millions

US tech giant says jury decision misunderstands its products and it will appeal.

Google has been told by a US jury to pay $425m for violating the privacy of tens of millions of users who opted out of a feature tracking app use.

The jury in San Francisco handed down the verdict on Wednesday after a group of Google users accused the tech giant of continuing to collect data from third-party apps even when they changed their account settings to prevent the practice.

Google said the decision misunderstood how its products work and that it planned to appeal.

“Our privacy tools give people control over their data, and when they turn off personalization, we honor that choice,” Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said in a statement.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs alleged that Google collected and sold users’ mobile app activity data in breach of privacy assurances contained in its Web & App Activity settings.

The suit, which was filed in July 2020, covered some 98 million Google users.

During the trial, Google had argued that collected data was “nonpersonal” and “pseudonymous” and stored in “segregated, secured, and encrypted locations”.

Google has faced a number of other recent privacy-related lawsuits.

In May, the tech giant agreed to pay $1.375bn to the state of Texas over claims it had collected residents’ face geometry and voiceprints without proper consent, and tracked users’ locations even when they opted out of the feature.

FORMER Prem stars who lost tens of millions in failed investments are demanding justice.

TV pundit Danny Murphy, 48, said he was a victim of “financial abuse” — turning to booze, drugs and gambling after losing about £5million.

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He was among up to 200 players who invested with Kingsbridge Asset Management in the 1990s and 2000s.

It attracted up to £417million before failed ventures led to loss of homes and bankruptcy.

Investors were deemed to be “victims of crime” in a police investigation but are still being chased for millions in tax.

Murphy is one of 11 stars, including ex-Arsenal ace Michael Thomas, calling for more protection from tax charges.

David McKee and Kevin McMenamin, who ran Kingsbridge, denied wrongdoing on BBC’s Panorama last night.

Murphy said he feels “shame” over his involvement.

“It’s the shame, embarrassment and guilt of getting yourself in a position that you think you’re better than,” he said.

“I’ve lost four – maybe five – million, roughly.

“The financial abuse I’ve suffered has caused me monumental problems in my life.”

He added: “The financial abuse in football and the dark side of football, is something that has gone under the radar for too long.”

MILLIONS of phones will sound a siren next week in one of the largest public safety exercises.

The national emergency alert test will take place at around 3pm on ­Sunday, September 7.

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Pat McFadden, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “It will be one of the UK’s largest public safety exercises in history.”

“It is a vital tool for keeping the nation safe when lives are on the line – and every minute matters.”

Phones will vibrate and emit a siren-like tone for ten seconds, with a test message appearing on screens to make clear the alert is only a drill.

Only 4G and 5G-enabled phones and tablets will receive the alert.

The Government has used the system to issue real warnings five times, including in January during Storm Eowyn to warn people in Scotland and Northern Ireland about severe weather.

Approximately 3.5 million people across Wales and south-west England received an alert during Storm Darragh last December.

A 500kg unexploded Second World War bomb found in a Plymouth back garden triggered a warning to some 50,000 phones in February last year.

Messages can be targeted to relatively small areas to pinpoint those at risk.

Some 15,000 phones were alerted during flooding in Cumbria in May 2024, and 10,000 received a warning during flooding in Leicestershire in January this year.

The system is designed for use during the most likely emergencies to affect the UK and warnings would also be transmitted on television, radio and locally by knocking on doors.

CHICKENPOX has gained a reputation as a ‘harmless’ childhood illness that it’s best to get over with – but it could result in dangerous complications for some and may even prove fatal.

It was announced that children will be given chickenpox vaccines for free on the NHS for the first time from January 2026.

The jab is already used in the US, Canada, Australia and Germany.

One to three-year-olds in the UK will receive the chickenpox vaccine along with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) jab.

The combined vaccine will now be dubbed MMRV, as it will protect against the varicella zoster virus.

Responding to news of the chickenpox vaccine rollout in the UK, Dr Gayatri Amirthalingam, from the UK Health Security Agency, said: “For some babies, young children and even adults, chickenpox can be very serious.

“It is excellent news that we will be introducing a vaccine. It could be a lifesaver.”

The news was coupled with warnings from experts that nearly one in five school-starters are not fully protected against preventable diseases – with uptake for the four-in-one diphtheria, tetanus, polio and whooping cough booster and MMR jabs having dropped again.

Chickenpox is a highly contagious infection known for its telltale itchy, spotty rash that blisters and scabs over.

But before these spots appear, the virus can also cause a high temperature, aches and pains, and loss of appetite.

Though it’s mostly known to infect children, adults can also catch chickenpox if they didn’t pick it up in childhood.

These infections tend to be more severe and adults with a varicella infection are more likely to be admitted to hospital.

Most people will recover on their own within a week or two, but the infection can be serious, even life-threatening, for some – especially if they’re very young or old, pregnant or have a weakened immune system.

The illness can result in bacterial skin infections and in rare cases, pneumonia, brain swelling and stroke.

For some, these complications can be fatal.

An average of around 20 people die of chickenpox per year, according to the Vaccine Knowledge Project at the University of Oxford.

This ranges from 17 deaths in 2017, to four in 2020, according to Office for National Statistics data.

Eighty per cent of deaths from chickenpox infections in England and Wales occur in adults, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) states.

1. Bacterial infections

Chickenpox spots can appear anywhere on the body – including inside the mouth and around the genitals.

They tend to develop into fluid-filled blisters, before bursting and scabbing over, which can take a few days.

The spots tend to be maddeningly itchy, so it can be hard to resist the temptation of scratching them – though soothing creams and cool baths can help.

Sometimes the chickenpox spots can get infected with bacteria – probably from scratching, according to healthcare provider Bupa.

Signs of a bacterial infection include a high temperature and redness and pain around the chickenpox spots.

You should seek urgent medical help if you or your child develop these symptoms.

2. Dehydration

Young children do run the risk of becoming dehydrated due to chickenpox.

For babies and kids, fewer wet nappies and peeing less can be telltale signs of dehydration.

Other signs may include:

• Feeling thirsty
• Dark yellow, strong-smelling pee
• Feeling dizzy or lightheaded
• Feeling tired
• A dry mouth, lips and tongue
• Sunken eyes

Call NHS 111 if you suspect you or your little one are dehydrated from chickenpox.

3. Pneumonia

Some people – especially adults – can develop pneumonia, inflammation of the lungs, after being infected with chickenpox.

Pneumonia is the most common chickenpox complication in adults, according to NICE.

Smokers are particularly at risk.

Symptoms of pneumonia can include:

• A cough with yellow or green mucus
• Shortness of breath
• A high temperature
• Chest pain
• An aching body
• Feeling very tired
• Loss of appetite
• Making wheezing noises when you breathe
• Feeling confused

4. Brain swelling

Infection or swelling of the brain, known as encephalitis, is a rare complication of the chickenpox infection.

Professor Benedict Michael, Institute of Infection, University of Liverpool, said: “Varicella-zoster virus is the second leading cause of brain infection (or ‘encephalitis’) in the UK, which can be life-threatening.

“Early diagnosis and treatment are essential, but prevention through vaccination is the most effective way to protect children and families from this serious complication.”

Dr Ava Easton, Chief Executive of Encephalitis International, added: “By making [the chickenpox vaccine] available to every child, we’re not only reducing the spread of chickenpox but also helping to stop some families from ever facing the devastating impact of encephalitis.

“That’s a powerful step forward for children’s health and for awareness of a condition too few people know about.”

Encephalitis usually starts off with flu-like symptoms, such as a high temperature and headache.

More serious symptoms develop in the next few hours, days or weeks, including:

• Confusion or disorientation
• Seizures or fits
• Changes in personality and behaviour
• Difficulty speaking
• Weakness or loss of movement in some parts of the body
• Loss of consciousness

Dial 999 for an ambulance immediately if you or someone else has these serious symptoms.

5. Stroke

According to the Stroke Association, children who develop chickenpox may have a four times higher risk of stroke in the six months following infection.

“However, stroke in children is still rare and the finding translates into a very small actual increase in their stroke risk,” it noted.

Studies by the organisation also found that adults with shingles – also caused by the varicella zoster virus – may also have an increased risk of stroke up until six months afterwards.

“This is particularly within the first few weeks, and for individuals with shingles around the eye,” Stroke Association said.

“Oral antiviral drugs used to treat shingles may be able to reduce this risk.”

6. Sepsis

In rare cases, chickenpox can result in sepsis – when the body’s immune system overreacts to an infection, attacking its own tissues and organs.

Sepsis can be life threatening and requires immediate medical help.

It can also be hard to spot, as there are lots of possible symptoms.

In adults, remember the SEPSIS acronym:

• Slurred speech or confusion
• Extreme shivering or muscle pain
• Passing no urine (in a day)
• Severe breathlessness
• It feels like you’re going to die
• Skin mottled, discoloured, or cold

Other signs include:

• High or very low body temperature
• Rapid heart rate
• Low blood pressure
• Rapid breathing

In children, look out for: 

• Fast breathing
• Lethargy or difficulty waking up
• Mottled, pale, or bluish skin
• Very cold hands and feet
• Seizures
• A rash that doesn’t fade when pressed ,which is a sign of meningococcal sepsis
• Babies not feeding or vomiting 

Emergency food supplies are running out in Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan, Save the Children warns.

Millions of children across four African countries could die of malnutrition in the next three months, Save the Children has warned, as emergency food supplies dwindle as a result of international aid cuts.

Save the Children said on Thursday that Nigeria, Kenya, Somalia and South Sudan were expected to run out of so-called “ready-to-use therapeutic food” (RUTF), a nutritional paste that has a long shelf life and does not need refrigeration.

In Nigeria alone, the lives of 3.5 million children under age five who are suffering from severe acute malnutrition will be under threat without access to treatment and nutrition support, the humanitarian group said.

“Imagine being a parent with a severely malnourished child,” Yvonne Arunga, Save the Children’s regional director for East and Southern Africa, said in a statement.

