pentagon announced this month that Navy Secretary John Phelan was stepping down. Hegseth previously removed Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the Navy’s top uniformed officer, and Gen. Jim Slife, the Air Force’s No. 2 leader, while Trump fired Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown Jr. as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said that while Hegseth is empowered to make personnel changes, he shares what he called “bipartisan concern” about the firings.

“We had a huge bipartisan majority here that had confidence in the Army chief of staff and the secretary of the navy,” Bacon said. “And I would just point out it may be constitutionally right … but it doesn’t make it right or wise.”

Hegseth has said the changes are part of building a “warrior culture” at the Pentagon.

Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina defended Hegseth’s personnel moves, saying he is “trying to innovate and trying to change the way we do business.”

“I’m glad that you’re firing people,” Mace said. “There are people there that are getting in your way. They need to go.”

Republicans back Trump on Iran

During the extended hearing, Hegseth detailed plans to increase pay for service members and upgrade munitions while also announcing that, as of Tuesday, the Pentagon had authorized $400 million in military aid for Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

But the debate and the questions were dominated by the war in Iran.

While a fragile ceasefire is now in place, the U.S. and Israel launched the war Feb. 28 without congressional oversight. House and Senate Democrats have failed to pass multiple war power resolutions that would have required Trump to halt the conflict until Congress authorizes further action.

Republicans say they back Trump’s wartime leadership, for now, citing Iran’s nuclear program, the potential for talks to resume and the high stakes of withdrawal. Still, GOP lawmakers are eager for the conflict to end, and some are eyeing future votes that could become an important test for the president if the war drags on.

Democrats questioned Hegseth over the war’s economic impact and rising gasoline costs, noting Trump’s promise to lower consumer costs. Hegseth responded by citing the threat posed by Iran.

“What is the cost of Iran having a nuclear weapon that they wield?” he said.

Republicans expressed support for Trump’s decision to strike Iran, including Mace, who in late March had expressed concerns about the justification for the war. “The longer this war continues, the faster it will lose the support of Congress and the American people,” she wrote in a social media post.

On Wednesday, Mace noted her past concerns but said she is “impressed with where we are today.” She told Hegseth: “Everything I have seen, you have surpassed all of my expectations.”

Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping corridor for the world’s oil, has sent fuel prices skyrocketing and posed problems for Republicans ahead of the midterm elections. The U.S. has imposed a naval blockade of Iranian shipping and three American aircraft carriers are in the Middle East for the first time in more than 20 years.

The countries appear locked in a stalemate. Trump told Axios on Wednesday that he is rejecting Iran’s proposal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for lifting the U.S. blockade.

Finley, Groves, Klepper and Toropin write for the Associated Press.

We’ve had two nights of handball controversy, first involving Bayern Munich and now Arsenal.

In both cases, the ball took a deflection off the body before hitting the arm, and fans have been conditioned into thinking this means there cannot be a penalty.

What referees actually look for is a clear change of trajectory. Why is that? Because it means the arm position would not create a barrier to the natural direction of the ball.

If the ball stays on roughly its intended path, then the ball touching the arm takes precedent.

The penalty given against Alphonso Davies on Tuesday would not have been awarded in the Premier League as the arm was too close to the body.

For Uefa, the fact that the arm moves out from the body before the ball hits it would trump the small deflection.

But Ben White’s handball against Atletico was a very clear penalty under Uefa’s definition. The arm was a long way out from the body and came in to make contact with the ball.

There is some discretion if the arm is being brought in to make the body smaller, but in White’s case it started from so far out, a penalty would be expected.

The Premier League is more relaxed than Europe even when it comes to deflections before a handball. That said, Arsenal defender Gabriel should have really conceded a penalty at Newcastle earlier this season as his arm, when sliding, was raised very high and the deflection off the body was negligible.

Would the ball deflecting off White’s shin have caused VAR to stay out of this in the Premier League? Possibly, but the movement of the arm was very clear.

A definite spot-kick in Europe, borderline for the Premier League.

April 29 (UPI) — Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla laid flowers at the Sept. 11 memorial and met with victims’ families and first responders in New York City on the third day of their state visit to the United States.

It was the first visit by a reigning British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2010.

The terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in 2001 killed nearly 2,800 people, 67 of them British. During the queen’s trip, she officially opened what is now called the Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden. The lower Manhattan space honors the British citizens who died in the attacks.

The royal couple laid flowers beside the reflecting pool, which has the names of victims etched into the side. Standing beside them were firefighters and officers from the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department and the New York Fire Department, in dress uniforms, The New York Times reported.

Charles spoke to both houses of Congress on Tuesday, and he mentioned that 9/11 was the first time that NATO invoked Article 5, which declares that an attack on any members is an attack on all.

Charles referenced the attacks during the speech.

