violence

As President Trump declared Washington, D.C., a crime-ridden wasteland in need of federal intervention last week and threatened similar actions in other Black-led cities, several mayors compared notes.

The president’s characterization of their cities contradicts what they began noticing last year: that they were seeing a drop in violent crime after a pandemic-era spike. In some cases the declines were monumental, due in large part to more youth engagement, gun buyback programs and community partnerships.

Now members of the African American Mayors Assn. are determined to stop Trump from burying accomplishments that they already believed were overlooked. And they’re using the administration’s unprecedented law enforcement takeover in the nation’s capital as an opportunity to disprove his narrative about some of the country’s greatest urban enclaves.

“It gives us an opportunity to say we need to amplify our voices to confront the rhetoric that crime is just running rampant around major U.S. cities. It’s just not true,” said Van Johnson, mayor of Savannah, Ga., and president of the African American Mayors Assn. “It’s not supported by any evidence or statistics whatsoever.”

Trump has deployed the first of 800 National Guard members to the nation’s capital, and at his request, the Republican governors of three states pledged hundreds more Saturday. West Virginia said it was sending 300 to 400 Guard troops, South Carolina pledged 200, and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days, marking a significant escalation of the federal intervention.

Beyond Washington, the Republican president is setting his sights on other cities including Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles and Oakland, calling them crime-ridden and “horribly run.” One thing they all have in common: They’re led by Black mayors.

“It was not lost on any member of our organization that the mayors either were Black or perceived to be Democrats,” Johnson said. “And that’s unfortunate. For mayors, we play with whoever’s on the field.”

The federal government’s actions have heightened some of the mayors’ desires to champion the strategies used to help make their cities safer.

Some places are seeing dramatic drops in crime rates

Trump argued that federal law enforcement had to step in after a prominent employee of his White House advisory team known as the Department of Government Efficiency was attacked in an attempted carjacking. He also pointed to homeless encampments, graffiti and potholes as evidence of Washington “getting worse.”

But statistics published by Washington’s Metropolitan Police contradict the president and show violent crime has dropped there since a post-pandemic-emergency peak in 2023.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson scoffed at Trump’s remarks, hailing the city’s “historic progress driving down homicides by more than 30% and shootings by almost 40% in the last year alone.”

Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, where homicides fell 14% from 2023 to 2024, called the federal takeover in District of Columbia a performative “power grab.”

In Baltimore, officials say they have seen historic decreases in homicides and nonfatal shootings this year, and those have been on the decline since 2022, according to the city’s public safety data dashboard. Carjackings were down 20% in 2023, and other major crimes fell in 2024. Only burglaries have climbed slightly.

The lower crime rates are attributed to tackling violence with a “public health” approach, city officials say. In 2021, under Mayor Brandon Scott, Baltimore created a Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan that called for more investment in community violence intervention, more services for crime victims and other initiatives.

Scott accused Trump of exploiting crime as a “wedge issue and dog whistle” rather than caring about curbing violence.

“He has actively undermined efforts that are making a difference saving lives in cities across the country in favor of militarized policing of Black communities,” Scott said via email.

The Democratic mayor pointed out that the Justice Department has slashed more than $1 million in funding this year that would have gone toward community anti-violence measures. He vowed to keep on making headway regardless.

“We will continue to closely work with our regional federal law enforcement agencies, who have been great partners, and will do everything in our power to continue the progress despite the roadblocks this administration attempts to implement,” Scott said.

Oakland officials this month touted significant decreases in crime in the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2024, including a 21% drop in homicides and a 29% decrease in all violent crime, according to the midyear report by the Major Cities Chiefs Assn. Officials credited collaborations with community organizations and crisis response services through the city’s Department of Violence Prevention, established in 2017.

“These results show that we’re on the right track,” Mayor Barbara Lee said at a news conference. “We’re going to keep building on this progress with the same comprehensive approach that got us here.”

After the president gave his assessment of Oakland last week, Lee, a steadfast Trump antagonist during her years in Congress, rejected it as “fearmongering.”

Social justice advocates agree that crime has gone down and say Trump is perpetuating exaggerated perceptions that have long plagued Oakland.

Nicole Lee, executive director of Urban Peace Movement, an Oakland-based organization that focuses on empowering communities of color and young people through initiatives such as leadership training and assistance to victims of gun violence, said much credit for the gains on lower crime rates is due to community groups.

“We really want to acknowledge all of the hard work that our network of community partners and community organizations have been doing over the past couple of years coming out of the pandemic to really create real community safety,” Lee said. “The things we are doing are working.”

She worries that an intervention by military troops would undermine that progress.

“It creates kind of an environment of fear in our community,” she said.

Patrols and youth curfews

In Washington, agents from multiple federal agencies, National Guard members and even the United States Park Police have been seen performing law enforcement duties including patrolling the National Mall and questioning people parked illegally.

Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson said the National Guard troops will not be armed, but he declined to elaborate on their assignments to safety patrols and beautification efforts.

Savannah’s Johnson said he is all for partnering with the federal government, but troops on city streets is not what he envisioned. Instead, he said, cities need federal assistance for things like multistate investigation and fighting problems such as gun trafficking and cybercrime.

“I’m a former law enforcement officer. There is a different skill set that is used for municipal law enforcement agencies than the military,” Johnson said.

There has also been speculation that federal intervention could entail curfews for young people.

But that would do more harm, Lee said, disproportionately affecting young people of color and wrongfully assuming that youths are the main instigators of violence.

“If you’re a young person, basically you can be cited, criminalized, simply for being outside after certain hours,” she said. “Not only does that not solve anything in regard to violence and crime, it puts young people in the crosshairs of the criminal justice system.”

A game of wait-and-see

For now, Johnson said, the mayors are closely watching their counterpart in Washington, Muriel Bowser, to see how she navigates the unprecedented federal intervention. She has been walking a fine line between critiquing and cooperating since Trump’s takeover, but things ramped up Friday when officials sued to block the administration’s naming its Drug Enforcement Administration chief as an “emergency” head of the police force. The administration soon backed away from that move.

Johnson praised Bowser for carrying on with dignity and grace.

“Black mayors are resilient. We are intrinsically children of struggle,” Johnson said. “We learn to adapt quickly, and I believe that we will and we are.”

Tang writes for the Associated Press.

