inquiry

Bereaved families are calling for a public inquiry into what they say are “repeated failures” by the UK government to protect vulnerable people from a website promoting suicide.

A report by the Molly Rose Foundation says departments were warned 65 times about the online forum, which BBC News is not naming, and others like it but did not act.

The suicide prevention charity says at least 133 people have died in the UK as a result of a toxic chemical promoted by the site and similar forums.

The government has not said whether it will consider an inquiry but said sites must prevent users from accessing illegal suicide and self-harm content or face “robust enforcement, including substantial fines”.

Families and survivors have written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer asking him for an inquiry to look into why warnings from coroners and campaigners have been ignored.

David Parfett, whose son Tom took his own life in 2021, told the BBC successive governments had offered sympathy but no accountability.

“The people who host the suicide platforms to spread their cult-like messages that suicide is normal – and earn money from selling death – continue to be several steps ahead of government ministers and law enforcement bodies,” he said.

“I can think of no better memorial for my son than knowing people like him are protected from harm while they recover their mental health.”

David and six other families are being represented by the law firm Leigh Day who have also written a letter to the prime minister highlighting their concerns about the main suicide forum.

The letter says victims were groomed online, and tended to be in their early 20s, with the youngest known victim being 13.

It argues a public inquiry is needed because coroners’ courts cannot institute the changes needed to protect vulnerable people.

According to the report, coroners raised concerns and sent repeated warnings to the Home Office, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department of Health and Social Care on dozens of occasions since 2019, when the forum that has been criticised by the families first emerged.

The report highlighted four main findings:

• The Home Office’s refusal to tighten regulation of the substance, which remains easily obtainable online, while UK Border Force “struggles to respond to imports” from overseas sellers

• The media regulator Ofcom’s decision to rely on “voluntary measures” from the main forum’s operators rather than taking steps to restrict UK access

• Repeated failures by government departments to act on coroners’ warnings

• Operational shortcomings, including inconsistent police welfare checks and delays in making antidotes available to emergency services

A government spokesperson said that the substance in question “is closely monitored and is reportable under the Poisons Act” meaning retailers should tell the authorities if they suspect it is being bought to cause harm.

But campaigners say the government’s response has been fragmented and slow, with officials “passing the parcel” rather than taking co-ordinated action.

Adele Zeynep Walton, whose sister Aimee died in 2022, said families like hers had been “ignored and dismissed”.

“She was creative, a very talented artist, gifted musician,” she told BBC News.

“Aimee was hardworking and achieved great GCSE results, however she was shy and quiet and struggled to make friends.

“Every time I learn of a new life lost to the website that killed my sister three years ago, I’m infuriated that another family has had to go through this preventable tragedy.”

The demand for an inquiry follows concerns raised by the BBC in 2023, when an investigation revealed sites offering instructions and encouragement for suicide and evading regulations.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said the state’s failure to act had “cost countless lives”.

He also accused Ofcom of being “inexplicably slow” to restrict UK access to the main website the Foundation has raised concerns about.

Under the Online Safety Act, which became law in October 2023, Ofcom got the power in March 2025 to take action against sites hosting illegal content, which includes assisting suicide. If sites fail to show they have systems in place to remove illegal material, Ofcom can block them or impose fines of up to £18m.

UK users are currently unable to access the forum, which is based in the US. A message on the forum’s homepage says it was not blocked to people in the UK as a result of government action but instead because of a “proactive” decision to “protect the platform and its users”.

“We operate under the protection of the First Amendment. However, UK authorities have signalled intentions to enforce their domestic laws on foreign platforms, potentially leading to criminal liability or service disruption,” the message reads.

In a statement, Ofcom said: “In response to our enforcement action, the online suicide forum put in place a geo-block to restrict access by people with UK IP addresses.

“Services that choose to block access by people in the UK must not encourage or promote ways to avoid these restrictions.”

It added the forum remained on its watchlist and a previously-launched investigation into it remained open while it checked the block was being maintained.

• If you, or someone you know, has been affected by mental health issues BBC Action Line has put together a list of organisations which can help.

OAKLAND — The world of Frank Wishom was collapsing fast in 2003 when he started talking to the FBI.

The high-tech company he had nurtured for a decade was failing. The woman in his life for 20 years had dumped him. And his diabetes was flaring so severely he expected to lose his legs.

Then, after undergoing vein surgery in fall 2003, the 62-year-old businessman had a heart attack and died.

Whatever he said to the FBI remains a mystery, because officials refuse to talk about the federal investigation that now threatens California’s new state Senate leader.

But Wishom’s friends, relatives and associates — some of whom have been contacted by FBI agents — are convinced that his allegations about public corruption here figure in the probe.

The grand jury investigation is swirling around Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland) and Wishom’s ex-girlfriend, prominent Oakland lobbyist Lily Hu, who once worked as a Perata aide.

In November, subpoenas were issued seeking information about payments and communications involving Perata and more than a dozen people and companies associated with him, including his two grown children, his former business partner and Hu.

On Dec. 15, federal agents executed search warrants on the homes of Perata and his son, a political consultant who has worked on the senator’s campaigns.