“We stood with you then,” he said. “And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that NATO has never come to the aid of the United States.

Charles also emphasized his country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Trump said earlier this year that British troops “held back” in the war, which caused some Brits to demand the state visit be canceled.

After the visit to the memorial, the king went to Harlem to meet with young people who run an urban farm. He fed lettuce to the chickens, The Times reported.

Camilla visited the New York Public Library and gave a speech about the power of literature. She gave the library a replica of Roo, the character in Winnie the Pooh, a British children’s classic.

The library has the original stuffed animals that inspired A.A. Milne to write the Pooh series, but the Roo animal was lost.

Wednesday evening, the king and queen will attend a reception with “celebrated creative and cultural figures from both sides of the Atlantic,” the British Embassy said. They will then head back to Washington.

The pair will attend a block party for the United States’ 250th anniversary in Virginia Thursday and say good-bye to Trump, ending their state visit.

After watching Manchester City slip to a 3-2 defeat by Brighton on Saturday, Arsenal fans started to believe they had a chance.

And Slegers’ team made sure to capitalise on the opportunity with seven unanswered goals against Leicester, improving their goal difference to 33 – six behind City.

Leah Williamson’s glancing header – the Gunners’ seventh against Leicester – also took their tally to 103 goals under Slegers. No WSL team has scored more since she was appointed – initially as interim boss – in October 2024.

“Clean sheet, seven goals scored, different scorers – it was a great night for us,” Slegers said to Sky Sports.

“You saw so many players playing the Arsenal way, we played attractive football and we were very brave in everything we did.”

What will also boost Arsenal’s belief is their squad’s strength in depth.

With the second leg of their Women’s Champions League semi-final against Lyon awaiting on Saturday, Slegers rested Williamson, Lotte Wubben-Moy, Mariona Caldentey, Caitlin Foord and Alessia Russo against the Foxes.

Their replacements did the job.

On her 100th WSL appearance, Maanum scored the opening goal and assisted two more, while Smilla Holmberg bagged her first two goals in an Arsenal shirt.

Stina Blackstenius has often had to play second fiddle to Russo, but the Swede, who scored the winning goal in last season’s Champions League final, showed her quality with two goals in the space of nine minutes.

“Everyone knows their role and brings their strengths. There are such high levels of communication and trust within the team, on the pitch, off the pitch,” Slegers added.

Evidence in the murder case against the singer D4vd — who is charged with the brutal killing of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez — will not become public until at least late next month, after his defense attorneys pumped the brakes on a preliminary hearing that was scheduled to take place this Friday.

David Anthony Burke, 21, was charged with murder, continuous sex abuse of a minor and mutilating a corpse earlier this month after Los Angeles police stormed a Hollywood Hills home and arrested him. He pleaded not guilty last week.

The singer has long been linked to Hernandez’s disappearance and death, after her badly decomposed body was found in the trunk of a Tesla he owned at a Hollywood tow yard last September. Authorities said Hernandez was last seen at Burke’s Hollywood residence on April 23, 2025.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said last week that Burke killed the 14-year-old because she threatened to expose the fact that he’d been sexually abusing her for nearly a year. An autopsy report made public last week revealed Hernandez died from a pair of stab wounds. Her body was dismembered when police found it in the trunk and two of her fingers had been amputated, the report said.

Burke’s lead defense attorney, Blair Berk, said she does not believe the prosecution’s case can hold up to scrutiny and pushed for an immediate preliminary hearing during his initial court appearance. Defendants have a right to a preliminary hearing, in which a judge determines whether prosecutors have enough evidence to bring a case to trial, within 10 business days. In Burke’s case, that would have put the preliminary hearing on track for May 1.

But on Wednesday afternoon, attorney Marilyn Bednarski asked that the hearing be pushed back to May 26, citing the voluminous amount of discovery in the case. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo agreed there was “good cause” to delay the hearing a few weeks.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman expressed some annoyance at Bednarski and Berk’s change of heart, noting she’d already warned the defense team that prosecutors had a trove of evidence to turn over.

Silverman said last week that discovery materials would include the results of a wiretap and searches of Burke’s cellphone and iCloud accounts, which prosecutors allege turned up “a significant amount of child pornography.” Law enforcement executed 54 search warrants in the case, according to court records.

The medical examiner’s report detailing how Hernandez died was not available to the defense until last week. Prosecutors also convened three secret grand juries between November 2025 and February 2026 to collect evidence against Burke, according to Silverman. Transcripts from those hearings were under seal as of last week.

Bednarski said Wednesday she needed “additional time to review the discovery we either just got, or are about to get, in order to have a full and free preliminary hearing.”

“We told them that this was what was going to be coming,” Silverman argued in reply. “As I said in my brief, we sent out subpoenas, we’ve been preparing, we’ve been telling witnesses to cancel planned vacations.”