Investigators believe up to four shooters opened fire with multiple weapons in the early hours of Sunday

At least three men have been killed and eight others wounded after a shooting in a crowded New York City club in Brooklyn.

Investigators believe up to four shooters opened fire with multiple weapons  early on Sunday just before 3:30am (07:30 GMT) at Taste of the City Lounge in the neighbourhood of Crown Heights after “a dispute”, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch told reporters.

“It’s a terrible shooting that occurred in the city of New York,” Tisch said at a news briefing. She said officers are investigating at least 36 shell casings from the lounge, as well as a firearm that was discovered in a nearby street.

Those wounded in the shooting — eight men and three women — are being treated at hospitals for non-life-threatening injuries, she said.

The shooting comes amid a record low year for gun violence in New York City. “I mean, we have the lowest numbers of shooting incidents and shooting victims seven months into the year that we’ve seen on record in the city of New York,” Tisch said. “Something like this is, of course, thank God, an anomaly. And it’s a terrible thing that happened this morning, but we’re going to investigate and get to the bottom of what went down.”

A gunman who killed five people, including himself, in late July inside a midtown Manhattan office, was seeking out the headquarters of the National Football League (NFL), which he blamed for the brain injuries he suffered from, according to New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Violence in Serbia has erupted, involving government supporters, police and anticorruption demonstrators who have been on the streets for months, demanding elections

President Aleksandar Vucic says the protests are part of a foreign plot to oust him.

Why has violence flared up – and what’s next?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests:

Mirko Dautovic – International affairs commentator for Balkan media

Florian Bieber – Professor of Southeast European history and politics at Graz University

Tatyana Kekic – Correspondent covering Serbia for bne IntelliNews

The day after Eid al-Fitr, a festive period for Muslims, is usually quiet; a time for rest, reflection, and recovery for most tailors who had had sleepless nights to ensure people looked colourful during the celebrations. For Abubakar Ibrahim, this March, it became a day etched in trauma.

It began as a brawl between two boys from neighbouring communities, Tunga Sabon Titi and Maje, divided only by a narrow stretch of road in Minna, the capital of Niger State in North Central Nigeria. The brawl quickly escalated into a full-blown gang clash, drawing in allies and sympathisers from both sides.

Ibrahim, a tailor and student in his early twenties, was at home when the commotion began. “I was heading somewhere when I heard the rants ‘karya ne wallahi, Ba sulhu [It’s a lie, no reconciliation]’,” he recalled. “While all this was happening, vigilantes were trying to disperse the crowd as we stood and watched.”

Moments later, gunfire shattered the air. He never saw it coming; six pellets from a Dane gun tore into him. Two lodged near his clavicle, the rest in his lap. “I didn’t realise I was hit until someone drew my attention while we were running,” he told HumAngle. “Then I felt dizzy, my leg went numb, and I collapsed.”

Residents told HumAngle that Mada, a local vigilante, had been aiming at the gang when his bullet missed and struck Ibrahim, who had no part in the clash or any gang activity. He was simply trying to earn a living, yet became another innocent casualty in a pattern of violence that has become disturbingly familiar in Minna.

Tracing the origins

Investigations by HumAngle trace the roots of Minna’s gang violence to long-standing turf rivalries between youths in neighbourhoods in the mid-2000s, when loosely organised gangs, locally called Yan Daba, engaged in sporadic confrontations, largely confined to street-level disputes.

Over time, the scale and lethality of these conflicts grew. Neighbourhood rivalries now pit entire communities such as Limawa, Unguwan Daji, Bosso, Soje, Kpakungu, Barikin Sale, against each other. Festive periods, school closures, and political transitions frequently trigger violent episodes, often leaving deaths, injuries, and property destruction in their wake. Some sources within these communities said the violence sometimes happens as weekend fights over petty theft, insults, or territory.

These confrontations have also spilt into schools, with rivals asserting dominance through violence. Schools such as Zarumai Model in Bosso, Government Day Secondary School in Unguwan Daji, Father O’Connell Science College (formerly Government Secondary School), and Hill Top Model Schools have all witnessed inter-school violent gang clashes, sometimes ending in serious injuries or deaths.

HumAngle has previously documented the activities of a gang with the same name in northwestern Nigeria’s Kano, where they terrorised neighbourhoods, showing that this style of youth-driven violence is not confined to one city.

These gangs are usually armed with daggers, cutlasses, and sharp weapons like scissors, animal horns, and screwdrivers. 

This violence is not confined to the past. In a pre-dawn sting operation in April, police officers in Niger State arrested 24 suspected criminals linked to thuggery and armed robbery in Maitumbi, a troubled suburb of Minna. The coordinated raid, led by the Anti-Thuggery Unit and backed by local police divisions and vigilantes, targeted crime hotspots like Angwan-Roka, Kwari-Berger, Flamingo, and Tudun Wada, following a surge in youth violence and gang activity, according to police spokesperson Wasiu Abiodun.

In March, the state Ministry of Basic and Secondary Education shut down Government Day Secondary School, Bosso Road, and Father O’Connell Science College in Minna, after assessing ongoing conflicts between students and local youths, some posing as students.

Although many incidents go unreported, they continue to claim lives and property.

In April last year, a violent clash between rival gangs in the Maitumbi area left two dead, with shops, vehicles, and tricycles damaged. The police confirmed the arrest of six suspects connected to the incident and stated that efforts were underway to apprehend others involved. 

Later in December, a 15-year-old boy, Saidu Ubu, was killed in another fight between rival groups from Gurgudu and Kwari-Berger. The altercation, which began as a minor dispute late at night, quickly escalated into a brutal fight that caused panic among residents. By the time police arrived, the attackers had fled.

More recently, police arrested 18-year-old Jamilu Abdullahi, known as Zabo, over alleged armed robbery, culpable homicide, and gang violence in several of the affected communities.

Caught in the fix

For residents like Ibrahim, these flare-ups are more than news headlines; they are life-altering. After he collapsed due to the gunshots, his brother rushed to the scene and took him to Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida Specialist Hospital, a nearby public medical facility.  

But the ordeal was far from over. 

When they arrived at the hospital, they were told that there were no doctors available to attend to him at the moment. “They only gave me some injections but didn’t attempt to remove the bullets,” Ibrahim recounted. 