Perata has denied any wrongdoing and said that he was prepared to cooperate with investigators.

Hu’s attorney, Doron Weinberg, said the investigation was triggered by baseless allegations raised by Wishom as a result of his breakup with Hu.

“Frank apparently was far off the deep end, acting irrationally and doing unreasonable things,” Weinberg said. “In his mental state, he would have accused her of anything.”

It was in the mid-1980s that Wishom began his relationship with Hu, a personable and hard-driving native of Taiwan. She and Wishom soon grew so close that some friends thought they were married.

For years, Hu had shared her upscale home with Wishom, a telecommunications contractor who wore $400 shoes, drove a big BMW, sailed a yacht and told people he once played football at nearby UC Berkeley.

The couple had been a fixture in this city’s political and social life and threw lavish holiday parties with catered food.

Wishom was known by many as “Big Frank,” a charismatic 6-foot-4 man who advocated causes for urban youths and helped fellow African Americans with their careers. But relatives and friends also saw a grandiose personality with a self-destructive business style, an explosive temper and a tendency to shade facts, or worse.

“He lived a complete farce,” said Deirdre Wishom, his oldest daughter and a schoolteacher living in Stockton. “My father was a notorious liar.”

Divorced twice, Wishom met Hu, a college dropout in her late 20s, at a birthday party. They fell in love and soon were working together at a firm Wishom was managing, friends say.

Within a few years, Wishom had established himself as a highly visible member of Oakland’s business and professional community.

After stints at several companies, Wishom launched a consulting business, F2 Technologies, with a partner whose name also was Frank. They later split.

Hu was working in telecommunications marketing, was president of Oakland Chinatown’s Chamber of Commerce and was running for City Council.

She lost the election, but after serving as a part-time field representative in Perata’s Assembly district office in 1997, she started a lobbying firm.

Hu and Wishom were political allies and friends of Perata, a Democrat who ascended from county supervisor to state assemblyman and senator. When Wishom became active in the prestigious service group 100 Black Men, it was no surprise that Perata was sitting at F2’s table during an event. Wishom was a forceful speaker and a natural salesman who landed several contracts with government agencies in the Bay Area.

He also benefited from Hu’s high visibility as one of the city’s busiest lobbyists, according to friends. In 1998, he won a $4.7-million contract to upgrade Oakland’s computers to avert Y2K meltdowns.

But like other tech companies, F2 began a downhill slide, and word got out that Wishom was better at landing contracts than executing them, said his longtime friend Herman Blackmon. “But he was such a good guy and knew so many people that he was able to deflect criticism.”

Wishom was hit by numerous federal and state tax liens.

The year 2003 erased most of the good things in Wishom’s life, and the stresses began to mount.

In March, Hu broke up with him, and he moved out of the house. In July, his mother died, and F2 Technologies filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection.

About that time, Wishom sounded out political newsletter publisher Sanji Handa, a friend. Wishom indicated he had bank records and other documentation that would be devastating to Perata and his allies, Handa recalled. “He said he was going to the FBI.”

In September 2003, Hu obtained a temporary restraining order, alleging that Wishom was constantly calling and following her and threatening her male friends.

Wishom’s own psychiatrist even warned Hu about his emotional state.

In his written denial of the harassment charge, Wishom alleged that he was the one being threatened. He said he received an anonymous call from a man who said, “Keep your mouth shut, or you will find yourself floating in the bay.”

Wishom also wrote that the FBI “is investigating Ms. Hu’s conduct in regard to her lobbying activities, and her activities with politicians.”

In a Sept. 22, 2003, letter to Wishom’s attorney, Hu’s attorney accused Wishom of bullying Hu through threats to “expose” false information about her. “She has no reason to believe that the FBI is investigating her, and she is not taking or giving any ‘kickbacks,’ ” the attorney wrote.

One source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Wishom specifically alleged in their conversations that kickbacks from government contracts were being laundered through payments for consulting work by Wishom and others.

Attorney Colin Cooper confirmed that he represented Wishom for about a month just before his death.

“I know he was being queried by the FBI, and he wanted me to help him,” Cooper said. “We never had a meeting with the FBI because he passed away.”

At one point, Wishom arranged a meeting with Perata in Sacramento to discuss his contracting business, but nothing apparently came of it. A Perata spokesman declined to comment.

During the breakup with Hu and the demise of his business, Wishom was depressed, friends and relatives agree. His diabetes worsened, and he told people that he feared that his legs would have to be amputated. While hospitalized after vein surgery, on Oct. 2, 2003, Wishom died of a heart attack.

More than 200 people, including Perata and Hu, attended Wishom’s memorial service. A newspaper account repeated one of Wishom’s tallest tales — that he had played football at UC Berkeley. A spokeswoman said the university had no record of him attending, and his oldest daughter said flatly, “He did not set foot on a campus.”

Wishom did not change his will, leaving everything to Hu. But there was nothing except debts — and the allegations of a dead man.

“What it feels like to me,” said Wishom’s first wife, Marie Henry of Palo Alto, “is the man is haunting her from his grave.”