“Now imagine that the only thing that could help your child bounce back from the brink of death is therapeutic food and that food is out of stock when it was once available.”

The warning comes just months after the United Nations announced sweeping programme cuts in June amid what the UN’s humanitarian office described as “the deepest funding cuts ever to hit the international humanitarian sector”.

“We have been forced into a triage of human survival,” UN aid chief Tom Fletcher said at the time.

“The math is cruel, and the consequences are heartbreaking. Too many people will not get the support they need, but we will save as many lives as we can with the resources we are given.”

Key international donors, led notably by the United States, have drastically scaled back foreign aid funding, leading to widespread concern that critical aid – from food and healthcare to poverty reduction – will be affected in countries around the world.

In July, as part of US President Donald Trump’s push to scale back federal spending, Congress approved a package that slashed the country’s foreign aid expenditures by about $8bn.

Last month, Doctors Without Borders (known by its French acronym MSF) reported that at least 652 malnourished children had died at its facilities in northern Nigeria in the first half of 2025 due to a lack of timely care.

“We are currently witnessing massive budget cuts, particularly from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other European countries, which are having a real impact on the treatment of malnourished children,” said Ahmed Aldikhari, MSF’s country representative in Nigeria.

On Thursday, Save the Children said staff at one of its clinics in northwestern Kenya have been forced to try to get food from other facilities to help feed malnourished children.

“And if [the children] are not supported, I know very soon [we] will be losing them,” said Sister Winnie, who runs the facility in Turkana.

About 105,000 RUTF cartons are needed through the end of the year across Kenya, Save the Children said, but only about 79,000 have been secured so far, with stocks expected to run out in October.

The group said that overall, shortfalls in nutrition funding could cut off treatment to 15.6 million people in 18 countries around the world, including more than 2.3 million severely malnourished children this year.

The situation is expected to deteriorate further in 2026, it added.

U.S. Air Force Air Mobility Command (AMC) on Monday released the findings of investigations into three mishaps involving the troubled KC-46A Pegasus aerial refueling tanker that cost the service nearly $23 million. The incidents all involved nozzle binding, a situation in which the tanker’s refueling boom nozzle gets stuck or binds with the receiving aircraft’s receptacle. 

Two of the incidents occurred in 2022 and a third in 2024. A fourth mishap took place July 8, 2025 and is still being investigated, AMC stated. There were no fatalities, injuries, or civilian property damage in any of these mishaps.

The first of these nozzle binding mishaps took place on Oct. 15, 2022. A KC-46A Pegasus assigned to the 305th Air Mobility Wing and operated by the 2nd Air Refueling Squadron, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey and an F-15E Strike Eagle assigned to the 4th Fighter Wing and operated by the 335th Fighting Squadron, Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina, were conducting routine air refueling operations. 

“During the mishap, a nozzle binding accident occurred during a breakaway which resulted in the air-refueling boom (ARB) striking the tail section of the KC-46A,” AMC said in a statement.

The Accident Investigation Board (AIB) found that a “preponderance of the evidence” showed one cause for the mishap. 

“Due to a limitation of the Air Refueling Boom (ARB) control system,” the KC-46 boom operator “inadvertently placed a radial force on the ARB that caused the nozzle to become bound in the receiver’s receptacle,” according to the AIB. “As a result, the bound forces exceeded the structural limitations of the ARB and caused a rapid upward movement of the ARB when released, striking the tail cone” of the Pegasus.

In addition, two other factors “substantially contributed” to this incident.

The Pegasus pilot failed to notify either the plane’s boom operator or the Strike Eagle’s pilot about an “engine power reduction” on the refueler. 

“This action, combined with the known ARB stiffness limitation and the resulting high engine power setting on [the F-15E], resulted in “a rapid forward movement” of that jet relative to the Pegasus.

In addition, “due to a limitation of the automated boom control system, the ARB entered an uncontrollable state during its upward motion toward the aircraft tail, disabling the boom control laws which could have slowed the rate at which the ARB struck the tail cone, substantially contributing to the mishap,” according to Col. Chad Cisewski, who led this AIB.

The estimated damages to the aircraft were $8,307,257.93, according to AMC.

Less than a month later, on Nov. 7 2022, there was another nozzle binding incident while a KC-46A Pegasus assigned to the 305th Air Mobility Wing and operated by the 2nd Air Refueling Squadron was refueling a F-22A Raptor assigned to the 94th Fighter Squadron, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia. The flight was in support of a joint-force training exercise from Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida.

“During the second air refueling attempt of the sortie, the KC-46A experienced a nozzle binding event during a breakaway with the F-22A, which resulted in damage to the ARB nozzle,” AMC said in its statement. “The bound forces exceeded the structural limitations of the ARB nozzle, damaging the nozzle beyond repair.”

The AIB determined “by a preponderance of the evidence, one cause for this mishap,” the report stated. The boom operator “made manual control inputs to the ARB which caused a radial force to be applied to the ARB nozzle, causing it to become bound inside the receiver’s air refueling receptacle.”

As a result, “the bound forces exceeded the structural limitations of the ARB nozzle, damaging the nozzle beyond repair.”

Two other factors “substantially contributed to the mishap,” according to the AIB. The first was “the failure” of the Raptor’s pilot “to account for the KC-46A Stiff Boom characteristics, causing a rapid forward movement” of the fighter relative to the refueler. The stiff boom probem is a long-standing issue, which you can read more about here.

In addition, the boom operator was “unable to verify that the ARB nozzle was clear of [the Raptor’s] air refueling receptacle prior to making ARB control inputs, substantially contributing to the mishap.”

The mishap caused an estimated $103,295.12 in damages, AMC noted.

A third nozzle binding incident took place Aug. 21, 2024, when a KC-46A Pegasus assigned to the 22nd Air Refueling Wing and operated by the 931st Air Refueling Wing was refueling an F-15E assigned to the 366th Fighter Wing in support Operation Nobel Eagle, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) aerospace warning, control, and defense missions in North America. The aircraft were helping to enforce a temporary flight restriction related to a presidential visit. Then-President Joe Biden was reportedly vacationing in Santa Ynez, California at the time. The tanker and one of the fighters were forced to make emergency landings — the F-15E twice having to abort those recoveries before finally touching down at an alternative location. You can read more about that in our initial report here and listen to the audio below.

During the fourth air refueling attempt of the sortie, “the KC-46A experienced nozzle binding of the boom in the F-15E receptacle,” AMC explained. “Upon release, the boom rapidly flew upward, striking the bottom aft portion of the KC-46A, and violently oscillated left and right.”

The boom striking the aircraft and “ensuing forceful oscillations resulted in critical failure of the boom shaft structure, portions of which detached from the KC-46A in flight,” the command continued. “The KC-46A crew declared an in-flight emergency and returned to Travis AFB. Emergency response personnel met the crew upon arrival.”

The boom fell in an open field about 13 miles northeast of Santa Maria, California, with no injuries or fatalities reported, the AIB explained.

The AIB found, “by a preponderance of the evidence, that the cause of the mishap was the [boom operator’s] control inputs to the air refueling flight control system, resulting in an excessive fly-up rate of the boom, which struck the aircraft empennage and caused a critical failure of the boom shaft structure,” according to the report.

There were four other factors that “substantially contributed to the mishap,” the AIB board president ruled. 

• Excessive closure rate and instability of the Strike Eagle.
• The boom operator’s “attempted contact outside the standard [aerial refueling] envelope for the F-15E.
• The F-15E pilot’s “failure to recognize and initiate immediate breakaway procedures, which further delayed positive separation from the KC-46A,” and
• The boom operator’s “lack of knowledge on boom flight control logic and its effects on the boom flight control surfaces prevented the [boom operator] from recognizing the influence of Flight Control Stick (FCS) inputs and programmed boom limit functions during operations, especially during nozzle binding situations.”

The estimated damages to the aircraft were $14,381,303, according to AMC.

The Air Force did not release details about the July 9, 2025 incident. However, at the time, 2nd Lt. Samantha Bostick, Deputy Chief of Public Affairs for the 22nd Air Refueling Wing at McConnell Air Force Base, told us what happened.

“A KC-46A Pegasus from McConnell Air Force Base declared an In-flight Emergency July 8, while operating over the eastern United States, refueling F-22s,” she said. “The crew had to make the decision to land at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., and has landed safely there. The aircraft will remain there for the time being.”

You can listen below as the crew of the KC-46, callsign FELL 81 and serial number 17-46033, alerts the U.S. Navy’s Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility at Virginia Capes (FACSFAC VACAPES) about losing the boom. FACSFAC VACAPES is better known by its callsign, Giant Killer, and helps monitor for threats and otherwise manage the airspace off the east coast of the United States.

In general, KC-46s are no stranger to issues with their booms. The boom and the control system for it have been a source of serious and persistent technical issues for the Pegasus fleet for years now. A fix for the KC-46’s particularly troublesome remote vision system (RVS), which boom operators in the tanker’s main cabin use to perform their work, is now unlikely to be finished before summer 2027, roughly three years behind schedule, according to Defense News.

The nozzle binding issue is clearly a problem in many respects, not just in terms of the dangers posed by booms breaking away or impacting the receiver or the tanker’s airframe, but it also poses a real danger to those on the ground. Beyond that, the reliability of any type during critical missions is always a concern, as such a mishap could curtail a high-priority mission or the risk of it occurring requires extra increasingly precious tankers being assigned to those operations as a contingency. What we don’t know is how common this is in comparison to the KC-135 or the recently retired KC-10. Hopefully, we can get more clarity in this regard now that the findings of these mishaps are published.

We will update you when we find out more.

Contact the author: [email protected]

A COMMON phone mistake that you think is saving battery life is actually doing the opposite.

Millions of us do it every single day – but even Apple has warned users not to bother.

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Loads of iPhone owners spend time every day quitting their apps.