Four days later, still in pain, his family turned to a local hunter in nearby Wushishi known for removing Dane gun pellets. The hunter succeeded where the hospital had failed.

“I was unconscious when I arrived at the hospital,” Ibrahim said. “I only woke up there. But the bullets stayed in me for four days until they were removed by the local hunter.”

The recovery was slow and painful. Ibrahim missed his exams, adding academic loss to physical trauma. “It took me a while [over a month] to recover,” he said quietly.

The vigilante accused of shooting him was reportedly arrested, but Ibrahim has heard nothing since; no justice, no closure. 

Residents who spoke to HumAngle expressed concerns over the lingering menace that has not only continued to affect their loved ones but has also left them worried about having to raise their children in such an environment.

“I do not want my child to grow up witnessing this violence and someday be influenced to partake in it. It will break my heart,” said Danlami Shittu, a designer whose shop is just metres away from where Ibrahim was shot. “Every festive period, we hold our breath. These boys do not just fight; they settle old scores. Yet those of us who are not involved still pay the price.”

The missing links

Aminu Muhammad, a consultant in peace and conflict management, said the roots of this crisis lie deep within the decay of societal values and systemic neglect and a defect in the state’s justice and security frameworks.

He identified poor parenting as a primary driver of youth delinquency in the city, noting that many parents in the city are disengaged from their children’s lives, unaware of where they live or who they associate with.

This parental neglect has created a vacuum filled by peer influence and street culture, pushing many youths toward gang affiliation. “You must first take care of your children before they become more acceptable in society,” he told HumAngle.

Beyond the home, Dr. Aminu, who is also a lecturer at the Abdullahi Kure University, Minna, revealed that lack of access to education and vocational training has left many young people idle and vulnerable. Those who cannot enrol in formal schools are rarely offered alternatives to learn trades or acquire skills that could make them self-reliant. This absence of opportunity often translates into frustration and a turn toward violence.

Dr. Aminu also points to the failure of security agencies and the justice system. 

“When there are calls to security personnel during violent encounters, the response is often delayed. These delays allow attackers to escape and victims to retaliate, perpetuating a cycle of violence,” he added. “Even when arrests are made, the lack of stern punishment mechanisms undermines accountability. These guys are granted bail or discharged without much consequence. Influential persons and even government officials sometimes intervene to secure their release.”

To stem the tide of violence, the conflict management consultant suggested a multi-pronged approach: stronger parental involvement, public sensitisation through the National Orientation Agency, and a tougher security and judicial framework. Without this, he warns, Minna risks losing its identity as a peaceful city and its youth to the streets. 

Bello Abdullahi, the state’s Commissioner for Homeland Security, did not respond to multiple calls and messages requesting official comments on the issue.

For Ibrahim, the physical wounds have healed, and he has returned to his tailoring, but the emotional scars will outlast the headlines. And for other casualties of this violence, their stories never even make it that far.

“I want peace. Not just for me, but for all of us,” Ibrahim said.

A total of 22,000 cases registered in province in 2023; in first five months of 2024, figure had already reached 17,000.

Healthcare providers in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) treated more than 17,000 victims of sexual violence over just five months last year, according to a United Nations report.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, released on Thursday, said the cases were registered in the province of North Kivu between January and May last year, as fighting between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels intensified.

“Many survivors sought care after violent sexual attacks, including penetration with objects, perpetrated by multiple perpetrators,” said the report, which charted crimes like rape, gang rape and sexual slavery.

The conflict, which has killed thousands this year alone and displaced millions, is still ongoing despite a Qatar-mediated agreement between DRC and M23 last month that was supposed to pave the way to a ceasefire, running parallel to United States efforts to broker peace between Kinshasa and Kigali.

Last year’s figure marked a continued surge in sexual violence as the Rwanda-backed M23 rampaged through the east, with a total of 22,000 cases registered throughout 2023. That figure was more than double the previous year’s tally.

In 2023, the spike in violence occurred as the conflict spilled over from North Kivu into South Kivu, forcing UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to withdraw from the latter.

The report said that MONUSCO’s operations narrowed, “owing to military operations and widespread insecurity”. The mission had documented 823 cases of sexual violence in 2024, affecting 416 women, 391 girls, seven boys and nine men.

The UN said that 198 of last year’s cases were perpetrated by DRC “state actors”, including the army. It found that “M23 elements”, which “continued to receive instructions and support from the Rwanda Defence Force”, were implicated in 152 cases.

According to the report, survivors reported that they were exposed to the threat of sexual violence while searching for food in the fields and areas around displacement sites.

Many displaced women had resorted to prostitution to survive, “highlighting the nexus between food insecurity and sexual violence”.

Denis Mukwege, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work combating sexual violence in DRC, told The Times newspaper this year: “When you have people raping with complete immunity – and think they can go on and on without any consequence, nothing will change.”

Guterres’s report charted violations in 21 countries, with the highest numbers recorded in DRC, the Central African Republic, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan.

While women and girls made up 92 percent of victims, men and boys were also targeted.

The clashes in March included murder, torture and other ‘inhumane acts’ that UN investigators say amount to war crimes.

War crimes were likely committed by members of interim government forces and fighters aligned with former President Bashar al-Assad during an outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal areas in March, according to a United Nations report.

Some 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were reported killed during the violence that primarily targeted Alawite communities, and reports of violations have continued, according to the report released on Thursday by the UN Syria Commission of Inquiry.

“The scale and brutality of the violence documented in our report is deeply disturbing,” said Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, chair of the commission, in a statement.

Torture, killings and inhumane acts related to the treatment of the dead were documented by the UN team, which based its research on more than 200 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as visits to mass grave sites.

“The violations included acts that likely amount to war crimes,” the UN investigators said.

Alawite men were separated from women and children, then led away and killed, the report found.

“Bodies were left in the streets for days, with families prevented from conducting burials in accordance with religious rites, while others were buried in mass graves without proper documentation,” the commission said.

Hospitals became overwhelmed as a result of the killings.

The commission found that even while the interim government’s forces sought to stop violations and protect civilians, certain members “extrajudicially executed, tortured and ill-treated civilians in multiple [Alawite] majority villages and neighbourhoods in a manner that was both widespread and systematic”.