A United Nations commission of inquiry says Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

A new report says there are reasonable grounds to conclude that four of the five genocidal acts defined under international law have been carried out since the start of the war with Hamas in 2023: killing members of a group, causing them serious bodily and mental harm, deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to destroy the group, and preventing births.

It cites statements by Israeli leaders, and the pattern of conduct by Israeli forces, as evidence of genocidal intent.

Israel’s foreign ministry said it categorically rejected the report, denouncing it as “distorted and false”.

A spokesperson accused the three experts on the commission of serving as “Hamas proxies” and relying “entirely on Hamas falsehoods, laundered and repeated by others” that had “already been thoroughly debunked”.

“In stark contrast to the lies in the report, Hamas is the party that attempted genocide in Israel – murdering 1,200 people, raping women, burning families alive, and openly declaring its goal of killing every Jew,” the spokesperson added.

The Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the unprecedented Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

At least 64,905 people have been killed in Israeli attacks in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Most of the population has also been repeatedly displaced; more than 90% of homes are estimated to be damaged or destroyed; the healthcare, water, sanitation and hygiene systems have collapsed; and UN-backed food security experts have declared a famine in Gaza City.

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2021 to investigate all alleged violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The three-member expert panel is chaired by Navi Pillay, a South African former UN human rights chief who was president of the international tribunal on Rwanda’s genocide.

The commission’s latest report alleges that Israeli authorities and Israeli forces have committed four of the five acts of genocide defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group – in this case, Palestinians in Gaza:

• Killing members of the group through attacks on protected objects; targeting civilians and other protected persons; and the deliberate infliction of conditions causing deaths
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group through direct attacks on civilians and protected objects; severe mistreatment of detainees; forced displacement; and environmental destruction
• Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of the group in whole or in part through destruction of structures and land essential to Palestinians; destruction and denial of access to medical services; forced displacement; blocking essential aid, water, electricity and fuel from reaching Palestinians; reproductive violence; and specific conditions impacting children
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births through the December 2023 attack on Gaza’s largest fertility clinic, reportedly destroying around 4,000 embryos and 1,000 sperm samples and unfertilised eggs

To fulfil the legal definition of genocide under the Genocide Convention, it must also be established that the perpetrator committed any one of those acts with specific intent to destroy the group in whole or in part.

The commission says it analysed statements made by Israeli leaders and alleges that President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant have “incited the commission of genocide”.

It also states that “genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference” that could be concluded from the pattern of conduct of Israeli authorities and security forces in Gaza.

The commission says the pattern of conduct includes intentionally killing and seriously harming an unprecedented number of Palestinians using heavy munitions; systematic and widespread attacks on religious, cultural and education sites; and imposing a siege on Gaza and starving its population.

Israel’s government insists that its efforts are directed solely at dismantling Hamas’s capabilities and not at the people of Gaza. It says its forces operate in accordance with international law and take all feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians.

“As early as 7 October 2023, Prime Minister Netanyahu vowed to inflict… ‘mighty vengeance’ on ‘all of the places where Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in, that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble’,” Pillay said in an interview with the BBC.

“His use of the phrase ‘wicked city’ in the same statement implied that he saw the whole city of Gaza [Gaza City] as responsible and a target for vengeance. And he told Palestinians to ‘leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere’.”

She added: “It took us two years to gather all the actions and make factual findings, verify whether that had happened… It’s only the facts that will direct you. And you can only bring it under the Genocide Convention if those acts were done with this intention.”

The commission says the acts of Israeli political and military leaders are “attributable to the State of Israel”, and that the state therefore “bears responsibility for the failure to prevent genocide, the commission of genocide and the failure to punish genocide”.

It also warns all other countries have an immediate obligation under the Genocide Convention to “prevent and punish the crime of genocide”, employing all measures at their disposal. If they do not, it says, they could be complicit.

“We have not gone so far as to name parties as co-conspirators, or being complicit in genocide. But that is the… ongoing work of this commission. They will get there,” Pillay said.

A number of international and Israeli human rights organisations, independent UN experts, and scholars have also accused Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is meanwhile hearing a case brought by South Africa that accuses Israeli forces of genocide. Israel has called the case “wholly unfounded” and based on “biased and false claims”.

WASHINGTON — Hours after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, FBI Director Kash Patel declared online that “the subject” in the killing was in custody. The shooter was not. The two men who had been detained were quickly released. Utah officials acknowledged that the gunman remained at large.

The false assurance was more than a slip. It spotlighted the high-stakes uncertainty surrounding Patel’s leadership of the bureau when its credibility is under extraordinary pressure, as is his own.

Patel now approaches congressional oversight hearings this week facing not just questions about that investigation but broader doubts about whether he can stabilize a federal law enforcement agency fragmented by political fights and internal upheaval.

Democrats are poised to press Patel on a purge of senior executives that has prompted a lawsuit, his pursuit of President Trump’s grievances over the Russia investigation long after it ended, and a realignment of resources that has prioritized illegal immigration and street crime over the FBI’s traditional pursuits.