They’ll swipe them closed, quitting them in order to save a bit of battery life.

But Apple says it doesn’t actually save battery life at all.

“You should only close an app if it’s unresponsive,” Apple said.

The iPhone maker continued: “Typically, there’s no reason to quit an app.

“Quitting it doesn’t save battery power, for example.”

In fact, it could even be making things worse.

After you move to a different app, the old one will be “suspended”.

“After you’ve switched to a different app, some apps will run for a short period of time before they’re set to a suspended state,” Apple explained.

“Apps that are in a suspended state aren’t actively in use, open or taking up system resources.”

They’re kept in a suspended state so that it’s quicker and more power-efficient to relaunch them.

But if you fully force-quit an app, it will need to reboot from scratch, which is slower and takes up more power.

So it’s better to just leave them in a suspended state unless there’s an actual issue with the app – like it keeps freezing or crashing.

HOW TO CHECK WHAT’S REALLY DRAINING YOUR BATTERY

So what are you supposed to do if your iPhone’s battery life isn’t as good as you’d like?

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Well you can very easily check to see which apps and features are draining the most battery.

Just go into Settings > Battery and you can look at a long list of apps order by how much charge they’re using.

If there are any high-drain apps you don’t really care about, consider deleting them.

Or try turning off Background App Refresh for that app if you don’t want it to periodically check for new info (like email notifications). Just note that this might make the app work less well.

BATTERY SWAP

Another option is to check up on the health of your iPhone’s battery.

Over time – as you charge and discharge them – phone batteries get worse. This is just the nature of lithium ion batteries.

That means the more you use your iPhone, the less charge it will hold over time.

So your iPhone will run out of battery more quickly.

IPHONE BATTERY SWAP – HOW MUCH WILL IT COST?

Here’s how much you’ll pay for iPhone battery replacements in the UK and the US..

iPhone 5 Series

iPhone SE Series

• iPhone SE (1st gen) – £N/A / $69
• iPhone SE (2nd gen) – £65 / $69
• iPhone SE (3rd gen) – £65 / $69

iPhone 6 Series

• iPhone 6 – £N/A / $69
• iPhone 6s – £N/A / $69
• iPhone 6s Plus – £N/A / $69

iPhone 7 Series

• iPhone 7 – £65 / $69
• iPhone 7 Plus – £65 / $69

iPhone 8 Series

• iPhone 8 – £65 / $69
• iPhone 8 Plus – £65 / $69

iPhone X Series

iPhone XR/XS Series

• iPhone XR – £85 / $89
• iPhone XS – £85 / $89
• iPhone XS Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 11 Series

• iPhone 11 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 11 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 11 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 12 Series

• iPhone 12 mini – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 12 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 13 Series

• iPhone 13 mini – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 Pro – £85 / $89
• iPhone 13 Pro Max – £85 / $89

iPhone 14 Series

• iPhone 14 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Pro – £95 / $99
• iPhone 14 Pro Max – £95 / $99

iPhone 15 Series

• iPhone 15 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Pro – £95 / $99
• iPhone 15 Pro Max – £95 / $99

iPhone 16 Series

• iPhone 16 – £95 / $99
• iPhone 16 Plus – £95 / $99
• iPhone 16 Pro – £109 / $119
• iPhone 16 Pro Max – £109 / $119

Picture Credit: Apple

You can get to see how degraded your iPhone’s battery has become by going into Settings > Battery > Battery Health.

Normally you’d expect to be at around 80% capacity versus new after two years – or roughly 500 “charge cycles”, which are full charges and discharges.

That means your phone only holds 80% of the charge it held when it was new.

There’s no way to fix that beyond getting a new battery.

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Apple will replace your iPhone’s battery at the Apple Store. It usually costs somewhere between £60 and £100 / $60 and $100 depending on the model, but it could be more or less than that.

This will give you like-new battery life, and costs far less than buying a new iPhone.

You might even find that your iPhone’s performance improves, as sometimes processor speed can be limited as a protection feature if your battery is severely degraded.

Millions of dollars began flowing into campaigns supporting and opposing an effort to redraw California’s congressional districts on the November ballot, notably $10 million from independent redistricting champion Charles Munger Jr.

The checks, reported Friday in state campaign finance disclosures, were made on Thursday, the day the state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom called a special election to replace the congressional districts drawn by an independent commission in 2021 with new districts that would boost the number of Democrats elected to Congress in next year’s midterm election.

The move is an effort by California Democrats to counter Texas Republicans’ and President Trump’s efforts to boost the number of GOP members.

Munger, a GOP donor and the son of a billionaire who was Warren Buffett’s right-hand man, bankrolled the 2010 ballot measure that created independent congressional redistricting in California. He donated $10 million to the “No on Prop. 50 – Protect Voters First” campaign,” which opposes the proposed redistricting.

“Charles Munger Jr. is making good on his promise to defend the reforms he passed,” said Amy Thoma, a spokesperson for the Voters First Coalition, which opposes the ballot measure and includes Munger.

A spokesperson for the campaign supporting the redrawing of congressional boundaries accused Munger of trying to boost the GOP under the guise of supporting independent redistricting.

“It’s no surprise that a billionaire who has given extensively to help Republicans take the house and [former Republican House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy would be joining forces to help Donald Trump steal five House seats and rig the 2026 midterm before a single American has voted,” said Hannah Milgrom, spokesperson for “Yes on 50: the Election Rigging Response Act.” “Prop 50 is America’s best chance to fight back – vote yes on November. 4.”

The campaign backing the ballot measure received $1 million on Thursday from a powerful labor group, SEIU’s state council; $300,000 from businessman Andrew Hauptman; and a flurry of other donations, according to the California secretary of state’s office. That is on top of the $5.8 million the campaign reported having in the bank as of July 30, including millions of dollars in contributions from House Majority PAC, which is focused on electing Democrats to Congress, and Newsom’s 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign.

Redistricting typically happens once a decade after the U.S. census. Trump asked Texas lawmakers to redraw their congressional districts earlier this year, arguing that the GOP was entitled to five more members from the state. In response, California Democrats have pitched new district boundaries that could result in five more Democrats being elected to Congress.

Columnist Jessica Boulton brings you her brutally-honest and wry rundown of Showbiz’s latest shenanigans: from Ibiza Final Boss to MasterChef muppets, she’s not holding back

Jessica Boulton works on the Mirror’s features desk, specialising in celebrity features and interviews. She also writes a weekly observational comedy column Jess Saying, which runs each Saturday. In addition, she oversees the entertainment pages, helps co-ordinate the Pride of Britain coverage and newsletter and guest edits The Diary. Jessica joined The Mirror’s sister paper The People in 2006, and has since worked on the Sunday Mirror and Now magazine. Most likely to be found raving about The Oscars, BAFTAs, Netflix, Friends or Star Wars.

It’s a strange, strange world when I’m feeling sorry for a bunch of Love Island contestants. But in this social media age, it is sadly what it’s come to. For the poor lovelorn bedhoppers at the Mallorca villa have been putting in weeks of seriously hard graft – flashing their abs and parading around in thong bikinis – to get the one precious thing, (I suspect) their hearts truly desired. No, not love. Fame. Glorious, generous, glittering FAME.

But in the days after Monday’s final, the Islanders soon found themselves getting a cold hard lesson in the pitfalls of success: There’s always someone waiting in the wings – ready to cut short your 15 minutes….

For it wasn’t the winning Islanders “Breaking The Internet” this week. It wasn’t the winning Islanders batting off the biggest brand deals or most enticing DMs from Blue Tick TikTok. And it wasn’t the winning Islanders getting excitable TV companies all in a lather, begging for interviews. It was….a HAIRCUT.

Yes, the biggest celebrity getting buzz online this week wasn’t even a celeb when the week began. He was Jack Kay, a literal normal down-to-earth 26-year-old Jack-the-lad, from Newcastle on holiday in Ibiza.

One SEVEN-second viral video clip later, however…. And he’s now “Ibiza Final Boss” – the internet’s newest celebrity (aka Ibiza Bob), with 70,000 followers on Instagram, 30,000 on TikTok and hundreds of memes in his honour.

READ MORE: Ibiza Final Boss takes private jet to party island with mates who ‘all have same haircut’

He’s been offered free holidays, brand endorsement deals, flights on a £5million private jet, and a whole list of big-money nightclub appearances. He’s signed with Joey Essex’s agent and has landed his own tour and – according to media experts – he could be well-placed to launch his own merchandise range and even bag a possible spot on a reality show. All in all, it’s predicted he could rake in a whopping SIX figures by the end of the year.

It’s not bad for seven seconds of dodgy dancing, dodgier fashion sense and The Dodgiest Bowl Haircut (Not On A Lego Figure)TM.

For nowadays you don’t need to work summer seasons in Blackpool or win a talent show to become a star. You can become ‘famous’ just by making the right people laugh, at the right moment in time, as they absent-mindedly scroll through their phone while listening to podcasts. Yep, Fame has reached Peak Fickledom.

So, when the stars and algorithms do align to make you a viral hit, you need to make the most of it. And while Jack’s ‘success’ is all thanks to what is ON his head, it’s what’s inside it which will prove his biggest asset. For in 2025, turning your viral moment in the sun into a longer-term earner is all about savvy strategy, clear thinking and mindset:

(*Okay, okay, PhotoShop may have lent a hand). As for the rest of the week? Well, Celebland was throwing us all sorts of surprises…..

Monday mayhem

Be afraid, be very afraid! For the stars of an upcoming new theatre tour have been doing the press rounds this week. And from the sounds of it, there will be no one safe this Halloween and autumn. Indeed, it’s expected to have many a celeb not just quaking but SHAKING, QUAKING, ­QUIVERING, TREMBLING AND OUTRIGHT ­SHUDDERING in their boots.