However, the report said the commission “found no evidence of a governmental policy or plan to carry out such attacks”. It also found that pro-Assad armed groups had committed “acts that likely amount to crimes, including war crimes” during the violence.

“We call on the interim authorities to continue to pursue accountability for all perpetrators, regardless of affiliation or rank,” Pinheiro said.

“While dozens of alleged perpetrators of violations have reportedly since been arrested, the scale of the violence documented in our report warrants expanding such efforts.”

The incidents in the coastal region were the worst violence in Syria since al-Assad was toppled last December, prompting the interim government to name a fact-finding committee.

The committee in July said it had identified 298 suspects implicated in serious violations during the violence in the country’s Alawite heartland.

The committee’s report then stated there was no evidence that Syria’s military leadership ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

Syrian authorities have accused gunmen loyal to al-Assad of instigating the violence, launching deadly attacks that killed dozens of security personnel.

According to the commission, the deadly attacks by pro-former government fighters began after Syrian interim authorities launched an arrest operation on March 6.

The government committee said 238 members of the army and security forces were killed in the attacks in the provinces of Tartous, Latakia and Hama.

100m champion Sha’Carri Richardson addresses domestic violence arrest and apologizes to boyfriend Christian Coleman.

Sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson has addressed her recent domestic violence arrest in a video on social media and issued an apology to her boyfriend Christian Coleman.

Richardson posted a video on her Instagram account Monday night in which she said she put herself in a “compromised situation”. She issued a written apology to Coleman on Tuesday morning.

“I love him & to him I can’t apologize enough,” the reigning 100-meter world champion wrote in all capital letters on Instagram, adding that her apology “should be just as loud” as her “actions”.

“To Christian I love you & I am so sorry,” she wrote.

Richardson was arrested on July 27 on a fourth-degree domestic violence offence for allegedly assaulting Coleman at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. She was booked into South Correctional Entity in Des Moines, Washington, for more than 18 hours.

Her arrest was days before she ran the 100 metres at the US championships in Eugene, Oregon.

In the video, Richardson said she’s practising “self-reflection” and refuses “to run away but face everything that comes to me head on”.

According to the police report, an officer at the airport was notified by a Transportation Security Administration supervisor of a disturbance between Richardson and her boyfriend, Coleman, the 2019 world 100-metre champion.

The officer reviewed camera footage and observed Richardson reach out with her left arm and grab Coleman’s backpack and yank it away. Richardson then appeared to get in Coleman’s way, with Coleman trying to step around her. Coleman was shoved into a wall.

Later in the report, it said Richardson appeared to throw an item at Coleman, with the TSA indicating it may have been headphones.

The officer said in the report: “I was told Coleman did not want to participate any further in the investigation and declined to be a victim.”

A message was left with Coleman from The Associated Press.

Richardson wrote that Coleman “came into my life & gave me more than a relationship but a greater understanding of unconditional love from what I’ve experienced in my past”.

She won the 100 at the 2023 world championships in Budapest and finished with the silver at the Paris Games last summer. She also helped the 4×100 relay team to an Olympic gold.

She didn’t compete during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, following a positive marijuana test at the US Olympic trials.

Victims not immediately identified after deadly attack at popular store in the state capital, Austin.

A gunman has opened fire in the parking lot of a Target store in Texas, United States, killing three people, according to authorities.

The attack occurred on Monday in the state’s capital, Austin, with Chief of Police Lisa Davis describing the attacker as a man in his 30s with “a mental health history”.

After the shooting, the man fled the scene in a stolen car, which he later crashed. He then stole another car from a nearby dealership before he was captured.

Emergency responders found the three victims, who were not immediately identified, when they arrived at the scene. Two were pronounced dead immediately, with a third pronounced dead at a hospital.

“This is a very sad day for Austin. It’s a very sad day for us all, and my condolences go out to the families,” Davis said.

The attack occurred shortly before schools restart in the country, in what is commonly a popular time for shopping.

In a post on X, Austin Mayor Kirk Watson called the attack a “devastating situation”.

“My heart is with the victims and their families,” he said. “While this remains an active and ongoing investigation, what I’ll say is that this was a sickening, cowardly act of gun violence.”

The Target attack comes just over two weeks after an attack at a Walmart store in Michigan.

A man stabbed 11 people at the store in Traverse City on July 26, and has been charged with “terrorism” and multiple counts of attempted murder.

In late July, a 27-year-old man fatally shot five people in Midtown Manhattan, in the deadliest shooting in the city in more than two decades.

Gun violence has been a leading driver of crime in the US. According to the database Gun Violence Archives, there have been 9,143 gun-related deaths and 269 mass shootings so far in 2025.

Well, at least they’re not eating the cats and dogs.

To hear President Trump tell it, Washington, D.C., has become a barbarous hellhole — worse even than Springfield, Ohio, it would seem, where he accused Black immigrants, many from Somalia, of barbecuing pets last year during the campaign.

Back then, Trump was just a candidate. Now, he’s the commander in chief of the U.S. military with a clear desire to use troops of war on American streets, whether it’s for a fancy birthday parade, to enforce his immigration agenda in Los Angeles or to stop car thefts in the nation’s capital.

“It’s becoming a situation of complete and total lawlessness,” Trump said during a Monday news conference, announcing that he was calling up National Guard troops to help with domestic policing in D.C.

“We’ll get rid of the slums, too. We have slums here. We’ll get rid of them,” he said. “I know it’s not politically correct. You’ll say, ‘Oh, so terrible.’ No, we’re getting rid of the slums where they live.”

Where “they” live.

While the use of the military on American streets is alarming, it should be just as scary how blatantly this president is tying race not just to crime, but to violence so uncontrollable it requires military troops to stop it. Tying race to criminality is nothing new, of course. It’s a big part of American history and our justice system has unfortunately been steeped in it, from the Jim Crow era to the 1990s war on drugs, which targeted inner cities with the same rhetoric that Trump is recycling now.

The difference between that last attack on minorities — started by President Nixon and lasting through Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, also under the guise of law and order — and our current circumstances is that in this instance, the notion of war isn’t just hyperbole. We are literally talking about soldiers in the streets, targeting Black and brown people. Whether they are car wash employees in California or teenagers on school break in D.C., actual crimes don’t seem to matter. Skin color is enough for law enforcement scrutiny, a sad and dangerous return to an era before civil rights.