The hearings will offer Patel his most consequential stage yet, and perhaps the clearest test of whether he can convince the country that the FBI, under his watch, can avoid compounding its mistakes in a time of political violence and deepening distrust.

“Because of the skepticism that some members of the Senate have had and still have, it’s extremely important that he perform very well at these oversight hearings” on Tuesday and Wednesday, said Gregory Brower, the FBI’s former top congressional affairs official.

The FBI declined to comment about Patel’s coming testimony.

Inaccurate claim after Kirk shooting

Kirk’s killing was always going to be a closely scrutinized investigation, not only because it was the latest burst of political violence in the U.S. but also because of Kirk’s friendships with Trump, Patel and other administration figures and allies.

While agents investigated, Patel posted on X that “the subject for the horrific shooting today that took the life of Charlie Kirk is now in custody.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said at a near-contemporaneous news conference that “whoever did this, we will find you,” suggesting authorities were still searching. Patel soon after posted that the person “in custody” had been released.

Two people were initially held for questioning in the case, but neither was a suspect.

As the search stretched on, Patel angrily vented to FBI personnel Thursday about what he perceived as a failure to keep him informed, including that he was not quickly shown a photograph of the suspected shooter. That’s according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press. The New York Times earlier reported details of the call.

Asked about the scrutiny of Patel’s performance, the FBI said it had worked with local law enforcement to bring the suspect, Tyler Robinson, to justice and “will continue to be transparent.”

Patel’s overall response did not go unnoticed in conservative circles. One prominent GOP strategist, Christopher Rufo, posted that it was “time for Republicans to assess whether Kash Patel is the right man to run the FBI.”

FBI personnel purge

On the same day Kirk was killed, Patel also faced a lawsuit from three FBI senior executives fired in an August purge that they characterized as a Trump administration retribution campaign.

Among them was Brian Driscoll, who as acting FBI director in the early days of the administration resisted Justice Department demands for names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. Driscoll alleged in the lawsuit that he was let go after he challenged the leadership’s desire to terminate an FBI pilot who had been wrongly identified on social media as having been part of the FBI search for classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump, while out of office, was indicted for his role in Jan. 6 and the classified documents case.

The upheaval continues a trend that began before Patel took over, when more than a half-dozen senior executives were forced out under a Justice Department rationale that they could not be “trusted” to implement Trump’s agenda.

There’s since been significant turnover in leadership at the FBI’s 55 field offices. Some left because of promotions or retirements, but others because of ultimatums to accept new assignments or resign. The head of the Salt Lake City office, an experienced counterterrorism investigator, was pushed out of her position weeks before Kirk was killed at a Utah college, said people familiar with the move.

FBI’s priorities shift

Patel arrived at the FBI having been a sharp critic of its leadership, including for the Trump indictments and investigations that he says politicized the institution. Under Patel and Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, the FBI and Justice Department have become entangled in their own politically fraught investigations, such as one focused on New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.

He’s moved quickly to remake the bureau, with the FBI and Justice Department working to investigate one of the Republican president’s chief grievances — the years-old Trump-Russia investigation. Trump calls that probe, which found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him get elected but did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump’s campaign, a “hoax.”

The Justice Department appeared to confirm in an unusual statement that it was investigating former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan, pivotal players in the Russia investigation, but did not say for what. Bondi has directed that evidence be presented to a grand jury.

Critics of the new Russia inquiry consider it a transparent attempt to turn the page from the fierce backlash the FBI and Justice Department endured from Trump’s base following the July announcement that those agencies would not be releasing any additional documents from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Patel has meanwhile elevated the fight against street crime, drug trafficking and illegal immigration to the top of the FBI’s agenda, in alignment with Trump’s agenda.

The bureau defends its aggressive policing in American cities that the Trump administration contends have been consumed by crime, despite falling crime rates in recent years in the cities targeted. Patel says the thousands of resulting arrests, many immigration-related, are “what happens when you let good cops be good cops.”

Critics say the street crime focus draws attention and resources from the sophisticated public corruption and national security threats for which the bureau has long been primarily, if not solely, responsible for investigating.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A watchdog investigation into former special counsel Jack Smith over his prosecutions of President Trump is based on an “imaginary and unfounded” premise, Smith’s lawyers wrote in a letter obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The letter marks the first response by Smith and his legal team to news that the Office of Special Counsel, an independent watchdog office, had launched an investigation into whether Smith engaged in improper political activity through his criminal inquiries into Trump.

The attorneys told Jamieson Greer, the acting head of the office, that his investigation into Smith was “wholly without merit.”

“Mr. Smith’s actions as Special Counsel were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences, not because of them,” wrote Smith’s lawyers, Lanny Breuer and Peter Koski.

The Office of Special Counsel, which is totally distinct from the Justice Department special counsel position that Smith held for more than two years starting in November 2022, confirmed the investigation following a request from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who asked it to examine Smith’s activities for potential violations of the Hatch Act, a federal law that bans certain public officials from engaging in political activity.

Cotton had alleged that Smith sought to interfere in the 2024 presidential election through his prosecutions and sought to effectively fast-track the cases toward resolution, including by asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on a key legal question before a lower court had a chance to review the issue.