Berk also sought to have Olmedo seal a filing that Silverman submitted early Wednesday that laid out evidence she plans to present at a preliminary hearing.

“The prosecution has appeared to file a rather unusual pre-preliminary hearing brief that appears to be a very one-sided view of what is anticipated as the evidence in this case. But no evidence has been presented by the prosecution in a courtroom. Certainly there has been no adjudication of the admissibility of that evidence,” Berk said, expressing worry that the publication of such materials would taint future jury pools.

Prosecutors normally file such briefs ahead of trial, which include a list of witnesses they plan to call and a summary of arguments they will make. Olmedo rejected Berk’s request to seal the motion. A copy of the document was not immediately available for review at the downtown Los Angeles courthouse.

According to Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche and other top administration officials, the U.S. Secret Service did a fine job protecting President Trump and Cabinet members from the gunman who breached the White House Correspondents’ Assn. dinner Saturday.

“That horrible act was stopped because of the courage and professionalism of law enforcement — the officers who responded without hesitation and did their jobs as they were trained to do,” Blanche said Monday.

However, according to a detailed accounting filed Wednesday by federal prosecutors in the criminal case against suspect Cole Tomas Allen, the performance of the nation’s preeminent protection agency was marred by inattentiveness and misfires and saved by “extraordinary good fortune” and the gunman falling to the ground.

“The defendant, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, a .38 caliber pistol, two knives, four daggers, and enough ammunition to take dozens of lives, was apprehended by [Secret Service] officers mere feet away from the ballroom where his primary target was located, along with other members of the Cabinet,” prosecutors wrote Wednesday, in a filing arguing for Allen to be held in detention pending trial on one charge of trying to kill the president and two firearms charges.

Contradicting a prior claim by Blanche that officers had “promptly tackled and detained” Allen, prosecutors wrote that the 31-year-old tutor from Torrance simply “fell to the ground” after blowing past a team of agents just two open flights of stairs from the ballroom.

They wrote that one officer fired at Allen five times, but never hit him.

The same officer saw Allen fire his shotgun “in the direction of the stairs leading down to the ballroom,” prosecutors wrote, and officers later discovered “one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube.”

Prosecutors said nothing about the Secret Service officer who Blanche said was shot in his ballistic vest during the incident — adding to speculation that the officer may have been shot not by Allen, but by a fellow officer, or not at all.

Agency critiqued before

In all, the court filing brought further into focus a chaotic Secret Service response that appeared flawed from the start, including in a video Trump posted shortly after the incident in which agents appeared to be idling around an unobstructed entrance when Allen ran past them.

It added to concerns that law enforcement, security experts and members of Congress had raised about the performance of an agency that has been repeatedly called on to improve after previous attempts on Trump’s life. At a 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pa., a gunman fired a bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, and that same year, another assailant prepared to shoot him from the unsecured perimeter of a Florida golf course.

Robert D’Amico, a former FBI deputy chief of operations for hostage rescue teams who is now a security consultant, said the security failures he saw in the Secret Service’s preparation for Saturday’s dinner — including its failure to set up basic barriers to prevent people from sprinting into the secured area — were stunning, especially given the past threats and the fact the nation is at war with Iran.

“It’s for a person like Trump, who’s had two assassination attempts before and is at war with Iran, which has terrorist training and proxies up, and you still don’t have the basics?” D’Amico said. “It’s unfathomable.”

Other concerns have been voiced by members of Congress, including Republicans.

The House Oversight Committee has requested a briefing from the Secret Service, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called for a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which also investigated the Butler incident.

In a letter urging the hearing, Hawley said the latest incident “raises questions about presidential security arrangements, potential resource needs, and the degree to which reforms previously proposed by Congress have been adopted.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News that from “a layman’s perspective,” event security “looked a little lax in terms of getting into the building,” and that it “doesn’t sound like it was sufficient.”

Sean M. Curran, director of the Secret Service, has been on Capitol Hill in recent days briefing lawmakers.

He told CBS News that agents did a “great job,” but also that the incident remains under review. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has said that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles would be leading discussions on potential updates to Secret Service plans for securing the president.

Fear of graver threats

Blanche has argued that proof of the Secret Service’s effectiveness at the press gala was in the result: Allen was stopped, Trump and other officials were unharmed and no one was killed, despite Allen’s alleged intent.

However, the concerns being raised have to do with the vulnerabilities that were exposed as much as those that were exploited.

Because the dinner was not designated a major “national special security event” — such as a political convention — there were no trained counterassault agents on standby to prevent a breach or to take down a person with a weapon, officials have said.

Law enforcement experts said that was clearly a mistake given so many top officials — Trump, Johnson, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, among others — were in the room.

Such a gathering could have been targeted by foreign adversaries or others with far more experience, less regard for human life and much greater firepower than Allen, experts said.