“Certainly the language that President Trump is using with regard to D.C. has a message that’s racially based,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law.

Chemerinsky pointed out that just a few days ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals called out the Trump administration for immigration raids that were unconstitutional because they were basically racial sweeps. But he is unabashed. His calls for violence against people of color are escalating. It increasingly appears that bringing troops to Los Angeles was a test case for a larger use of the military in civilian settings.

President Trump holds up a chart in front of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth during Monday’s news conference announcing the deployment of troops in Washington, D.C.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

“This will go further,” Trump ominously said, making it clear he’d like to see soldiers policing across America.

“We have other cities also that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is,” he went on. “We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even mention that anymore, they’re so, they’re so far gone.”

In reality, crime is dropping across the United States, including in Washington. As the Washington Post pointed out, violent crime rates, including murders, have for the most part been on a downward trend since 2023. But all it takes is a few explosive examples to banish truth from conscientiousness. Trump pointed out some tragic and horrific examples — including the beating of Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, a former employee of the president’s Department of Government Efficiency who was attacked after attempting to defend a woman during a carjacking recently, not far from the White House.

These are crimes that should be punished, and certainly not tolerated. But the exploitation we are seeing from Trump is a dangerous precedent to justify military force for domestic law enforcement, which until now has been forbidden — or at least assumed forbidden — by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

This week, just how strong that prohibition is will be debated in a San Francisco courtroom, during the three-day trial over the deployment of troops in Los Angeles. While it’s uncertain how that case will resolve, “Los Angeles could provide a bit of a road map for any jurisdiction seeking to push back against the Trump administration when there’s a potential threat of sending in federal troops,” Jessica Levinson, a constitutional legal scholar at Loyola Law School, told me.

Again, California coming out as the biggest foil to a Trump autocracy.

But while we wait in the hopes that the courts will catch up to Trump, we can’t be blind to what is happening on our streets. Race and crime are not linked by anything other than racism.

Allowing our military to terrorize Black and brown people under the guise of law and order is nothing more than a power grab based on the exploitation of our darkest natures.

It’s a tactic Trump has perfected, but one which will fundamentally change, and weaken, American justice if we do not stop it.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Bad Bunny fan who was visiting Puerto Rico for the hip-hop star’s concert residency was fatally shot early Sunday in La Perla, a popular seaside shantytown in the capital, police said.

The victim was identified as Kevin Mares, a 25-year-old who lived in New York, according to a police statement.

The shooting happened in the predawn hours at a nightspot called Shelter for Mistreated Men in La Perla, a coastal community of San Juan that has struggled to shed its dark reputation.

Homicide detective Sgt. Arnaldo Ruiz said in a phone interview that the shooting took place when several people near Mares began arguing and one pulled out a gun and shot at least three people, including Mares. Two other men, who live in La Perla, were injured and remain hospitalized.

Ruiz said Mares was an innocent bystander. He was with three other friends who told police they were in Puerto Rico for one of Bad Bunny’s 30 concerts, which have attracted tens of thousands of visitors to the U.S. territory, where the artist was born.

Mares was shot on the left side of his abdomen and was taken to Puerto Rico’s largest public hospital, where he died, authorities said.

Ruiz said police don’t yet know what the people were arguing about and don’t have a description of the shooter. “We have very little information,” he said.

Ruiz added that Mares’ three friends also were from New York. He didn’t know their hometowns.

La Perla is on the outskirts of a historic district popular with tourists known as Old San Juan. A couple hundred people live in the shantytown, which once served as Puerto Rico’s biggest distribution point for heroin and was known for its violence.

Police used to avoid the community, which used to have a sign proclaiming, “Not open to visitors. Do not enter.”

But violence eased when hundreds of federal agents raided the slum in 2011 and arrested dozens of people, including a well-known community leader who was later convicted.

The neighborhood became even safer and more welcoming after Puerto Rican singers Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featured it in their hit “Despacito.”

But isolated violence persists.

In February 2023, three tourists were stabbed after police said a person told them to stop filming inside the community.

In April of last year, a 24-year-old tourist from Delaware was killed and his body set on fire after police said he and a friend were attacked after a drug purchase. Police said the victims were trying to take pictures of La Perla after being warned not to do so.

The island of 3.2 million people has reported 277 killings so far this year, compared with 325 killings in the same period last year.

Coto writes for the Associated Press.

Government says move aims to boost ‘fight against insecurity’ as armed gangs continue to carry out attacks across the country.

Haiti’s government has announced a three-month state of emergency in several parts of the country as it battles surging gang violence.

The measure will cover the West, Centre and Artibonite departments, the latter of which is known as Haiti’s “rice basket” and has experienced an increase in attacks by armed groups in recent months.

In a statement on Saturday, the government said the state of emergency would allow the Haitian authorities to “continue the fight against insecurity and respond to the agricultural and food crisis”.

“Insecurity has negative effect both on the lives of citizens and on the country’s different sectors of activity. Given the scale of this crisis, it is imperative to decree a major mobilisation of the state’s resources and institutional means to address it,” it said.

Haiti has reeled from years of violence as powerful armed groups, often with ties to the country’s political and business leaders, have vied for influence and control of territory.

But the situation worsened dramatically after the July 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moise, which created a power vacuum.

Nearly 1.3 million people have been displaced across the country, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in June, while the United Nations estimates that 4,864 people were killed from October 2024 to June of this year.

Efforts to stem the deadly gang attacks, including the deployment of a UN-backed, Kenya-led police mission, have so far failed to restore stability.

While much of the focus has been on Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, where up to 90 percent of the city is under the control of armed groups, the violence has also been spreading to other parts of the country.

Between October 2024 and the end of June, more than 1,000 Haitians were killed and 620 were kidnapped in the Artibonite and Centre departments, according to the UN’s human rights office.

In late April, dozens of people waded and swam across the Artibonite River, which cuts through the region, in a desperate attempt to flee the gangs.

Meanwhile, the government on Friday appointed Andre Jonas Vladimir Paraison as interim director of Haiti’s National Police, which has been working with Kenyan police officers leading the UN-backed mission to help quell the violence.

“We, the police, will not sleep,” Paraison said during his inauguration ceremony. “We will provide security across every corner of the country.”

Paraison previously served as head of security of Haiti’s National Palace and was on duty as a police officer when Moise was killed at his private residence in July 2021.