But Smith’s lawyers say that argument is contradicted by the facts and note that no court ruling or other authority prohibits prosecutors from investigating allegations of criminal conducts against candidates for office. Politics, they say, played no part in the decision to bring the cases.

“A review of the record and procedural history demonstrates the opposite — Mr. Smith was fiercely committed to making prosecutorial decisions based solely on the evidence, he steadfastly followed applicable Department of Justice guidelines and the Principles of Federal Prosecution, and he did not let the pending election influence his investigative or prosecutorial decision-making,” Smith’s lawyers wrote.

“The predicate for this investigation,” they added, “is imaginary and unfounded.”

Smith, who was appointed special counsel under the Biden administration, brought two cases against Trump, one accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Both were brought in 2023, well over a year before the 2024 presidential election, and indictments in the two cases cited what Smith and his team described as clear violations of well-established federal law.

Both cases were abandoned by Smith after Trump’s November win, with the prosecutor citing longstanding Justice Department policy prohibiting the indictment of a sitting president.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press.

As Matthew Stafford got to the podium on Thursday, he joked that he was sure reporters wanted to ask him questions about the paper cut he suffered.

The Rams star quarterback then fielded inquiries about the subject that clouds all conversation about the Rams: The back injury that sidelined Stafford until this week.

Stafford practiced for the fourth day in a row, another small milestone for the 17th-year pro and a team aiming to make a Super Bowl run.

“The good thing is I feel pretty good,” said Stafford, who practiced for the fourth day in a row. “The last couple days out there practicing, I was able to do even more than I thought I was going to be able to do the first day, and then I’ve just been trying to stack days.

“Backs are sometimes interesting things. It’s not cut and dry, what’s what and how you’re going to feel. So I’m really appreciative of our team, our head coach and everybody taking a day-to-day approach with me and doing everything they can to try and help me out.

“I have a feeling of responsibility to our team to do what’s right by them and I’m trying to do that as best as I can day in and day out.”

Stafford, 37, declined to discuss specifics of his injury, which coach Sean McVay has described as an aggravated disc that required at least one epidural injection.

Stafford said there was not a particular offseason incident that caused the condition, which apparently flared while training between the time the Rams returned from Maui in June and the start of training camp in late July.

“It wasn’t like one thing where I knew right away,” he said. “Just kind of something that crept up on me a little bit.”

Stafford said he had done “everything under the sun” to be able to return to the field.

Asked if he expected to be ready for the Sept. 7 opener against the Houston Texans, he said, “I’m not going to answer questions like that. … It’s probably a day-to-day thing. I’m just doing everything I can to try and be out there for the next practice.”

Rams coach Sean McVay, left, talks with quarterback Matthew Stafford, right, during training camp in Woodland Hills on Thursday.

(Gary Klein / Los Angeles Times)

Stafford’s return to the field began on Monday, two days after he did not go through a scheduled individual throwing session. Stafford recovered well enough from Monday’s workout to practice again on Tuesday. He participated in a team jogthrough on Wednesday, and then went through a full practice on Thursday.

Throughout the week, he looked sharp and showed no discernible signs of discomfort or limitations.

“I’ve seen a guy that’s gotten better and better,” McVay said. “He looks like the stud that we know.”

Stafford’s availability will be paramount for a team aiming to return to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 2021-22 season, when Stafford led the Rams to a victory in Super Bowl LVI at SoFi Stadium.

During the offseason, the Rams adjusted Stafford’s contract — he will carry a salary-cap number of $47.5 million this season, according to Overthecap.com — because they believe that with the addition of star receiver Davante Adams and a rising defense, they have a shot at another title.

During training camp and joint practices with the Dallas Cowboys and New Orleans Saints, veteran Jimmy Garoppolo took first-team snaps in place of Stafford. Third-year pro Stetson Bennett also made major strides during training camp and two preseason starts.

Yet Stafford’s availability and performance will dictate whether the Rams can improve their performance from last season, when they advanced to the NFC divisional round before losing to the eventual Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles.

So the Rams and Stafford must manage the back issue.

The Rams play their final preseason game at Cleveland on Saturday, but Stafford — and perhaps other veterans — will not travel, McVay said.

Stafford sounded as if managing this back issue will be nothing new for a quarterback who played through numerous injuries during 12 seasons with the Detroit Lions and four with the Rams.

“There’s soreness all over the place, every time I wake up,” he joked. “It’s something that I’ll manage like I do a million other things throughout the year.”

More than 140,000 children had been sent overseas by Seoul following the devastating 1950-53 Korean War.

South Korea is set to end the decades-old practice of outsourcing adoptions to private agencies, after a damaging investigation concluded the country’s government-endorsed foreign adoption programme violated the fundamental human rights of adoptees.

On Saturday, South Korea will introduce a “newly restructured public adoption system, under which the state and local governments take full responsibility for the entire adoption process”, South Korea’s Ministry of Health and Welfare said.