“Most of my military friends are all saying the same thing,” said D’Amico, who is also a former infantry platoon commander in the U.S. Marines. “If you had had a team of three or four [gunmen], they would have gotten to [Trump].’”

In the initial criminal complaint against Allen, prosecutors included the text of an email Allen sent to family just as he was preparing to rush the security perimeter, in which he allegedly wrote that he had chosen to use buckshot in order to “minimize casualties” and prevent bystanders from being wounded by more powerful bullets penetrating walls.

He also allegedly wrote that he was willing to “go through most everyone” at the event to get to top administration officials, but that guests and hotel staff were “not targets at all.”

In Wednesday’s filing, prosecutors describe Allen’s actions as “premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and say he was “laden with weapons” as he breached security. But none of those weapons included assault-style rifles that can fire multiple bullets rapidly and have been used to kill civilians in mass shootings across the country for years.

The filing described Allen — a Caltech graduate and high school tutor — not as some trained tactical expert, but as an ideologue who spent part of his Amtrak journey from California to Washington waxing poetic about the landscape around him, describing Pennsylvania’s woods as “vast fairy lands filled with tiny trickling creeks in spring.”

Could have been worse

D’Amico said he and other Marines learned early on in Iraq that entrances to secured locations have to be designed in a “serpentine” fashion, forcing anyone approaching to move more slowly through the area and giving security officers more time to assess their intentions. And at an event the size of the correspondents’ dinner, with so many top officials gathered in a public hotel, you would want to make entrances “even more difficult.”

And yet no barriers seemed to be in place at the event, he said — something anyone trained more than Allen could have capitalized on.

“If they just had come through in a team of three or four who were coordinated and trained, there absolutely would have been penetration into the ballroom,” D’Amico said. “It would have been a gunfight.”

Allen himself questioned the security at the event, according to court records, allegedly writing that he had walked into the Washington Hilton with multiple weapons and no one considered “the possibility that I could be a threat.”

He wrote that if he “was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen,” he “could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed” — referring to a powerful machine gun.

“It is fortunate he was only armed with what he had,” said Ed Obayashi, a California law enforcement expert on use of force.

April 29 (UPI) — The Florida legislature approved a new congressional map proposed by Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday, sending the redistricting plan back to the governor’s office for a signature.

The new congressional map would allow the Republican Party to pick up an expected four more seats in Congress, Politico reported. In total, the party would have 24 seats to four that would lean Democrat. Currently, Florida Republicans hold 20 seats in Congress and Democrats have seven.

DeSantis submitted his proposal Monday as the state legislature convened a special session.

“Our new map for 2026 makes good on my promise to conduct mid-decade redistricting and it more fairly represents the makeup of Florida today,” DeSantis told Fox News earlier in the week.

Florida lawmakers fast-tracked the proposal ahead of Novembers midterms, The Hill reported. Committees in both the House and Senate advanced the map within hours of the start of the special session.

Lawmakers approved the map mostly along party lines, with some Republican senators voting against it.

Dave Wasserman with Cook Political Report said Reps. Kath Castor, Darren Soto, Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, all Democrats, are now in danger of losing their seats come November.

The U.S. Marine Corps is exploring the possibility of fielding a theater ballistic missile defense capability. A key driver in this discussion is the U.S. Army’s capacity to provide protection against ballistic threats in future conflicts, or lack thereof, something TWZ has highlighted repeatedly in the past. The latest conflict with Iran has underscored the serious threats that ballistic missiles pose even to high-end integrated air and missile defense networks, which would be magnified further in a fight against a near-peer adversary like China.

“We’re exploring theater ballistic missile defense. So we’re doing some studies, we’re running some simulations, to see if that’s a requirement for the service in the future,” Marine Lt. Col. Robert Barclay said during a panel discussion yesterday at the annual Modern Day Marine exposition, at which TWZ has been in attendance.

Barclay is currently the Marine Air Command and Control Systems (MACCS) Integration Branch Head within the Aviation Combat Element Division of the service’s Combat Development and Integration office. His portfolio includes service-wide air and missile defense requirements.

“We know our old sensor used to be able to do it, but it wasn’t really a requirement,” Barclay added. “What we need to determine is, is [defending against] a theater ballistic [missile] like an SRBM [short-range ballistic missile] or MRBM [medium-range ballistic missile], a requirement for the Marine Corps to do? I would argue that it probably is.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t think the Army’s going to have enough capacity with us where we’re operating to actually adjudicate on that threat,” he continued. “So, I think we need to take a hard look at that, and that’s what our intent [is] to do over the next year.”