He replaced Normil Rameau, whose tenure of just more than a year was marked by tensions with a faction of the Transitional Presidential Council, notably Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime.

Rameau had repeatedly warned about the police force’s severe underfunding.

The change comes as Laurent Saint-Cyr, a wealthy businessman, also took over this week as president of the Transitional Presidential Council, which is charged with holding elections by February 2026.

Succes Masra denies the charges against him, which relate to inter-communal clashes that left dozens dead in May.

Chad’s former prime minister and opposition leader Succes Masra has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for disseminating racist and xenophobic messages that incited violence.

Defence lawyer Kadjilembay Francis told reporters following Saturday’s ruling at a court in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, that Masra would appeal his sentence.

“He has just been subjected to ignominy and unworthy humiliation,” Francis said.

Masra, who was prime minister between January and May last year, is the head of the Transformers party and a sharp critic of Mahamat Deby, Chad’s current president.

He was accused alongside 67 co-defendants, mostly from the same Ngambaye ethnic group, of causing a clash between herders and farmers in May in Logone Occidental, in the southwest of the central African country. The fighting left 35 people dead and six others injured.

Masra has denied the charges against him, which include hate speech, xenophobia and having incited a massacre.

Before leaving the courtroom on Saturday, he gave a message to his supporters: “Stand firm.” Activists with his party said they would put out a “special message” later in the day.

The Ngambaye ethnic group enjoys wide popularity among the predominantly Christian and animist populations of the south, whose members feel marginalised by the largely Muslim-dominated authorities in N’Djamena.

Masra left Chad after a bloody crackdown on his followers in 2022, only returning under an amnesty agreed in 2024.

He faced off against Deby in that year’s presidential election, which Deby won with more than 61 percent support.

But Masra did not accept the results, claiming that the vote was rigged. He later agreed to serve as premier after signing a reconciliation deal with Deby.

Masra has strongly opposed the military rulers who came to power in Chad in April 2021, after the death of Deby’s father, Idriss Deby Itno, who had led the country for 30 years.

Deby took power in 2021 and legitimised his presidency with a parliamentary election earlier this year, which was opposed by Masra and his party.

“Thank you so much for showing up this morning,” Sharon Nicholls said into a megaphone at 8 a.m. Wednesday outside a Home Depot in Pasadena.

As of Friday afternoon, no federal agents had raided the store on East Walnut Street. But the citizen brigade that stands watch outside and patrols the parking lot in search of ICE agents has not let down its guard—especially not after raids at three other Home Depots in recent days despite federal court rulings limiting sweeps.

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

About two dozen people gathered near the tent that serves as headquarters of the East Pasadena Community Defense Center. Another dozen or so would be arriving over the next half hour, some carrying signs.

“Silence is Violence”

“Migrants Don’t Party With Epstein”

Cynthia Lunine, 70, carried a large sign that read “Break His Dark Spell” and included a sinister image of President Trump. She said she was new to political activism, but added: “You can’t not be an activist. If you’re an American, it’s the only option. The immigration issue is absolutely inhumane, it’s un-Christian, and it’s intolerable.”

Anit-ICE activists march through the Home Depot in Pasadena on Aug. 6.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

There are local supporters, for sure, of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Activists told me there aren’t many days in which they don’t field shouted profanities or pro-Trump cheers from Home Depot shoppers.

But the administration’s blather about a focus on violent offenders led to huge demonstrations in greater Los Angeles beginning in June, and the cause continues to draw people into the streets.

Dayena Campbell, 35, is a volunteer at Community Defense Corner operations in other parts of Pasadena, a movement that followed high-profile raids and was covered in the Colorado Boulevard newspaper and, later, in the New York Times. A fulltime student who works in sales, Campbell was also cruising the parking lot at the Home Depot on the east side of Pasadena in search of federal agents.

She thought this Home Depot needed its own Community Defense Corner, so she started one about a month ago. She and her cohort have more than once spotted agents in the area and alerted day laborers. About half have scattered, she said, and half have held firm despite the risk.

When I asked what motivated Campbell, she said:

“Inhumane, illegal kidnappings. Lack of due process. Actions taken without anyone being held accountable. Seeing people’s lives ripped apart. Seeing families being destroyed in the blink of an eye.”

Anywhere from a handful to a dozen volunteers show up daily to to hand out literature, patrol the parking lot and check in on day laborers, sometimes bringing them food. Once a week, Nicholls helps organize a rally that includes a march through the parking lot and into the store, where the protesters present a letter asking Home Depot management to “say no to ICE in their parking lot and in their store.”

Nicholls is an LAUSD teacher-librarian, and when she asks for support each week, working and retired teachers answer the call.

“I’m yelling my lungs out,” said retired teacher Mary Rose O’Leary, who joined in the chants of “ICE out of Home Depot” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here.”

Sharon Nicholls gets a hug of support from another protester outside the Home Depot in Pasadena.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

“Immigrants are what make this city what it is … and the path to legal immigration is closed to everybody who doesn’t have what, $5 million or something?” O’Leary said, adding that she was motivated by “the Christian ideal of welcoming the stranger.”

Retired teacher Dan Murphy speaks Spanish and regularly checks in with day laborers.

“One guy said to me, ‘We’re just here to work.’ Some of the guys were like, ‘We’re not criminals … we’re just here … to make money and get by,’” Murphy said. He called the raids a flexing of “the violent arm of what autocracy can bring,” and he resents Trump’s focus on Southern California.

“I take it personally. I’m white, but these are my people. California is my people. And it bothers me what might happen in this country if people don’t stand firm … I just said, ‘I gotta do something.’ I’m doing this now so I don’t hate myself later.”

Nicholls told me she was an activist many years ago, and then turned her focus to work and raising a family. But the combination of wildfires, the cleanup and rebuilding, and the raids, brought her out of activism retirement.

“The first people to come out after the firefighters—the second-responders—were day laborers cleaning the streets,” Nicholls said. “You’d see them in orange shirts all over the city, cleaning up.”

The East Pasadena Home Depot is “an important store,” because it’s a supply center for the rebuilding of Altadena, “and we’re going out there to show our love and solidarity for our neighbors,” Nicholls said. To strike the fear of deportation in the hearts of workers, she said, is “inhumane, and to me, it’s morally wrong.”