South Korea sent more than 140,000 children overseas following the devastating 1950-53 Korean War, when intercountry adoption was encouraged as a solution.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation concluded earlier this year that the international adoption process had been riddled with irregularities, including “fraudulent orphan registrations, identity tampering, and inadequate vetting of adoptive parents”.

The new change is a “significant step towards ensuring the safety and promoting the rights of adopted children”, the Health Ministry added.

Under the new system, key procedures – such as assessing prospective adoptive parents and matching them with children – will be deliberated by a ministry committee, under the principle of the “best interests of the child”.

Previously, this had been done by major adoption agencies with minimal oversight from the state. The commission blamed the government for the issues, particularly a failure to regulate adoption fees, which turned the industry into a profit-driven one.

“With this restructuring of the public adoption system, the state now takes full responsibility for ensuring the safety and rights of all adopted children,” said Kim Sang-hee, director of population and child policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

International adoption began after the Korean War as a way to remove mixed-race children, born to Korean mothers and American soldier fathers, from a country that emphasised ethnic homogeneity.

It became big business in the 1970s to 1980s, bringing international adoption agencies millions of dollars as the country overcame post-war poverty and faced rapid and aggressive economic development.

Activists say the new measure is only a starting point and warn it is far from sufficient.

“While I think it’s high time that Korea close down all private adoption agencies, I don’t believe … having the state handle new adoptions is enough,” said writer Lisa Wool-Rim Sjoblom, a Korean adoptee who grew up in Sweden.

The government should prioritise implementing the findings of the truth commission, issue an official apology, and work to help the tens of thousands of Koreans who were sent abroad for adoption, Sjoblom told the AFP news agency.

“The government urgently needs to acknowledge all the human rights violations it enabled, encouraged, and systematically participated in, and, as soon as possible, begin reparations.”

Coroner’s finding comes five years after acquitted policeman Zachary Rolfe fatally shot 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker.

An Australian police officer who shot dead an Indigenous teenager was a racist drawn to “high adrenaline policing”, a landmark coronial inquiry has found.

Racist behaviour was also “normalised” in Zachary Rolfe’s Alice Springs police station, said the 682-page findings released in a ceremony in the remote outback town of Yuendumu in central Australia on Monday.

The findings were delivered five years after the shooting of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker, leading to protests around the country. But Rolfe was found not guilty of murder in a trial in the Northern Territory capital of Darwin in 2022.

Walker was shot three times during the attempted arrest in Yuendumu – one of 598 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have died in custody since 1991 when detailed records began.

“I found that Mr Rolfe was racist,” said Northern Territory coroner Elisabeth Armitage, delivering her conclusions after a nearly three-year inquiry.

Northern Territory Coroner Elisabeth Armitage has handed down her Findings into the death of Kumanjayi Walker #auslaw https://t.co/4uAEzIkwhd pic.twitter.com/hNb6UPnDUT

— NT Courts (@CourtsinNT) July 7, 2025

Rolfe, who was dismissed from the police force in 2023 for reasons not directly related to the shooting, worked in an organisation with the hallmarks of “institutional racism”, she said.

There was a “significant risk” that Rolfe’s racism and other attitudes affected his response “in a way that increased the likelihood of a fatal outcome”, she said.

Walker’s family and community will always believe racism played an “integral part” in his death, the coroner said. “It is a taint that may stain the [Northern Territory] police.”

The coroner cited offensive language used in a so-called awards ceremony for the territory’s tactical police, describing them as “grotesque examples of racism”.

“Over the decade the awards were given, no complaint was ever made about them,” she said.

The policeman’s text messages also showed his attraction to “high adrenaline policing”, and his “contempt” for some more senior officers as well as remote policing. These attitudes “had the potential to increase the likelihood of a fatal encounter with Kumanjayi”, she said.

In a statement shared before the coroner released her findings, Walker’s family said the inquest had exposed “deep systemic racism within the NT police”.

“Hearing the inquest testimony confirmed our family’s belief that Rolfe is not a ‘bad egg’ in the NT Police force, but a symptom of a system that disregards and brutalises our people,” the family said in the statement shared on social media.

“Crucially, the inquest heard evidence backing a return to full community-control, stating what yapa have always known: when we can self-determine our futures and self-govern our communities, our people are stronger, our outcomes are better, our culture thrives,” the statement said, referring to the Warlpiri people, also known as Yapa.

Armitage’s presentation was postponed last month after 24-year-old Warlpiri man Kumanjayi White, who was also from Yuendumu, died in police custody in a supermarket in Alice Springs.

White’s death also prompted protests and calls for an independent investigation into his death.

NEW YORK — New York City comptroller and Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander was arrested by federal agents at an immigration court Tuesday as he was trying to accompany a person out of a courtroom.

A reporter with the Associated Press witnessed Lander’s arrest at a federal building in Manhattan. The person Lander was walking out of the courtroom was also arrested.

Lander had spent the morning observing immigration court hearings and told an AP reporter that he was there to “accompany” some immigrants out of the building.

A video of the arrest, captured by an AP reporter, shows an agent telling Lander, “You’re obstructing.”

Lander replies, as he’s being handcuffed, “I’m not obstructing, I’m standing right here in the hallway.”