To take a step back quickly, the Marine Corps’ main general-purpose ground-based anti-air weapon today is the Stinger short-range heat-seeking surface-to-air missile. The service currently fields Stinger in a man-portable air defense system (MANPADS) configuration using shoulder-fired launchers, as well as integrated on the Humvee-based Avenger air defense vehicles. Stinger offers a point defense capability against fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, drones, and certain types of cruise missiles.

The Marines also hope to reach initial operational capability this year with a new Medium-Range Intercept Capability (MRIC), which is a service-specific variation of the Israeli Iron Dome system. MRIC uses a U.S.-made version of Iron Dome’s Tamir interceptor, called SkyHunter, and a trailer-based road-mobile launcher. Each launcher can accommodate up to 20 interceptors, which come preloaded in individual canisters, at a time. The system uses offboard sensors to spot and track targets and cue missiles to intercept them. The Corps’ existing AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radars (G/ATOR) have been presented as the primary sensor for MRIC.

“The primary target set for MRIC is cruise missiles and your higher-end Group 5-type of [anti-]air application, as well as rotary wing, fixed-wing type of aspects,” Marine Col. Andrew Konicki, the service’s Program Manager for Ground Based Air Defense and another panelist at Modern Day Marine yesterday, explained. MRIC “can go after Group 3, because it’s probably a mismatch in terms of ammunition versus what it’s going after. So it’s primarily focused on that growing threat, or that higher-end threat, so to speak, as part of that integrated air missile defense application and layer defense piece.”

Groups 3 and 5 here refer to different categories of uncrewed aerial systems. The U.S. military defines Group 5 as consisting of drones with maximum weights greater than 1,320 pounds, and that can fly above 18,000 feet. The MQ-9 Reaper is a commonly used example of a Group 5 uncrewed aircraft. Drones that fall under Group 3 have maximum weights anywhere between 56 and 1,320 pounds, can operate at altitudes between 3,500 and 18,000 feet, and reach top speeds of up to 250 knots. Group 3 is very broad, but notably includes Iran’s now-infamous Shahed 136 long-range kamikaze drone, and the growing number of variants and derivatives thereof.

Lt. Col. Robert Barclay’s mention of an unspecified previous Marine ballistic missile defense capability seems most likely to be a reference to the HAWK medium-range surface-to-air missile system. The service retired HAWK in the 1990s, but versions of the system remain in use elsewhere worldwide, including in Ukraine. HAWK has used an evolving mixture of radars for target acquisition and engagement since the system was first introduced in the 1950s, as you can read more about here. Improved HAWK interceptors have also been developed, including variants explicitly intended to offer a rudimentary anti-ballistic missile capability.

The video below shows HAWK systems in service in Ukraine.

Американський ЗРК HAWK (Яструб) захищає небо України!

Barclay did not elaborate on what level of ballistic missile defense capability the Marine Corps might look to pursue in the future. In the past year or so, there have been reports of Israel using Iron Dome against incoming Iranian ballistic missiles in the terminal phase. However, the system’s effectiveness against ballistic missiles of any kind, which it was never designed to intercept, and whether the Marines might be able to employ MRIC in this role, is unclear.

Today, the main tool for providing ground-based theater ballistic missile defense across all of America’s armed forces is the Army’s Patriot surface-to-air missile systems. The Army also operates the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which offers a higher-end ballistic missile defense capability over Patriot. Both Patriot and THAAD are only capable of intercepting incoming ballistic threats during their final terminal phase.

The PATRIOT Missile in Action

At the same time, as TWZ has highlighted several times in recent years, the Army’s Patriot force is heavily strained due to constant demands that it is simply not adequately resourced to meet. The THAAD force is even smaller and is in equally heavy demand.

The latest conflict with Iran has reignited discussions about the Army’s worryingly limited capacity to meet operational needs for ballistic missile defense, as well as protection against other aerial threats. Between February and April, Iranian forces launched repeated missile and drone attacks on key bases across the Middle East. They were successful in many instances in targeting high-value military assets, including aircraft parked on the ground and air and missile defense radars.

The Repair Shop expert Steve Fletcher faced a challenging restoration on the BBC show.

Steve Fletcher, an expert on The Repair Shop since its launch in 2017, was left astounded by the item he was called upon to restore.

During the latest episode of the BBC programme (April 29), viewers watched Steve alongside Sonnaz Nooranvary examine the item that had been brought in.

Casting her eye over it on the table, Sonnaz remarked: “I’m no builder, but needless to say, this looks like it’s seen much better days.” Concurring, Steve responded: “Yeah, I’ve done up old buildings, and I don’t think any of them were as bad as this.”

Stepping into the barn was Dawn Shrives from West Sussex, who jokingly told the experts they were looking at “ruins” before revealing it was an extraordinary model watermill constructed by her late father in 1996.

She explained: “He put it all together to go in front of our family home to replicate the red brickwork of the house. Every little brick he made by hand, individually, he wanted it to be a working watermill. Obviously, the years of it sitting on the ground, outside, the weather had gotten to it.”