Nicholls had a quick response when I asked what she thinks of those who say illegal is illegal, so what’s left to discuss?

“That blocks the complexity of the conversation,” she said, and doesn’t take into account the hunger and violence that drive migration. Her husband, she said, left El Salvador 35 years ago during a war funded in part by the U.S.

Pablo Alvarado, right, co-director of National Day Laborer Organizing Network, speaks to Anti-ICE protesters on Aug. 6.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

They have family members with legal status and some who are undocumented and afraid to leave their homes, Nicholls said. I mentioned that I had written about Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, who was undocumented as a child, and has kept his passport handy since the raids began. In that column, I quoted Gordo’s friend, immigrant-rights leader Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

“Full disclosure,” Nicholls said, “[Alvarado] is my husband.”

It was news to me.

When the raids began, Nicholls said, she told her husband, “I have the summer off, sweetie, but I want to help, and I’m going to call my friends.”

On Wednesday, after Nicholls welcomed demonstrators, Alvarado showed up for a pep talk.

“I have lived in this country since 1990 … and I love it as much as I love the small village where I came from in El Salvador,” Alvarado said. “Some people may say that we are going into fascism, into authoritarianism, and I would say that we are already there.”

He offered details of a raid that morning at a Home Depot in Westlake and said the question is not whether the Pasadena store will be raided, but when. This country readily accepts the labor of immigrants but it does not respect their humanity, Alvarado said.

“When humble people are attacked,” he said, “we are here to bear witness.”

Nicholls led demonstrators through the parking lot and into the store, where she read aloud the letter asking Home Depot to take a stand against raids.

Outside, where it was hot and steamy by mid-morning, several sun-blasted day laborers said they appreciated the support. But they were still fearful, and desperate for work.

Jorge, just shy of 70, practically begged me to take his phone number.

Whatever work I might have, he said, please call.

[email protected]

Sean “Diddy” Combs will remain in federal custody until he faces sentencing later this year, a judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian on Monday denied the disgraced rapper and music producer’s motion requesting release prior to his sentencing on Oct. 3, The Times has confirmed. Combs has been in federal custody in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in September. The facility is reportedly notorious for incidents of violence as well as staffing shortages, inmate overcrowding and even power outages.

“Combs fails to satisfy his burden to demonstrate an entitlement to release,” Subramanian said in the order, reviewed by The Times. “The motion for bail is denied.”

A legal representative for Combs, 55, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

In his order, Subramanian was unswayed by lawyers’ arguments for Combs’ release including that he shouldn’t be punished for his “swinger” lifestyle; that he’s the target of “ongoing threats of violence” at the MDC; and explanations for his violence against ex-girlfriends Casandra “Cassie” Ventura and Jane, who went by a pseudonym. The two women testified about the musician’s orgies known as “freak-offs” and made allegations about his violent behavior.

Combs’ attorneys urged the release, insisting their client is not a flight risk. The judge, however, didn’t see “clear and convincing evidence” of this or the danger that his lawyers said Combs faced at the prison. Regarding the “squalor and danger” at the facility, Subramanian acknowledged that “public outcry concerning these conditions has come from all corners,” according to the order.

Yet, he wrote, Combs has said that MDC staff have “been able to keep him safe and attend to his needs, even during an incident of threatened violence from an inmate.”

Though Combs was cleared in July of racketeering and sex trafficking, the jury convicted him on two counts of prostitution-related charges. The jury’s split verdict leaves Combs facing up to 10 years in prison for each of the two counts of prostitution.

The denial of bail comes after Combs’ legal team on Sunday submitted a letter from a woman who identified herself as “Victim 3” from the trial. Virginia Huynh wrote in support of the rapper’s release, claiming he had “made visible efforts to become a better person,” according to the letter reviewed by The Times.

She added: “I want to assure the Court that if released, I believe Mr. Combs will adhere to all conditions imposed and will not jeopardize his freedom or the well-being of his family. Allowing him to be at home will also support the healing process for all involved.”

State media says armed groups violated the truce agreed in the predominantly Druze region.

Druze armed groups have attacked personnel from Syria’s internal security forces in the restive area of Suwayda, killing at least one government soldier and wounding others, as well as shelling several villages in the southern province, according to state-run Ekhbariya TV.

Ekhbariya’s report on Sunday quoted a security source as saying the armed groups had violated the ceasefire agreed in the predominantly Druze region, where sectarian bloodshed killed hundreds of people last month.

In response to the renewed violence, the Syrian government said in a statement that “the media and sectarian mobilisation campaigns led by the rebel gangs in the city have not ceased over the past period”.

It added: “As these gangs failed to thwart the efforts of the Syrian state and its responsibilities towards our people in Suwayda, they resorted to violating the ceasefire agreement by launching treacherous attacks against internal security forces on several fronts and shelling some villages with rockets and mortar shells, resulting in the martyrdom and injury of a number of security personnel.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported four deaths in the latest violence in Suwayda, noting three were government soldiers and one was a local fighter.

Violence in Suwayda erupted on July 13 between Bedouin tribal fighters and Druze factions.

Government forces were sent in to quell the fighting, but the bloodshed worsened, and Israel carried out strikes on Syrian troops, and also bombed the heart of the capital Damascus, under the pretext of protecting the Druze.

The Druze are a minority community in the region with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel. Suwayda province is predominantly Druze, but is also home to Bedouin tribes, and the communities have had longstanding tensions over land and other resources.

A United States-brokered truce between Israel and Syria was announced in tandem with Syria President Ahmed al-Sharaa declaring a ceasefire in Suwayda after previous failed attempts. The fighting had raged in Suwayda city and surrounding towns for nearly a week. Syria said it would investigate the clashes, setting up a committee to do so.

The Suwayda bloodshed was another blow to al-Sharaa’s fledgling government, after a wave of sectarian violence in March that killed hundreds of Alawite citizens in the coastal region.

Hundreds of Bedouin families were displaced by the fighting in Suwayda and relocated to nearby Deraa.

Israel attacks Syria again

Separately, the Israeli military said on Sunday that it conducted a raid on targets in southern Syria on Saturday.

The army said it seized weapons and questioned several suspects it said were involved in weapons trafficking in the area.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said on Sunday that five of its members had been killed during an attack by ISIL (ISIS) on a checkpoint in eastern Syria’s Deir Az Zor on July 31.