No, it’s not a new take on Phantom of the Opera (albeit some may be haunted by what’s said). Nor is it Saw: The Musical (although that is a multi-million pound idea). It’s the terrifying new two-hander: An Evening With… Katie Price and Kerry Katona. The pair’s tell-all 33-date UK tour was feared to have been cancelled earlier in the summer due to… well, whatever Katie’s snoresome crisis-du-jour was at the time.

But the pair are back and have now been hitting the interview circuit to give fans a little taste of what to expect. Target one? “Snobby” Strictly – which they publicly dissed this week for having never asked them to take part. (One suspects they’ve now said “Foxtrot Oscar” to any future possibilities too).

Of course, we all know the real dirt will be saved for the show itself. Yet however juicy the eww -some twosome’s tete-a-tete promises to be, I can’t help but wonder if the panto frenemies could have come up with a slightly more, er… spicy format… A WWE-style grudge match with lookalikes of their many nemeses, perhaps? Imagine the commentator yelling to the roaring crowd: “Get Ready to say mi-OWWW! It’s our very own….. Nuclear Cheetah aka Kerry Katona! – from Atomic Kitten to a one-woman weapon of mass destruction…”

Or maybe… they could make it a dramatic retelling of Four Weddings And A Funeral, where Katie’s the bride each time and the funeral’s for her tragic lack of taste? Or finally, what about a musical? After all, KP’s been Defying Gravity for years (with the help of her plastic surgeon).

What a royal twit Tuesday

It’s not been a good week for Royal affairs – of any kind. But a new bombshell biography has cemented one unassailable truth: Young kids fed on fairy tales and Disney movies are far more likely to find themselves a talking warthog or a flying elephant than a real-life Prince Charming.

Yes, a new book by historian Andrew Lownie has claimed Prince Andrew allegedly strayed “more than a dozen” times before his first – yes, first – anniversary with Fergie. Clearly their wedding certificate was not worth the paper it was printed on.

Fergie did have a little something in common with Cinderella however. She was sporting some rather fetching slippers this week. They weren’t glass ones though – they were fluffy numbers emblazoned with the unofficial Royal motto “Never Complain, Never Explain”. It warms the heart, it really does.

Wok you gonna do? Wednesday

The BBC took a leap with its MasterChef dilemma by airing the first episode of the pre-recorded series on Wednesday. Surprisingly they went for primetime BBC1 instead of hiding it on iPlayer only. Presumably they figured they were in for a roasting whatever they did – so they might as well fill a hole in the schedule.

The real stars of the series are the editors who faced the unenviable task of trying to cut out as much of the under-fire Gregg Wallace and John Torode as possible – which from the looks of the results is a bit like trying to remove excess garlic from a pasta dish. You can’t. Everything’s already tainted.

What I don’t understand is why the Beeb didn’t go with my previous suggestion: just do some deep fake trickery. So what could they replace them with? Let’s see: Option 1: A literal toxic trigger warning; Option 2: Bradley Walsh and Rylan Clark (they’re on everything else anyway); Option 3 (and perhaps most apt): Statler and Waldorf. A couple of muppets… who are completely stuffed.

No relief for kangaroo testicles Thursday

Talking of show formats (see Monday), there was one news story this week that left me feeling a little… well, antsy . What was it? This: “ITV bosses are planning the next five years of I’m A Celebrity…” (really? another FIVE?); “With talks under way to film in the jungle until 2030….” (Wait, 2030 is only five years away??); “When it’ll reach its ­landmark 30th season”. (30 years? 30? 3-0?)

You mean to say we’ve been watching the same show with the same hosts, same sort of trials, same prize, same location, same set and same set of scandals just with different faces… for nearly 30 YEARS? They say doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome is the very ­definition of insanity. So either, we can all relate to Peter Andre’s infamous jungle-penned hit Insania – written while a campmate in 2004 – or we really don’t mind the deja vu.

So what can we expect over the next few years? Well, I have two predictions:

1. Princess and/or Junior Andre will follow in their parents’ footsteps, going back to the scene of the crime special place where the Katie and Peter’s “love” story first began.

2. Following the “success” of political hires Matt Hancock and Nigel Farage, bosses will make a “bigly” play for President Trump at the end of his term. (If he doesn’t rewrite the US Constitution, that is.) After all, there’s been quite a few (thousand) of his type involved in the show before. Fatima Whitbread even got one stuck up her nose… Much to the chagrin of her and the cockroach, I suspect.

Foolish Friday

It was a mixed day for Richard Osman. On the plus side, Netflix released the first trailer for the movie adaptation of his bestselling crime novel The Thursday Murder Club (starring Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren).

On the downside… Osman – who has produced a number of game shows including Pointless, Total Wipeout, Prize Island, and my absolute FAVOURITE Only Connect – inexplicably decided to tell podcast listeners that quiz shows often use “an algorithm” to stop contestants winning too much money.

It’s obvious to be fair, and while not quite a Gerald Ratner-level own goal, it wasn’t terribly clever. I wouldn’t want to overtly criticise him in a family newspaper, so here’s my verdict – in the style of Only Connect’s Missing Vowels Round. Enjoy! WH TTT LPLNK R*

Picture of the Week

Being a 30-something in today’s world must be tough. There you are, juggling career, love life, social life and saving for an inexplicably-expensive “micro-loft” – and somehow you also have to make time for what’s really important: taking impossibly perfect pics for the ‘Gram.

But it looks like a certain 35-year-old Oscar-winner has got this careful balancing act all figured out. For, Avengers star Brie Larson posted THIS video on Instagram this week.

And while she might be steady as a rock, I – as Gen Z would say – “am shook” . In fact I’m more impressed by this feat than by any of her big screen Captain Marvel antics.

Brie, who is promoting her new tome, Party People, accompanied this video with a quip: “My social media manager said this will sell 1,000 books. So here I am.” The book in question is a “cookbook for creative celebrations” with “endless ideas for weird and wacky parties” – which goes some way to explaining this impressive-yet-leftfield marketing campaign.

Personally, I’m most amazed by her superhuman pain threshold. For, anyone who has experienced the inherent cruelty of the modern-day torture device known as a stiletto heel, will appreciate that this is not just a demonstration of core strength, stability and precision… but of sheer, sheer, sheer ENDURANCE.

So how did she do it? The way I see it, there’s only one explanation: she’s in the wrong franchise… the girl’s a Wonder Woman for sure.

What do you think? Have you seen some funny celeb moments this week? Let me know in comment or on X/Instagram via @JessicaBoulton

*Answer To Missing Vowels Round: “What a plonker”

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ANOTHER popular gadget is destined for the scrapheap after Apple officially designated it “obsolete”.

It joins hundreds of products already on the list that are beyond repair.

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Like any tech company, Apple routinely discontinues older devices and continues to offer software and servicing for a limited period after.

The firm has two key phases: vintage and obsolete.

An Apple gadget is classified as vintage when Apple stopped distributing it for sale more than five and less than seven years ago.

You can still get a repair sorted from authorised service providers during this period but there’s no guarantee as the parts become limited.

But when it steps into the obsolete stage you can’t get any repairs sorted at all.

A device is considered obsolete when Apple stopped distributing them for sale more than seven years ago.

As you would expect, with 49 years in the business, Apple has a lot of discontinued products now.

And there are a sizeable number of iPhones on the list dating back to the very first in 2007.

Of course, it includes other gizmos too, such as the Apple Watch.

And it’s a popular Apple Watch model that’s been bumped down to obsolete this week.

The second-generation Apple Watch Series 1 models released in 2016 have been added.

So if you own one, don’t count on any repairs – you’ll have to upgrade to a newer Apple Watch.

This means the full list of obsolete Apple Watch products is now:

• Apple Watch (1st generation), 38mm
• Apple Watch (1st generation), 42mm
• Apple Watch Edition (1st generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Edition (1st generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Hermes (1st generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Hermes (1st generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Series 1, Aluminium (2nd generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Series 1, Aluminium (2nd generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Series 2, Aluminium (2nd generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Series 2, Aluminium (2nd generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Series 2, Stainless Steel (2nd generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Series 2, Stainless Steel (2nd generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Sport (1st generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Sport (1st generation), 42 mm
• Apple Watch Stainless Steel (1st generation), 38 mm
• Apple Watch Stainless Steel (1st generation), 42 mm

WHY DO GADGETS GET DISCONTINUED?

Analysis by Jamie Harris, Assistant Technology and Science Editor at The Sun

It’s never good news to hear that your favourite gadget is no longer repairable and you’ll have to buy an expensive new one altogether.

But Apple is fairly good for making tech last as long as possible, providing plenty of software updates for years after a product was released.

However, there comes a point when they have to stop.

For something like a smartwatch it’s simply not financially viable to keep producing parts for items that few people now own.

Given the second-generation Apple Watch Series 1 models were released nine years ago, a lot has changed since then.

If you do still own one, chances are it’s probably quite battered and slow now.

The nation’s first mandated work requirement for Medicaid recepients, approved by the Republican-led Congress and signed by President Trump, is expected to have a seismic effect in California.

One estimate from state health officials suggests that as many as 3.4 million people could lose their insurance through what Gov. Gavin Newsom calls the “labyrinth of manual verification,” which involves Medi-Cal recipients proving every six months that they are working, going to school or volunteering at least 80 hours per month.

“It’s going to be much harder to stay insured,” said Martha Santana-Chin, the head of L.A. Care Health Plan, a publicly operated health plan that serves about 2.3 million Medi-Cal patients in Los Angeles County.

She said that as many as 1 million people, or about 20% to 40% of its members, could lose their coverage.

The work requirement will be the first imposed nationwide in the six-decade history of Medicaid, the program that provides free and subsidized health insurance to disabled and low-income Americans.

It’s relatively uncharted territory, and it’s not yet clear how the rules will shake out for the 5.1 million people in California who will be required to prove that they are working in order to qualify for Medi-Cal, the state’s version of Medicaid.