Dawn went on to describe how her father had planned to install an underground chamber to make the watermill turn. Tragically, he passed away in 2014, and her mother subsequently moved to a smaller property, reports the Manchester Evening News.

She noted that with her mother now living in a bungalow, there is nothing left to remind her of her beloved late husband, underlining just how precious the watermill model truly is. Dawn continued: “He’s touched, every single piece of this. He’s crafted this, and she looks out her front window and sees this deteriorating; it’s just so sad to see.”

She went on: “So to have it brought back to life for the family, for mum, would just be amazing. Just to see it put back together and whole again, I think, is almost- we can’t even think of that.” As Steve outlined his intentions to repair the model, it was evident he faced a considerable challenge.

Ultimately, after crafting bricks to substitute those Dawn’s father had originally made, Steve succeeded in restoring the dilapidated model and incorporated water to make the wheel rotate as her father had envisioned decades earlier.

When the moment arrived to reveal the completed restoration, Dawn brought her mother, Pam, along to view the model. The two women were immediately moved to tears upon seeing it unveiled, astounded by Steve’s achievement.

Pam promptly thanked Steve as Dawn exclaimed: “Look at that! Isn’t that lovely?” Pam remarked: “Gosh, that’s amazing. You’ve done all of these (roof tiles). Gosh, thank you.”

Upon noticing the water feature surrounding the house, Steve activated it for the first time, demonstrating the functioning watermill. She observed: “It’s just beyond anything that we could’ve thought would ever happen to it, thank you.”

Addressing the camera directly, Dawn said: “The watermill just sums up a legacy that will now stay in the family, be preserved, and dad would be so pleased to know that it’s working and it’s loved and it’s still loved.” Pam agreed, adding: “It’s just the best thing we could have done, isn’t it?”

The Repair Shop is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.

Not every crowd will gleefully applaud and cheer a known notorious villain. But the Disneyland faithful certainly will, as when Darth Vader set foot in the park’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge on Wednesday morning and the audience erupted in approving hollers.

Kylo Ren has officially been evicted from the fictional “Star Wars” town of Black Spire Outpost. Vader has instead taken up residence, and he will appear multiple times daily in front of the land’s militaristic TIE fighter before stalking the area on the prowl for Luke Skywalker.

In Vader’s first two appearances Wednesday, he spoke of his quest to hunt down the young Jedi. He was flanked by two classic Stormtroopers, who had different dialogue in each showing — one time critiquing Black Spire Outpost and later talking of a run-in with a Jedi.

Vader isn’t the only new addition to the area. Leia, Han and Luke, the latter of whom previously appeared in the land for a limited time last year, are also now regularly appearing in Galaxy’s Edge.

Their presence marks a major shift in direction for the 14-acre theme park land. When Galaxy’s Edge opened in 2019, it was set at a fixed point in the “Star Wars” timeline, namely one in the middle of the latest films in the series.

This was done in part to promote the new cinematic works, but to also facilitate interaction, placing guests on an unknown adventure rather than one with a fixed outcome. It was a theme park experiment to see how much Disneyland attendees would lean in and role play.

But Disneyland wisely hasn’t completely pivoted on the Galaxy’s Edge mission. The characters appear out in the land and on a quest rather than simply standing and posing for photos.

Leia, for instance, spent the bulk of one appearance working with the furry Chewbacca to fix up the starship Millennium Falcon. Later, she joked around with Luke and asked young fans if they wanted to train to learn the ways of the Force.

We’ll have more on the changes to Galaxy’s Edge and what they mean for the future of Disneyland in our theme park newsletter, Mr. Todd’s Wild Ride.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sounded ready Wednesday to rule that the Trump administration may end the temporary protection that has been granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants from troubled countries.

Congress in 1990 authorized Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, for noncitizens who could not safely return home because their native country was wracked by war, violence or natural disasters. If those people passed a strict background check, they could stay and work legally in this country.

But President Trump came to office believing too many immigrants had been granted permission to enter and stay indefinitely.

Last year, his Department of Homeland Security moved to cancel the temporary humanitarian protection for immigrants from 13 countries, including Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, Honduras and Nicaragua. Court challenges on behalf of Haitians and Syrians were consolidated into a single case, Mullin vs. Doe, which the justices heard Wednesday.

Immigrant-rights advocates challenged those decisions as political and unjustified, and they won orders from federal judges that blocked the cancellations.

But Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court arguing the judges had overstepped their authority. They pointed to a provision in the 1990 law that bars “judicial review” of the government’s decision to end temporary protection for a particular country.

The justices ruled for the administration and set aside the lower court rulings in a series of 6-3 orders.

Faced with criticism over its brief and unexplained orders, the justices agreed to hear arguments on the TPS issue on the last day of oral arguments for this term.