“You don’t have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens asking for a judicial warrant,” Lander said as he was led down a hallway and into an elevator.

One of the officers who led Lander away wore a tactical vest labeled “federal agent.” Others were in plainclothes, with surgical masks over their faces.

The episode occurred as federal immigration officials are conducting large-scale arrests outside immigration courtrooms across the country.

Emailed inquiries to the FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not immediately returned.

Lander is a candidate in the city’s Democratic mayoral primary. Early voting in the contest is underway.

Attanasio writes for the Associated Press.

Interest in the issue was pushed by far-right groups and Elon Musk and branded by critics as a racist dog whistle.

The British government has announced it will hold a national inquiry into organised child sexual abuse after months of resisting the call from opposition groups.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Saturday that he had read “every single word” of an independent report into the sexual assault scandal, also known as the “grooming gangs” case, by Baroness Louise Casey and would accept her recommendation for the investigation.

“That is the right thing to do on the basis of what she [Casey] has put in her audit. I asked her to do that job to double check on this; she has done that job for me and having read her report … I shall now implement her recommendations.” Starmer told reporters travelling with him during a visit to Canada.

Earlier this year, the government dismissed calls for a public inquiry, stating that it was focusing on recommendations already made in a seven-year national inquiry by Professor Alexis Jay.

In 2022, Jay found that there had been institutional failings across the country, affecting tens of thousands of victims in England and Wales.

But the opposition Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said Starmer only backs the report because “a report told him to”.

But increased interest into the “grooming gangs” case, as the British press termed it, was pushed by far-right groups, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and further stoked by tech billionaire and Tesla owner Elon Musk, after the perpetrators of one of the most high-profile cases in the country were men of Pakistani heritage.

Their push was branded by critics as a racist dog whistle. The vast majority of “grooming gang” offences, however, are carried out by white men, the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) said earlier this year.

Musk used his X platform to criticise the British prime minister over not backing a national inquiry after the local authority in Oldham, a town in northern England, found that girls under the age of 18 were sexually exploited by groups of men in the 2000s and 2010s.

Musk also alleged that Starmer did not bring the perpetrators to justice when he was the country’s chief prosecutor between 2008 and 2013, a charge that Starmer had denied repeatedly.

Due to the similarity of the Oldham case to others in several towns, including mainly white girls being abused by men largely from a Pakistani background, the issue has been linked to immigration.

A murder investigation has been launched after a teenage boy died in north Manchester.

Officers were called to Nevin Road in the New Moston area at about 17:00 BST, Greater Manchester Police said.

The force has not yet said how the boy died. Three people have been arrested in connection with the incident.

Supt Marcus Noden said it was “distressing and heartbreaking” that a boy had lost his life and urged witnesses to come forward.

The force said it was “still trying to establish the circumstances” around the incident and several areas had been cordoned off, including outside the Fairway Inn Pub on Nuthurst Rd.

The boy’s family is being supported by specialist officers.

Supt Noden appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

He said they wanted to hear from “anyone who was in the Nevin Road area” who saw the incident take place.

“We will bring updates as we get them as the investigation continues,” he added.

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his administration on Wednesday to investigate then-President Biden’s use of an autopen to sign pardons and other documents, increasing the pressure on his predecessor as House Republicans also requested interviews with members of Biden’s inner circle.

An autopen is a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, and presidents have used them for decades. However, Trump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote in a memo. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Trump directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington to handle the investigation.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican, requested transcribed interviews with five Biden aides, alleging they had participated in a “cover-up” that amounted to “one of the greatest scandals in our nation’s history.”

“These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said in a statement. “They must appear before the House Oversight Committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden’s cognitive state and who was calling the shots.”

Interviews were requested with White House senior advisors Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, former Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president.

Comer reiterated his call for Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee. He warned subpoenas would be issued this week if they refuse to schedule voluntary interviews.

“I think that people will start coming in the next two weeks,” Comer told reporters. He added that the committee would release a report with its findings, “and we’ll release the transcribed interviews, so it’ll be very transparent.”

Democrats have dismissed the effort as a distraction.

“Chairman Comer had his big shot in the last Congress to impeach Joe Biden and it was, of course, a spectacular flop,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as the ranking member on the Oversight Committee in the previous Congress. “And now he’s just living off of a spent dream. It’s over. And he should give up the whole thing.”

Republicans on the committee are eager to pursue the investigation.

“The American people didn’t elect a bureaucracy to run the country,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, a freshman Republican from Texas. “I think that the American people deserve to know the truth and they want to know the truth of what happened.”

The Republican inquiry so far has focused on the final executive actions of Biden’s administration, which included the issuing of new federal rules and presidential pardons that they claim may be invalid.

Comer cited the book “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.

In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”

Biden and members of his family have vigorously denied the book’s claims.

“This book is political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class,” said Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter.

Biden withdrew from the presidential race last summer after a debate against Trump in which he appeared to lose his train of thought multiple times, muttered inaudible answers and misnamed different government programs.