After the 2026 midterm elections, millions of healthy adults will be required to prove every six months that they meet the work requirement in order to qualify for Medicaid. The new mandate spells out some exceptions, including for people who are pregnant, in addiction treatment or caring for children under age 14.

Democrats have long argued that work requirements generally lead to eligible people l osing their health insurance due to bureaucratic hurdles. Republicans say that a work requirement will encourage healthy people to get jobs and preserve Medicaid for those who truly need it.

“If you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana. “And you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.”

Only three U.S. states have tried to implement work requirements for Medicaid recipients: New Hampshire, Arkansas and Georgia. One study found that in the first three months of the Arkansas program, more than 18,000 people lost health coverage.

People can lose coverage a variety of ways, said Joan Alker, a Georgetown University professor who studies Medicaid. Some people hear that the rules have changed and assume they are no longer eligible. Others struggle to prove their eligibility because their income fluctuates, they are paid in cash or their jobs don’t keep good payroll records. Some have problems with the technology or forms, she said, and others don’t appeal their rejections.

Of the 15 million people on Medi-Cal in California, about one-third will be required to prove they are working, the state said. Those people earn very little: less than $21,000 for a single person and less than $43,000 for a household of four.

The state’s estimate of 3.4 million people losing coverage is a projection based on what happened in Arkansas and New Hampshire.

But those programs were brief, overturned by the courts and weren’t “a coordinated effort among the states to figure out what the best practices are,” said Ryan Long, the director of congressional relations at the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative think tank that has become influential among congressional Republicans.

Long said advancements in technology and a national emphasis on work requirements should make work verification less of a barrier. The budget bill includes $200 million in grants for states to update their systems to prepare, he said.

Arguments from liberal groups that people will lose healthcare are a “straw man argument,” Long said: “They know that the public supports work requirements for these benefits, so they can’t come out and say, ‘We don’t support them.’”

A poll by the health research group KFF found this year that 62% of American adults support tying Medicaid eligibility to work requirements.

The poll also found that support for the policy drops to less than 1 in 3 people when respondents hear “that most people on Medicaid are already working and many would risk losing coverage because of the burden of proving eligibility through paperwork.”

In June, Newsom warned that some Californians could be forced to fill out 36 pages of paperwork to keep their insurance, showing reporters an image of a stack of forms with teal and gold accents that he described as “an actual PDF example of the paperwork that people will have to submit to for their eligibility checks.”

Many Californians already are required to fill out that 36-page form or its online equivalent to enroll in Medi-Cal and Covered California, the state’s health insurance marketplace.

Experts say it’s too soon to say what system will be used for people to prove their work eligibility, because federal guidance won’t be finalized for months.

Newsom’s office directed questions to the Department of Health Care Services, which runs Medi-Cal. A spokesperson there said officials are “still reviewing the full operational impacts” of the work requirements.

“The idea that you are going to get a paper submission every six months, I’m not sure people have to do that,” Long said.

Georgia is the only state that has implemented a lasting work requirement for Medicaid. Two years ago, the state made healthcare available to people who were working at least 80 hours per month and earned less than the federal poverty limit (about $15,000 for one person or $31,200 for a household of four).

More than 100,000 people have applied for coverage since the program’s launch in July of 2023. As of June of this year, more than 8,000 people were enrolled, according to the state’s most recent data.

The Medicaid program has cost more than $100 million so far, and of that, $26 million was spent on health benefits and more than $20 million was allocated to marketing contracts, KFF Health News reported. Democrats in Georgia have sought an investigation into the program.

The Inland Empire agency that provides Medi-Cal coverage for about 1.5 million people in San Bernardino and Riverside counties estimated that 150,000 members could lose their insurance as a result of work requirements.

Jarrod McNaughton, the chief executive of the Inland Empire Health Plan, said that California’s 58 counties, which administer Medi-Cal, “will be the ones at the precipice of piecing this together” but haven’t yet received guidance on how the eligibility process will be set up or what information people will have to provide.

Will it be done online? Will recipients be required to fill out a piece of paper that needs to be mailed in or dropped off? “We don’t really know the process yet, because all of this is so new,” Naughton said.

In the meantime, he said, the health plan’s foundation is working to make this “as least burdensome as possible,” working to improve community outreach and connect people who receive Medi-Cal insurance to volunteer opportunities.

James Arthur McDonald Jr., an investor and financial analyst who frequently appeared on CNBC, was sentenced to five years in prison for defrauding investors in a multimillion-dollar scheme, the United States Attorney’s Office said on Monday.

McDonald, 53, a former San Gabriel Valley resident, was the CEO and chief investment officer of two Los Angeles-based companies: Hercules Investments LLC and Index Strategy Advisors Inc.

In late 2020, McDonald adopted a “risky short position” betting against the U.S. economy following the presidential election, with the idea that the combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the election would trigger a major sell-off in the stock market, according to the Justice Department. However, when the expected market drop did not happen, Hercules’ clients lost between $30 million and $40 million.

McDonald “solicited millions of dollars’ worth of funds from investors” for the purposes of raising capital for Hercules at the start of 2021 after clients complained to the firm’s employees about their losses. However, in doing so, McDonald “misrepresented how the funds would be used” and failed to disclose the firm’s massive losses.

According to the Justice Department, McDonald obtained $675,000 from “one victim group” and then misappropriated most of the money including spending $174,610 at a Porsche dealership and transferring an additional $109,512 to the landlord of a home he was renting in Arcadia.

McDonald also defrauded clients at Index Strategy Advisors, his other firm, said the Justice Department, using less than half of $3.6 million he raised for trading purposes on personal and other expenditures.

McDonald commingled clients’ funds with his personal bank account and used the money to buy luxury cars, pay his rent, make credit card payments, pay off Hercules operating expenses and “to make Ponzi-like payments” to Index Strategy clients — including paying some of those clients using funds from other clients.

Prosecutors claimed that McDonald caused his victims more than $3 million in losses.

“To his victims, [McDonald] seemed to embody the American Dream,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “But looks can be deceiving, and as [McDonald’s] victims learned, their trust had been betrayed.”

In November 2021, McDonald failed to appear before the Securities and Exchange Commission to testify about the allegations he had defrauded investors, and remained a fugitive until last June when he was found at a residence in Port Orchard, Wash.

At the time of his arrest, law enforcement found a fake Washington, D.C., driver’s license with his photograph and the name “Brian Thomas.”

In April 2024, a U.S. District judge found McDonald and Hercules liable for violating federal securities law and ordered them to pay millions in disgorgement and civil penalties.

McDonald pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud in February.

He will be ordered to pay restitution in this case before a United States district judge at a later date.

California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said Monday that his office has spent more than $5 million fighting the Trump administration in court over the last six months, but saved the state nearly $170 billion.

“That means that for every one dollar we’ve been given by the legislature and the governor from special session funding to do this work — and we are very grateful for that funding — we’ve returned $33,600 for the state,” Bonta said during an afternoon news conference alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Just to put it in perspective, if you told a Wall Street investor they’d get a $33,000 return on every one dollar invested, they would trip over themselves to get in on that deal.”

Bonta’s calculations are based on a mountain of litigation his office has filed against the administration since President Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20, including 37 lawsuits — many alongside other liberal-led states — and 47 amicus briefs backing other litigants’ lawsuits against the administration.

The vast majority of the savings Bonta claimed were the result of one particular lawsuit, in which California and other states successfully challenged a Trump administration effort to freeze trillions of dollars in federal funding to the states — including what Bonta said was $168 billion for California alone.

“In his first week in office, President Trump went after a full-third of California’s budget — and we went to court less than 24 hours later and stopped him in his tracks,” Bonta said.

Bonta also cited court orders his office has won protecting $7 billion in transportation funding to maintain roads, highways, bridges and other infrastructure; $939 million in education funding for after-school and summer learning and teacher preparation; $972 million in healthcare funding for identifying, tracking and addressing infectious diseases, ensuring immunizations and modernizing public health infrastructure; and $300 million for electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. However, it has previously derided California’s efforts to block Trump’s agenda in the courts. Last month, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told The Times that Newsom was “destroying” the state and that Trump has been trying to “step in and save Californians from Gavin’s incompetence.”

The state legislature during a special session in February allocated Bonta’s office an extra $25 million to staff up and fight Trump in court. As part of that allocation, the legislature required that Bonta provide regular reports on how the money is spent. Bonta and Newsom’s news conference Monday followed the first of those reports being submitted to lawmakers.

Bonta said much of the $5 million his office has spent to date was used to pay for in-house attorneys and paralegals, and that none has been spent on outside counsel. He also said that, given the pace and scope of the work to date, his office will eventually need more funding.

“We’re grateful for the $25 million and the ability to draw down that $5 million so far. We do think we will need more going into the future, and I’m hopeful that through the conversations that we have — talking about what we would use it for, our success so far, what the continuing threats are down the road — that we’ll get to a place that will work for everybody,” Bonta said.

Newsom, citing Bonta’s financially consequential wins in court already, promised he’ll get the funding.

“Let me assure you, he will not be in need of resources to do his job,” Newsom said. “This report only highlights why I feel very confident in his ability to execute and to deliver results for the people of this state.”

Bonta’s report outlined 36 lawsuits his office had brought against the Trump administration through Wednesday. Those lawsuits challenged Trump’s efforts to slash the federal workforce, cut healthcare funding and research, dismantle the Department of Education and reduce education funding. They also challenged Trump administration efforts to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and restrict voting access in California, among other things.

On Friday Bonta’s office filed its 37th lawsuit, challenging the administration’s efforts to effectively ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth nationwide.

Newsom said Bonta’s work to date shows exactly why it was necessary for him and other California leaders to call a special session and allocate the additional funds. California sued the first Trump administration more than 120 times, and they knew it would need to sue the second Trump administration, too.

“We were mindful that past is prologue,” Newsom said, and the added resources they provided Bonta’s office “have come to bear great fruit.”