But the ideological divide appeared to be unchanged.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said Congress had prohibited “judicial micromanagement” of these decisions, and none of six conservatives disagreed.

UCLA law professor Ahilan T. Arulanantham, representing several thousand Syrians, said the Homeland Security secretary had failed to consult the State Department, which says it is unsafe to travel there.

He said the government “reads the statute like it’s a blank check … to give the secretary the power to expel people who have done nothing wrong.”

Chicago attorney Geoffrey Pipoply, representing more than 350,000 Haitians, said the cancellations were driven by “the president’s racial animus toward non-white immigrants.”

The court’s three liberals argued the administration failed to follow the procedural steps required under the law. But that argument failed to gain traction.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her husband adopted two children from Haiti who are citizens. Like most of the conservatives, she asked few questions during the argument.

CHICAGO — Rookie Sam Antonnaci hit a tying triple with two outs in the ninth inning and Colson Montgomery had a winning single in the 10th, lifting the Chicago White Sox to a 3-2 victory Wednesday for a three-game sweep that extended the Angels’ losing streak to six.

Mike Trout hit his 10th home run of the season for the Angels, who have lost 10 of 11 and dropped to 12-20. Additionally, Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi left after two innings with left shoulder tightness.

Kikuchi gave up no runs on two hits and a walk with one strikeout before exiting. His average fastball velocity dropped from 94.9 mph in the first inning to 92.8 mph in the second.

A 34-year-old from Japan, Kikuchi was an All-Star last season with the Angels. He is 0-3 with a 5.81 ERA in 31 innings over seven starts.

With the White Sox trailing 2-1, Tristan Peters was hit by a Ryan Zeferjahn pitch with one out in the ninth and scored on Antonacci’s triple.

Montgomery singled with one out in the 10th off Drew Pomeranz (0-3) for his first big league walk-off hit, giving the White Sox their second series sweep this season.

Seranthony Domínguez pitched a perfect 10th.

Former Dodger Miguel Vargas had an RBI single in the third off Mitch Farris, recalled from triple-A before the game, and Trout’s homer tied the score in the fourth.

Vaughn Grissom’s first big league homer since Sept. 7, 2022, for Atlanta gave the Angels a 2-1 lead in the seventh against Erick Fedde, who gave up five hits, struck out six and walked none in a season-high seven innings.

Up next

Angels: RHP Walbert Ureña (0-3, 4.77 ERA) takes the mound at home Friday against the New York Mets and RHP Christian Scott (0-0. 6.75).

White Sox: Rookie LHP Noah Schultz (1-1, 3.52) makes his fourth career start for the White Sox on Friday when they open a trip Friday at San Diego, which starts RHP Germán Márquez (3-1, 4.38).

April 29 (UPI) — Two people are dead and 10 are injured after a small plane crashed into a hangar Wednesday at an airport in Adelaide, South Australia.

News.com.au reported that the two people killed were in a Diamond DA42 two-engine plane, while one person who’d been in the hangar sustained life-threatening injuries, two were in serious condition, six others had smoke inhalation and one sustained minor injuries.

The plane burst into flames after it crashed at Parafield Airport, the BBC reported. Photos of the scene showed a large plume of black smoke rising from the area, and other witnesses reported seeing the plane struggling overhead before the crash.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has started an investigation into the incident.

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said on social media that the fire had been extinguished and the airfield was closed.

He said his “thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those who have passed away, and with everyone affected by this devastating event,” the BBC said. He also thanked first responders for their response.

The airport has several flight training schools and has a large amount of aircraft traffic. News.com.au said the plane involved was used for student training, but Chief Inspector Andrew McCracken could not say if the pilot Wednesday was a student.

In January, a student pilot crashed during takeoff at the airport, but although the plane caught fire, the pilot escaped unharmed.

The general in charge of keeping the United States Marine Corps sustained in a fight dismisses the notion that China poses a near-peer threat to the U.S. It’s far more serious and will make the currently paused conflict with Iran pale by comparison should the two superpowers come to blows, said Lt. Gen. Stephen Sklenka, the USMC Deputy Commandant for Installations and Logistics. 

“There is no threat that looms larger than the People’s Republic of China,” Sklenka said during the 2026 Modern Day Marine Expo in Washington, D.C.. “Don’t listen to this garbage about them being a near peer. They’re a peer because they rival us in nearly every single measure of national influence.”

As the “lead strategist” and former Deputy Commander of U.S. IndoPacom, Sklenka said he “got to be pretty familiar with how General Secretary Xi was thinking and what his intentions are.”

The Chinese leader’s “vision is to upend the international structure [and] supplant us as the global leaders. And in many ways, it’s been Xi’s thinking, his vision, that has helped my own thinking about the demands of modern warfare, particularly when waged in the Pacific and particularly waged against a peer adversary, something that’s new to all of us.”