The disastrous debate performance pushed questions about his age and mental acuity to the forefront, ultimately leading Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. He was replaced on the ticket by Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump.

Brown and Megerian write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — A Texas hospital that repeatedly sent a woman who was bleeding and in pain home without ending her nonviable, life-threatening pregnancy violated the law, according to a newly released federal investigation.

The government’s findings, which have not been previously reported, were a small victory for 36-year-old Kyleigh Thurman, who ultimately lost part of her reproductive system after being discharged without any help from her hometown emergency room for her dangerous ectopic pregnancy.

But a new policy the Trump administration announced on Tuesday has thrown into doubt the federal government’s oversight of hospitals that deny women emergency abortions, even when they are at risk for serious infection, organ loss or severe hemorrhaging.

Thurman had hoped the federal government’s investigation, which issued a report in April after concluding its inquiry last year, would send a clear message that ectopic pregnancies must be treated by hospitals in Texas, which has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans.

“I didn’t want anyone else to have to go through this,” Thurman said in an interview with the Associated Press from her Texas home this week. “I put a lot of the responsibility on the state of Texas and policy makers and the legislators that set this chain of events off.”

Uncertainty regarding emergency abortion access

Women around the country have been denied emergency abortions for their life-threatening pregnancies after states swiftly enacted abortion restrictions in response to a 2022 ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, which includes three appointees of President Trump.

The guidance issued by the Biden administration in 2022 was an effort to preserve access to emergency abortions for extreme cases in which women were experiencing medical emergencies. It directed hospitals — even ones in states with severe restrictions — to provide abortions in those emergency cases. If hospitals did not comply, they would be in violation of a federal law and risk losing some federal funds.

On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for enforcing the law and inspecting hospitals, announced it would revoke the Biden-era guidance around emergency abortions.

The law, which requires doctors to provide stabilizing treatment, was one of the few ways that Thurman was able to hold the emergency room accountable after she didn’t receive any help from staff at Ascension Seton Williamson in Round Rock, Texas, in February 2023, a few months after Texas enacted its strict abortion ban.

An ectopic pregnancy left untreated

Emergency room staff observed that Thurman’s hormone levels had dropped, a pregnancy was not visible in her uterus and a structure was blocking her fallopian tube — all telltale signs of an ectopic pregnancy, when a fetus implants outside of the uterus and has no room to grow. If left untreated, ectopic pregnancies can rupture, causing organ damage, hemorrhage or even death.

Thurman, however, was sent home and given a pamphlet on miscarriage for her first pregnancy. She returned three days later, still bleeding, and was given an injected drug intended to end the pregnancy, but it was too late. Days later, she showed up again at the emergency room, bleeding out because the fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it. She underwent an emergency surgery that removed part of her reproductive system.

CMS launched its investigation of how Ascension Seton Williamson handled Thurman’s case late last year, shortly after she filed a complaint. Investigators concluded the hospital failed to give her a proper medical screening exam, including an evaluation with an OB-GYN. The hospital violated the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing treatment to all patients. Thurman was “at risk for deterioration of her health and wellbeing as a result of an untreated medical condition,” the investigation said in its report, which was publicly released last month.

Ascension, a vast hospital system that has facilities across multiple states, did not respond to questions about Thurman’s case, saying only that it “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

Penalties for doctors, hospital staff

Doctors and legal experts have warned abortion restrictions like the one Texas enacted have discouraged emergency room staff from aborting dangerous and nonviable pregnancies, even when a woman’s life is imperiled. The stakes are especially high in Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years in prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion. Lawmakers in the state are weighing a law that would remove criminal penalties for doctors who provide abortions in certain medical emergencies.

“We see patients with miscarriages being denied care, bleeding out in parking lots. We see patients with nonviable pregnancies being told to continue those to term,” said Molly Duane, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights that represented Thurman. “This is not, maybe, what some people thought abortion bans would look like, but this is the reality.”

The Biden administration routinely warned hospitals that they need to provide abortions when a woman’s health was in jeopardy, even suing Idaho over its state law that initially prohibited nearly all abortions, unless a woman’s life was on the line.

Questions remain about hospital investigations

But CMS’ announcement on Tuesday raises questions about whether such investigations will continue if hospitals do not provide abortions for women in medical emergencies.

The agency said it will still enforce the law, “including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy.”

While states like Texas have clarified that ectopic pregnancies can legally be treated with abortions, the laws do not provide for every complication that might arise during a pregnancy. Several women in Texas have sued the state for its law, which has prevented women from terminating pregnancies in cases where their fetuses had deadly fetal anomalies or they went into labor too early for the fetus to survive.

Thurman worries pregnant patients with serious complications still won’t be able to get the help they may need in Texas emergency rooms.

“You cannot predict the ways a pregnancy can go,” Thurman said. “It can happen to anyone, still. There’s still so many ways in which pregnancies that aren’t ectopic can be deadly.”

Seitz writes for the Associated Press.

Investigators in China are working to find the cause of a powerful explosion at a chemical plant that killed five people and injured 19 more. More than 200 emergency workers responded to the blast in Shandong province, which damaged properties up to a kilometre away.