Bonta said there is no time to slow down now, as the Trump administration continues to violate the law, and that his team is ready to keep fighting.

“We know that this work is just the beginning,” he said, “but we are not backing down.”

University of California leaders face a difficult choice after the U.S. Department of Justice said this week that UCLA had violated the civil rights of Jewish students during pro-Palestinian protests and federal agencies on Wednesday suspended more than $300 million in research grants to the school.

Do they agree to a costly settlement, potentially incurring the anger of taxpayers, politicians and campus communities in a deep-blue state that’s largely opposed to President Trump and his battle to remake higher education?

Or do they go to court, entering a protracted legal fight and possibly inviting further debilitating federal actions against the nation’s premier public university system, which has until now carefully avoided head-on conflicts with the White House?

Leaders of the University of California, including its systemwide president, James B. Milliken; UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk and UC’s 24-member Board of Regents — California Gov. Gavin Newsom is an ex-officio member — have just days to decide.

What led to the conflict

In findings issued Tuesday, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7, 2023. That’s when Hamas attacked Israel, which led to Israel’s war in Gaza and the pro-Palestinian student encampment on Royce Quad.

The Justice Department gave UC — which oversees federal legal matters for UCLA and nine other campuses — a week to respond to the allegations of antisemitism. It wrote that “unless there is reasonable certainty that we can reach an agreement” to “ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated and reasonable steps are taken to prevent its recurrence,” the department would sue by Sept. 2.

A day after the Justice Department disclosed its findings, the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and other federal agencies said they were suspending hundreds of grants to UCLA researchers. A letter from the NSF cited the university’s alleged “discrimination” in admissions and failure to “promote a research environment free of antisemitism.” A Department of Energy letter cutting off grants on clean energy and nuclear power plants made similar accusations, adding that “UCLA discriminates against and endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.”

Initial data shared with The Times on Thursday night showed the cuts to be at least $200 million. On Friday, additional information shared by UC and federal officials pointed to the number being greater than $300 million — more than a quarter of UCLA’s $1.1 billion in annual federal funding and contracts. UCLA has not released a total number.

In a campuswide message Thursday, Frenk, the UCLA chancellor, called the government’s moves “deeply disappointing.”

“This far-reaching penalty of defunding life-saving research does nothing to address any alleged discrimination,” Frenk said.

In a statement to The Times Friday, an official from the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH, said it would “not fund institutions that promote antisemitism. We will use every tool we have to ensure institutions follow the law.”

An NSF spokesperson also confirmed the UCLA cuts, saying Friday that the university is no longer in “alignment with current NSF priorities.” A Department of Energy spokesperson also verified the cuts but did not elaborate outside of pointing to the department’s letter to UCLA.

What comes next

The Times spoke to more than a dozen current and former senior UC leaders in addition to higher education experts about the rapid deliberations taking place this week, which for the first time have drawn a major public university system into the orbit of a White House that has largely focused its ire on Ivy League schools.

Trump has accused universities of being too liberal, illegally recruiting for diversity in ways that hurt white and Asian American students and faculty, and being overly tolerant of pro-Palestinian students who he labels as antisemites aligned with Hamas.

Universities, including UCLA, have largely denied the accusations, although school officials have admitted that they under-delivered in responding to Jewish student concerns. In the last two years, encampments took over small portions of campuses, and, as a result, were blamed for denying campus access to pro-Israel Jews.

In a major payout announced Tuesday — before the Justice Department’s findings — UCLA said it would dole out $6.45 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by three Jewish students and a medical school professor who alleged the university violated their civil rights and enabled antisemitism during the pro-Palestinian encampment in 2024. About $2.3 million will be donated to eight groups that work with Jewish communities, including the Anti-Defamation League, Chabad and Hillel. Another $320,000 will be directed to a UCLA initiative to combat antisemitism, and the rest of the funds will go toward legal fees.

Through spokespersons, Frenk and Milliken declined interviews on what next steps UCLA might take. Friday was Milliken’s first day on the job after the long-planned departure of former UC President Michael V. Drake, who will return to teaching and research.

But in public remarks this week, Newsom said he was “reviewing” the Justice Department’s findings and that UC would be “responsive.”

The governor, who spoke during an event at the former McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento County on Thursday, said he had a meeting with Drake scheduled that day to discuss the Trump administration’s charges.

Newsom did not respond specifically to a question from The Times about whether UC would settle with Trump.

“We’re reviewing the details of the DOJ’s latest and then that deadline on Tuesday,” the governor said. “So we’ll be responsive.”

In a statement Friday, Newsom said, “Freezing critical research funding for UCLA — dollars that were going to study invasive diseases, cure cancer, and build new defense technologies — makes our country less safe. It is a cruel manipulation to use Jewish students’ real concerns about antisemitism on campus as an excuse to cut millions of dollars in grants that were being used to make all Americans safer and healthier.”

What insiders say

Senior UCLA and UC leaders, who spoke on background because they were not authorized to discuss legal decisions, said the university has been bracing for this moment for months. The university and individual campuses are under multiple federal investigations into alleged use of race in admissions, employment discrimination against Jews, and civil rights complaints from Jewish students. At the same time, leaders said, they were hoping the multimillion-dollar settlement with Jewish students would buy them time.

“It backfired,” said one senior administrator at UCLA, reflecting the sense of whiplash felt among many who were interviewed. “Within hours of announcing our settlement, the DOJ was on our back.”

Other senior UC officials said the system was considering suing Trump. It has already sued various federal agencies or filed briefs in support of lawsuits over widespread grant cuts affecting all major U.S. universities. UC itself, however, has not directly challenged the president’s platform of aggressively punishing elite schools for alleged discrimination.

It’s unclear if a suit or settlement could wipe out all remaining investigations.

Mark Yudof, a former UC president who led the system from 2008 to 2013, said he felt the Trump administration was targeting a public university as a way to “make a statement” about the president’s higher education aims going beyond Ivy League institutions.

“But this is not Columbia,” Yudof said, referring to the $221-million settlement the New York campus recently reached with the White House to resolve investigations over alleged antisemitism amid its response to pro-Palestinian protests.

On Wednesday, Brown University also came to a $50-million agreement with the White House. The Brown payment will go toward Rhode Island workforce development programs. Harvard is also negotiating a deal with the government over similar accusations regarding antisemitism.

“The University of California is much more complex,” said Yudof, who lives in Florida and also led the University of Texas and University of Minnesota. “For one, an issue that may affect UCLA is not going to affect UC Merced or UC Riverside. But do you come to an agreement on all campuses? If there is a settlement payment, does it affect all campuses, depending on the cost?”

George Blumenthal, a former chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, said he “just can’t see UC making the kind of deal that Columbia did or that Harvard contemplates. Committing public funds to Washington to the tune of tens or hundreds of million dollars strikes me as politically untenable in California.”

Pro-Palestinian UCLA groups said they don’t agree with the premise of negotiations. They point out that many protesters in last year’s encampment were Jewish and argue that the protest — the focus of federal complaints — was not antisemitic.

“We reject this cynical weaponization of antisemitism, and the misinformation campaign spinning calls for Palestinian freedom as antisemitic. We must name this for what it is: a thinly-veiled attempt to punish supporters of Palestinian freedom, and to advance the long-standing conservative goal of dismantling higher education,” said a statement from Graeme Blair, a UCLA associate professor of political science, on behalf of UCLA Faculty for Justice in Palestine.

The bigger picture

Higher education experts say UC’s decision would set a national precedent. The university’s finances include more than $50 billion in operating revenues, $180 billion in investments — including endowment, retirement, and working capital portfolios — and smaller campus-level endowments. The funds support facilities across the state, including multiple academic health centers, investment properties and campuses, as well as tens of thousands of former employees enrolled in retirement plans.

Dozens of public campuses across the U.S. are under investigation or pressure from the White House to atone for alleged wrongdoing to Jewish students or to change admissions, scholarship programs and protest rules and more. But UC has long been a standard-bearer, including in academic and protest freedoms.

“If you are Trump, your target of Harvard or Brown is much easier — a snooty elite — than a public, even a UCLA or Berkeley,” said Rick Hess, an education expert with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

Kenneth Marcus, who served as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department during Trump’s first term, said there would be benefits for UCLA and the UC system to enter into a “systemwide agreement that would enable everybody to put this behind themselves.”

The Justice Department’s Tuesday letter said it was investigating all campuses but only issuing findings of violations so far at UCLA.

Marcus, chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said a systemwide agreement would “provide the federal government with assurances that the regents are making changes across the board.”

Staff writer Taryn Luna in Sacramento contributed to this report.

Japan reports one death during coastal evacuation but cancels warning across the country by Thursday afternoon.

Japan’s weather office has lifted a tsunami advisory imposed a day earlier, becoming one of the last countries to rescind the emergency order after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded hit Russia’s Far East.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued a statement lifting the advisory on Thursday, as fears of a deadly disaster subsided across the Pacific, including the United States’s West Coast and several Latin American countries, allowing millions to return to their homes.

Storm surges of up to 4 metres (12 feet) were predicted for some parts of the Pacific, after the magnitude 8.8 quake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday. Ultimately, the tsunamis produced by the earthquake were weaker than had been feared.

“There is currently no coastal area for which tsunami warnings or advisories are in force,” the Japanese agency announced on Thursday afternoon (07:45 GMT).

Almost two million people had been ordered to higher ground in Japan before the warnings were downgraded to an advisory for large stretches of its Pacific coast, with waves up to 0.7 metres still being observed earlier on Thursday.

The highest recorded waves of about 1.3 metres were observed in Kuji, Iwate Prefecture, on Wednesday afternoon, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

The only reported death from the tsunamis was a woman killed when her car fell off a cliff in Japan as she tried to escape on Wednesday, Japanese media reported.

Separately, 11 people were taken to hospital after developing symptoms of heatstroke while taking shelter in hot weather, with temperatures rising to about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some places.