Epic Fury offers some sobering lessons, Sklenka noted. While the U.S. is able to pour forces into theater via uncontested skies and largely uncontested seas, Iran was still able to inflict a great deal of pain on America and its allies during the fighting. It still is economically through an ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz. A fight with China would be far worse, Sklenka cautioned.

“We’re about two months into combat operations with Epic Fury. We’ve got service members who have tragically been wounded and killed by Iran. They’ve launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles at our bases and our allies throughout the region – Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan – reinforcing the point that the bases that we have, they’re no longer administrative garrison sanctuaries. We really need to start looking at our bases as war fighting formations, just as critical of a war fighting formation as our divisions, wings and [Marine Expeditionary Units] MEUs.”

We’ll talk more about that later in this story.

You can see damage to U.S. bases in the Middle East in the following satellite images.

Iran has “illustrated how a mid-tier power can hold a significantly superior force at risk” Sklenka suggested. “As a learning organization, we ask ourselves, ‘how do we carry every lesson from this fight forward, and how do we ensure that we’re equally prepared to dominate the conflict with China?’”

“Think about the complexities and complications that we’re [facing] with Iran, and then ask yourself, ‘how are we going to respond and act when we’re going up against a nation that’s number two in national GDP?’” he added. “The fact is that Iran doesn’t have anywhere near China’s economic might. They don’t have their industrial base. They certainly don’t have their military modernization trajectory.”

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, the Chinese manufacturing base has been out-producing us” Sklenka posited. “Xi is on a wartime footing. There’s no doubt about that. It’s underpinned by an industrial base that’s out producing the world in ships and steel, precious minerals and satellites, munitions.”

China’s “shipbuilding capacity is reported to be 230 times the capacity that the United States has,” the general continued. “They more than doubled their nuclear powered submarine construction, their arsenal of ballistic and cruise missiles is undergoing a rapid expansion.”

First made-in-China aircraft carrier, the Shandong, enters service

“Their nuclear stockpile is the fastest growing in the world. They’re pursuing innovative, intelligentized warfare tactics,” Sklenka pointed out. “They’re using artificial intelligence, drone swarms, exploring the cognitive and innovative domains to achieve their dominance. They’re building a military design to dominate the Pacific, and I believe ultimately beyond the Pacific.”

China’s intent, Sklenka added, “is clear. They want to regain that self-identified moniker of the Middle Kingdom, and they want to resume what they believe is their rightful place in the world. They’re not interested in sharing that position with us or with anybody else. General Secretary Xi’s view is that it’s their time, and this is the context. I bring that all up for our transformation.”

“None of us in uniform today have ever had to operate in a world where a legitimate peer simultaneously contests us in every single domain,” said Sklenka. “We are talking terrestrially and non-terrestrially, kinetically and non-kinetically. We’re going to have to fight to get to that fight, and we’re going to have to embrace these challenges and not operate under the auspices of how we did in the 80s and 90s. History is proven, and our current operations are confirmed, that the society that can project and sustain power and sustain their forces most effectively, ultimately, they prevail.”

Looking to the future, Sklenka echoed warnings that TWZ has made for years about the vulnerability of U.S. military installations, both home and abroad. No increases in magazine depth, additional weapons systems or advancements with AI and other new technologies will ultimately matter “if you can’t get off the installation in the first place,” he stated. “The ability to mobilize and deploy is underpinned by the readiness of our installations. It’s a concept that we’re just now really starting to wrestle with.”

“Our bases, posts and stations…are the front lines of decisive terrain. And I’m not just talking about those in the first island chain. This isn’t just [Marine Corps Installations Pacific] MCIPAC. Our CONUS installations are subject to non-kinetic attacks. Non kinetic-attacks, they’re going to be just as debilitating and just as strategically consequential as any kinetic attack that’s going to be out there. And they’re going to carry an air of non-attrition that’s designed to both confuse decision makers and sow chaos during the most critical phases of the fight, the beginning, the first shots of that next war.”

That first salvo, Sklenka said, is most likely not going to be delivered by a missile or bomber.

“They’re likely not going to be fired in the South China Sea or in the Taiwan Strait,” he explained. “They’re going to be a cyber attack against a power grid on our base, a disinformation campaign targeting military families or a drone swarm coming off one of our installations.”

The localized drone attack concern is exactly what TWZ has long predicted and became a reality last year in Russia and Iran. Last June, Ukraine launched Operation Spider Web, an audacious near-field attack on Russian air bases, destroying a large number of strategic bombers with remotely operated drones set up in trucks placed near those installations.

Spider Web was followed about two weeks later by an operation Israel carried out, using drones pre-positioned inside Iran to attack the Islamic Republic’s air defenses.

You can see video of one attack during Operation Spider Web below.