In Chile, the country’s disaster response agency Senapred has downgraded its warning from “alert” to “state of precaution” in at least four areas early on Thursday.

The country had conducted what the interior ministry said was “perhaps the most massive evacuation ever carried out in our country” with 1.4 million people ordered to high ground after the earthquake on Wednesday.

Earlier, Chilean authorities reported no damage or victims and registered waves of just 60 centimetres (two feet) on the country’s north coast.

In the Galapagos Islands, where waves of up to three metres were expected, there was relief as the Ecuadorian Navy’s oceanographic institute said the danger had passed.

Residents reported the sea level falling and then rising suddenly, a phenomenon which is commonly seen with the arrival of a tsunami.

But a surge of just over a metre was reported, causing no damage.

In the US, the country’s National Weather Service originally issued tsunami “warnings” for Hawaii, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and parts of California, as well as lower-level tsunami advisories for parts of Washington and Oregon. A less serious tsunami watch was in place for the entire US West Coast.

However, the threat level for Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands was later downgraded from a warning to an advisory, meaning that people who had evacuated can now return to their homes.

The worst damage was seen in Russia, where a tsunami crashed through the port of Severo-Kurilsk and submerged the local fishing plant, officials said.

Russian state television footage showed buildings and debris swept into the sea.

The surge of water reached as far as the town’s World War II monument about 400 metres from the shoreline, said Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov.

Russian scientists reported that the Klyuchevskoy volcano erupted shortly after the earthquake.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest in the Kamchatka region since 1952, the regional seismic monitoring service said, warning of aftershocks of up to a magnitude of 7.5.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was one of the 10 strongest tremors recorded since 1900.

Although a not a full-on Thomas the Tank Engine fan, I have for 65 years been an out-there and unashamed enthusiast for anything running on rails (‘Thomas the Tank Engine clung to me like a disease’: the film about the choo-choo’s global grownup superfans, 22 July).

My wife and I sometimes do front-of-house at a heritage railway and can confirm the attraction of railways for those with autism, particularly young people. There is a predictability about railways, timetables, signals and all the other paraphernalia that is very attractive.

Also, there is endless scope for studying minutiae and collecting odd bits of information. Numbers and names on the engines, liveries (colours of trains to you), performance records and endless other statistics. And, as honoured by Brannon Carty’s film, discussed in your article, you don’t have to be a loner if you don’t want to: there are millions of others to share your passion.

The study of Thomas’s creator, the Anglican cleric Wilbert Awdry, is recreated at the Narrow Gauge Railway Museum in Tywyn: a small collection of theological texts on one side, a joyful collection of railway books on the other, with a model railway spread across his desk. Wonderful!
Rev David Gibson
Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire

The RNLI reported a staggering 17,000 people were rescued on UK beaches last year which is why it’s important to know what coloured flags indicate on UK beaches

With more and more Brits opting to holiday in the UK with staycations being one of the biggest summer travel trends, it’s important to be clued up on beach safety. New research from Visit Britain found that over 1 in 3 (35%) UK adults plan to choose a domestic holiday trip, compared to just 28% choosing an overseas trip this summer.

But worryingly, recent RNLI figures show lifeguards responded to over 17,000 people last year on UK beaches, which could have been significantly less if beachgoers understood the flag system used to mark safe and unsafe zones.

READ MORE: Beautiful European seaside city named ‘Dubai dupe’ but with cheap £87 flights

In a effort to change this, caravan holiday provider Parkdean Resorts has detailed the differnce in flag colours and what they may mean to avoid any confusion or risking danger on the beach.

One red flag

The presence of a red flag on the beach signifies that the conditions are not safe for swimming. Do not enter the water as it’s too dangerous to swim, surf or even paddle.

Two red flags

This means that the beach can’t be used for any water use, so stay clear of the sea as there is a threat.

Orange flag

The presence of an orange windsock signifies strong wind conditions, so beachgoers should be cautious when swimming. Avoid using any inflatables as they could be blown out to sea.

Red and yellow flag

A red and yellow flag at the beach signifies that lifeguards are patrolling the area. The area between the flags is the safest area to swim, paddle and use water inflatables.

Black and white flag

A black and white chequered flag signifies that the area is designated for water sports, surfing, kayaking and paddle boarding. Swimmers should avoid this area and look for red and yellow flags instead.

Blue flag

Blue flags aren’t a safety flag colour but instead they signify excellent beach quality, including water cleanliness, safety provisions and environmental management. Britain has 76 blue flag beaches and wales has 21 – there are plenty of safe options for holidaymakers.

Some of these include:

• Trevone Bay, Cornwall – a picturesque sandy cove near Padstow.
• Whitley Bay, North Tyneside – stretching along the North East coast, it offers stunning views of St Mary’s Lighthouse and features a wide promenade, clean waters, and family-friendly facilities
• Sea Palling Beach, Norfolk – located near Great Yarmouth, it’s perfect for paddling, sunbathing and beachcombing
• Trecco Bay, Wales – this long sandy beach in Porthcawl is ideal for families with safe, clean waters and seasonal lifeguards
• Westward Ho!, Devon – famous for its expansive sands and excellent surfing conditions. The beach is backed by a natural pebble ridge and has superb accessibility

Do you have a story to share? Email [email protected]

Eligible customers can pick from more than 100 holiday destinations at a discounted rate

Millions of Tesco shoppers could benefit from discounted holidays this summer. Anyone with a Clubcard could use their points to get cheaper deals from easyJet.

According to the supermarket, there are thousands of holidays to choose from, covering a range of budgets. The scheme uses your existing Clubcard vouchers, which are accumulated from points when you shop at Tesco.

These can then be exchanged for easyJet holiday credit, making them worth twice the value they were previously. This means that for every 50p in Clubcard vouchers you have, you will get £1 to use with easyJet.

The Tesco website explains: “Choose from thousands of hand-picked hotels in Europe and beyond, with a range to suit any budget. easyJet holidays has departures to over 100 destinations from airports all around the UK, often with daily or more frequent flights, meaning you can tailor your travel plans to suit you.

“Their collection of more than 5,000 hotels has everything from luxury all-inclusive, boutique city retreats and family friendly beach side resorts. Whatever you’re looking for, you can holiday with confidence with a dedicated 24 hour UK-based support team and flexibility to change your booking if plans change.

“Tempted? Exchange your Clubcard vouchers and get 2x the value, then book your package holiday at an unbeatable price with total confidence. Did we mention that all holidays are ATOL and ABTA protected too?”

How to claim your holiday

Firstly, you must make sure you have an easyJet holidays online account that matches your Tesco account email address. Your easyJet holidays account email must match the one you use for your Tesco Clubcard account.

You must then select the right amount to exchange. However, if your order exceeds the maximum annual easyJet holidays credit allowance (£300 Clubcard Voucher value = £600 easyJet holidays credit), the order will be cancelled and the Tesco Clubcard points will be refunded to your account.

Tesco.com added: “Please note, once you exchange your Clubcard vouchers for easyJet holidays credit, this is non refundable. Any unused easyJet holidays credit will not be refunded, credited, or exchanged, so only exchange the amount you need.”

You will then receive an order confirmation email. A second email will follow once easyJet holidays have validated your order.

It will contain information on how to access your easyJet holidays credit. This means you can then visit easyJet holidays to book your package holiday.

You must also remember that easyJet holidays credit is only valid for six months from the date you exchange your Clubcard vouchers. Within a 12 month period, the maximum you can exchange is £300 in Clubcard vouchers (£600 easyJet holidays credit).

You cannot use your easyJet holidays credit to book standalone easyJet flights and you must be one of the travel party on the holiday booking. You cannot share, combine or pool your easyJet holidays account(s), or credit with other family members or friends.

As of 2024, around 23 million households in the UK were registered for a Tesco Clubcard. For more information on how to claim your holiday, visit the Tesco website here.

On June 9, soon after United States President Donald Trump dispatched US National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell the protests taking place over immigration raids, California Governor Gavin Newsom posted two photographs on X. The images showed dozens of troopers wearing the National Guard uniform sleeping on the floor in a cramped space, with a caption that decried Trump for disrespecting the troops.

X users immediately turned to Grok, Elon Musk’s AI, which is integrated directly into X, to fact-check the veracity of the image. For that, they tagged @grok in a reply to the tweet in question, triggering an automatic response from the AI.

“You’re sharing fake photos,” one user posted, citing a screenshot of Grok’s response that claimed a reverse image search could not find the exact source. In another instance, Grok said the images were recycled from 2021, when former US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, withdrew troops from Afghanistan. Melissa O’Connor, a conspiracy-minded influencer, cited a ChatGPT analysis that also said the images were from the Afghanistan evacuation.

However, non-partisan fact-checking organisation PolitiFact found that both AI citations were incorrect. The images shared by Newsom were real, and had been published in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The bot-sourced erroneous fact checks formed the basis for hours of cacophonous debates on X, before Grok corrected itself.

Unlike OpenAI’s standalone app ChatGPT, Grok’s integration into X offers users immediate access to real-time AI answers without quitting the app, a feature that has been reshaping user behaviour since its March launch. However, the increasingly first stop for fact checks during breaking news or for other general posts often provides convincing but inaccurate answers.

“I think in some ways, it helps, and in some ways, it doesn’t,” said Theodora Skeadas, an AI policy expert formerly at Twitter. “People have more access to tools that can serve a fact-checking function, which is a good thing. However, it is harder to know when the information isn’t accurate.”

There’s no denying that chatbots could help users be more informed and gain context on events unfolding in real time. But currently, its tendency to make things up outstrips its usefulness.

Chatbots, including ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, are large language models (LLMs) that learn to predict the next word in a sequence by analysing enormous troves of data from the internet. The outputs of chatbots are reflections of the patterns and biases in the data it is trained on, which makes them prone to factual errors and misleading information called “hallucinations”.

For Grok, these inherent challenges are further complicated because of Musk’s instructions that the chatbot should not adhere to political correctness, and should be suspicious of mainstream sources. Where other AI models have guidelines around politically sensitive queries, Grok doesn’t. The lack of guardrails has resulted in Grok praising Hitler, and consistently parroting anti-Semitic views, sometimes to unrelated user questions.

In addition, Grok’s reliance on public posts by users on X, which aren’t always accurate, as a source for its real-time answers to some fact checks, adds to its misinformation problem.

‘Locked into a misinformation echo chamber’

Al Jazeera analysed two of the most highly discussed posts on X from June to investigate how often Grok tags in replies to posts were used for fact-checking. The posts analysed were Gavin Newsom’s on the LA protests, and Elon Musk’s allegations that Trump’s name appears in the unreleased documents held by US federal authorities on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Musk’s allegations on X have since been deleted.

Our analysis of the 434 replies that tagged Grok in Newsom’s post found that the majority of requests, nearly 68 percent, wanted Grok to either confirm whether the images Newsom posted were authentic or get context about National Guard deployment.

Beyond the straightforward confirmation, there was an eclectic mix of requests: some wanted Grok to make funny AI images based on the post, others asked Grok to narrate the LA protests in pirate-speak. Notably, a few users lashed out because Grok had made the correction, and wouldn’t endorse their flawed belief.

“These photos are from Afghanistan. This was debunked a couple day[s] go. Good try tho @grok is full of it,” one user wrote, two days after Grok corrected itself.

The analysis of the top 3,000 posts that mentioned @grok in Musk’s post revealed that half of all user queries directed at Grok were to “explain” the context and sought background information on the Epstein files, which required descriptive details.

Another 20 percent of queries demanded “fact checks” whose primary goal was to confirm or deny Musk’s assertions, while 10 percent of users shared their “opinion”, questioning Musk’s motives and credibility, and wanted Grok’s judgement or speculation on possible futures of Musk-Trump fallout.

“I will say that I do worry about this phenomenon becoming ingrained,” said Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, about the instant fact checks. “Even if it’s better than just believing a tweet straight-up or hurling abuse at the poster, it doesn’t do a ton for our collective critical thinking abilities to expect an instant fact check without taking the time to reflect about the content we’re seeing.”

Grok was called on 2.3 million times in just one week —between June 5 and June 12— to answer posts on X, data accessed by Al Jazeera through X’s API shows, underscoring how deeply this behaviour has taken root.

“X is keeping people locked into a misinformation echo chamber, in which they’re asking a tool known for hallucinating, that has promoted racist conspiracy theories, to fact-check for them,” Alex Mahadevan, a media literacy educator at the Poynter Institute, told Al Jazeera.

Mahadevan has spent years teaching people how to “read laterally”, which means when you encounter information on social media, you leave the page or post, and go search for reliable sources to check something out. But he now sees the opposite happening with Grok. “I didn’t think X could get any worse for the online information ecosystem, and every day I am proved wrong.”

Grok’s inconsistencies in fact-checking are already reshaping opinions in some corners of the internet. Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), which studies disinformation, analysed 130,000 posts related to the Israel-Iran war to understand the wartime verification efficacy of Grok. “The investigation found that Grok was inconsistent in its fact-checking, struggling to authenticate AI-generated media or determine whether X accounts belong to an official Iranian government source,” the authors noted.

Grok has also incorrectly blamed a trans pilot for a helicopter crash in Washington, DC; claimed the assassination attempt on Trump was partially staged; conjured up a criminal history for an Idaho shooting suspect; echoed anti-Semitic stereotypes of Hollywood; and misidentified an Indian journalist as an opposition spy during the recent India-Pakistan conflict.

Despite this growing behaviour shift of instant fact checks, it is worth noting that the 2025 Digital News Report by Reuters Institute showed that online populations in several countries still preferred going to news sources or fact checkers over AI chatbots by a large margin.

“Even if that’s not how all of them behave, we should acknowledge that some of the “@grok-ing” that we’re seeing is also a bit of a meme, with some folks using it to express disagreement or hoping to trigger a dunking response to the original tweet,” Mantzarlis said.

Mantzarlis’s assessment is echoed in our findings. Al Jazeera’s analysis of the Musk-Trump feud showed that about 20 percent used Grok for things ranging from trolling or dunking directed at either Musk or Grok itself, to requests for AI meme-images such as Trump with kids on Epstein island, and other non-English language requests including translations. (We used GPT-4.1 to assist in identifying the various categories the 3,000 posts belonged to, and manually checked the categorisations.)

Beyond real-time fact-checking, “I worry about the image-generation abuse most of all because we have seen Grok fail at setting the right guardrails on synthetic non-consensual intimate imagery, which we know to be the #1 vector of abuse from deepfakes to date,” Mantzarlis said.

For years, social media users benefited from context on the information they encountered online with interventions such as labeling state media or introducing fact-checking warnings.

But after buying X in 2022, Musk ended those initiatives and loosened speech restrictions. He also used the platform as a megaphone to amplify misinformation on widespread election fraud, and to boost conservative theories on race and immigration. Earlier this year, xAI acquired X in an all-stock deal valued at $80bn. Musk also replaced human fact-checking with a voluntary crowdsource programme called Community Notes, to police misleading content on X.

Instead of a centralised professional fact-checking authority, a contextual “note” with corrections is added to misleading posts, based on the ratings the note receives from users with diverse perspectives. Meta soon followed X and abandoned its third-party fact-checking programme for Community Notes.

Research shows that Community Notes is indeed viewed as more trustworthy and has proven to be faster than traditional centralised fact-checking. The median time to attach a note to a misleading post has dropped to under 14 hours in February, from 30 hours in 2023, a Bloomberg analysis found.

But the programme has also been flailing— with diminished volunteer contributions, less visibility for posts that are corrected, and notes on contentious topics having a higher chance of being removed.

Grok, however, is faster than Community Notes. “You can think of the Grok mentions today as what an automated AI fact checker would look like — it’s super fast but nowhere near as reliable as Community Notes because no humans were involved,” Soham De, a Community Notes researcher and PhD student at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera. “There’s a delicate balance between speed and reliability.”

X is trying to bridge this gap by supercharging the pace of creation of contextual notes. On July 1, X piloted the “AI Note Writer,” enabling developers to create AI bots to write community notes alongside human contributors on misleading posts.

According to researchers involved in the project, LLM-written notes can be produced faster with high-quality contexts, speeding up the note generation for fact checks.

But these AI contributors must still go through the human rating process that makes Community Notes trustworthy and reliable today, De said. This human-AI system works better than what human contributors can manage alone, De and other co-authors said in a preprint of the research paper published alongside the official X announcement.

Still, the researchers themselves highlighted its limitations, noting that using AI to write notes could lead to risks of persuasive but inaccurate responses by the LLM.

Grok vs Musk

On Wednesday, xAI launched its latest flagship model, Grok 4. On stage, Musk boasted about the current model capabilities as the leader on Humanity’s Last Exam, a collection of advanced reasoning problems that help measure AI progress.

Such confidence belied recent struggles with Grok. In February, xAI patched an issue after Grok suggested that Trump and Musk deserve the death penalty. In May, Grok ranted about a discredited conspiracy of the persecution of white people in South Africa for unrelated queries on health and sports, and xAI clarified that it was because of an unauthorised modification by a rogue employee. A few days later, Grok gave inaccurate results on the death toll of the Holocaust, which it said was due to a programming error.

Grok has also butted heads with Musk. In June, while answering a user question on whether political violence is higher on the left or the right, Grok cited data from government sources and Reuters, to draw the conclusion that, “right-wing political violence has been more frequent and deadly, with incidents like the January 6 Capitol riot and mass shootings.”

“Major fail, as this is objectively false. Grok is parroting legacy media,” Musk said, adding, there was “far too much garbage in any foundation model trained on uncorrected data.”

Musk has also chided Grok for not sharing his distrust of mainstream news outlets such as Rolling Stone and Media Matters. Subsequently, Musk said he would “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge” by adding missing information and deleting errors in Grok’s training data, calling on his followers to share “divisive facts” which are “politically incorrect but nonetheless factually true” for retraining the forthcoming version on the model.

That’s the thorny truth about LLMs. Just as they are likely to make things up, they can also offer answers grounded in truth — even at the peril of their creators. Though Grok gets things wrong, Mahadevan of the Poynter Institute said, it does get facts right while citing credible news outlets, fact-checking sites, and government data in its replies.

On July 6, xAI updated the chatbot’s public system prompt that directs its responses to be “politically incorrect” and to “assume subjective viewpoints sourced from the media are biased”.

Two days later, the chatbot shocked everyone by praising Adolf Hitler as the best person to handle “anti-white hate”. X deleted the inflammatory posts later that day, and xAI removed the guidelines to not adhere to political correctness from its code base.

Grok 4 was launched against this backdrop, and in the less than two days that it has been available, researchers have already begun noticing some weird modifications.

When asked for its opinion on politically sensitive questions such as who does Grok 4 support in the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, it sometimes runs a search to find out Musk’s stance on the subject, before returning an answer, according to at least five AI researchers who independently reproduced the results.

“It first searches Twitter for what Elon thinks. Then it searches the web for Elon’s views. Finally, it adds some non-Elon bits at the end,” Jeremy Howard, a prominent Australian data scientist, wrote in a post on X, pointing out that “54 of 64 citations are about Elon.”

Researchers also expressed surprise over the reintroduction of the directive for Grok 4 to be “politically incorrect”, despite this code having been removed from its predecessor, Grok 3.

Experts said political manipulation could risk losing institutional trust and might not be good for Grok’s business.

“There’s about to be a structural clash as Musk tries to get the xAI people to stop it from being woke, to stop saying things that are against his idea of objective fact,” said Alexander Howard, an open government and transparency advocate based in Washington, DC. “In which case, it won’t be commercially viable to businesses which, at the end of the day, need accurate facts to make decisions.”