The SDF was the main force allied with the United States in Syria during fighting that defeated ISIL in 2019 after the group declared a caliphate across swaths of Syria and Iraq.

ISIL has been trying to stage a comeback in the Middle East, the West and Asia. Deir Az Zor city was captured by ISIL in 2014, but the Syrian army retook it in 2017.

On Saturday, Syria’s Defence Ministry said an attack carried out by the SDF in the countryside of the northern city of Manbij injured four army personnel and three civilians.

The ministry described the attack as “irresponsible and for unknown reasons”, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.

Police have told residents to stay home and not approach the suspect, who could be ‘armed and dangerous’.

A manhunt is under way for a former United States soldier suspected of carrying out a shooting in a bar in the US state of Montana, which has left four people dead.

The shooting happened on Friday at about 10:30am (16:30 GMT) at The Owl Bar in Anaconda, with four people pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation.

The suspect has been identified as 45-year-old military veteran Michael Paul Brown. Brown lived next door to the bar, according to public records and owner David Gwerder.

Gwerder, who was not there at the time of the incident, said a bartender and three patrons were killed before Brown fled the scene.

“He knew everybody that was in that bar. I guarantee you that,” Gwerder said. “He didn’t have any running dispute with any of them. I just think he snapped.”

Brown’s home in Anaconda – a town of about 9,000 people, located in southwest Montana about 109 miles (175km) west of the city of Bozeman – was cleared by a SWAT team.

Montana Senator Steve Daines said a “massive manhunt” is under way, aided by drones.

Authorities said Brown was last seen in the Stump Town area, just west of Anaconda, and he is “believed to be armed and dangerous”.

He should not be approached if seen, the Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Law Enforcement Center said in a social media post, while Anaconda residents have been instructed to stay home and lock their doors.

More than a dozen police officers have converged on Stump Town, locking it down so no one is allowed in or out as police search for Brown in a wooded, mountainous area.

Randy Clark, a retired police officer who lives in the area, said a police helicopter hovered over a nearby mountainside as officers moved among the trees.

A US army spokesperson said Brown served as an armour crewman from 2001 to 2005 and was deployed to Iraq from early 2004 until March 2005. Brown was also in the Montana National Guard from 2006 to 2009.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said in a social media post that he was “closely monitoring the situation involving an active shooter in Anaconda”.

Our hearts are with the community of Anaconda, Montana, where four lives were lost in a senseless bar shooting.

Law enforcement is actively searching for the suspect, Michael Paul Brown, who remains at large and is considered armed and dangerous. We stand with the brave officers… pic.twitter.com/nHmlib8D2o

— National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (@GLFOP) August 1, 2025

The US football league has previously faced legal challenges over its failure to address players’ concussions.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has said that a gunman who killed five people, including himself, sought out the headquarters of the National Football League (NFL), which he blamed for the brain injuries he suffered from.

Adams said on Tuesday that a note carried by the shooter, identified as 27-year-old Shane Tamura, suggests his target was the NFL.

“The note alluded to that he felt he had CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy], a known brain injury for those who participate in contact sports,” Adams told CBS News. “He appeared to have blamed the NFL for his injury.”

But Tamura appears to have arrived at the wrong floor of a New York City office tower and instead opened fire in the offices of a real estate firm, on top of shooting people in the ground-floor lobby.

The NFL has previously faced litigation relating to concussions suffered by football players.

The organisation, which oversees professional US football, has denied any link between conditions like CTE and its sport, but it has nevertheless paid out more than $1bn to settle concussion-related lawsuits.

Monday’s shooting has also renewed debate about mass shootings and access to firearms in the US. Tamura reportedly entered the building with an AR-15-style rifle.

The NFL’s headquarters are located in a skyscraper that it shares with other firms.

Tamara is believed to have started shooting as he entered the lobby of the skyscraper. Then, police believe he took the wrong elevator, arriving at the 33rd floor, which contained the offices of Rudin Management, a real estate firm.

There, he opened fire once more and then took his own life.

Among those killed in the shooting was a 36-year-old police officer named Didarul Islam, who had come to the US from Bangladesh and had been on the force for three years.

Other victims include security guard Aland Etienne, Julia Hyman of Rudin Management, and an executive at the BlackRock investment firm, Wesley LePatner.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell stated in a memo that there would be an “increased security presence” at the organisation’s offices over the coming weeks.

Tamura is a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, with a history of mental health issues. He never played in the NFL, but he did play football in high school.

The news outlet Bloomberg reported that Tamura’s note alleges that his football career was cut short by a brain injury.

The note also called for his brain to be studied. CTE can only be diagnosed through an autopsy.

The United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO) has condemned the recent surge in violence in Djugu territory. This includes lethal attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in Ituri and North Kivu, leading to the deaths of civilians.

In a statement issued in Kinshasa on July 23, MONUSCO expressed strong condemnation of the recent attacks by the Convention pour la Révolution Populaire (CRP) armed group against the DR Congo army. They denounced the ongoing deadly assaults by the ADF, which have resulted in the deaths of 82 civilians in the Ituri and North Kivu provinces.

The UN organisation raised concerns regarding the ADF attacks that occurred from July 8 to 9, in the northeastern regions of Eringeti and Irumu within Ituri province. These attacks were a retaliatory response to joint operations conducted by the Congolese army and the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) against an armed group in the area, resulting in the tragic loss of 47 civilian lives. In light of these events, MONUSCO has offered heartfelt condolences to the affected families and communities, reiterating the UN Secretary General’s call for foreign armed groups to lay down their weapons and return to their countries of origin without conditions.

“The actors of this violence, whoever they are and whatever their motivations, must account for their acts before the competent jurisdictions. We call on armed groups which are signatories to the Aru II peace accord in Ituri to fully respect their engagements, notably by observing without delay the cessation of hostilities and to prefer peaceful channels in the resolution of conflicts,” Bruno Lemarquis, assistant special representative of the UN Secretary General in DR Congo and interim chief of MONUSCO, declared. “We equally exhort all the other armed groups active in the province to lay down their arms in conformity with calls by the Congolese authorities and the international community.”

The global organisation also condemned the attacks on civilian populations that occurred on July 21 in Djugu. It specifically denounced the looting and desecration of the Catholic parish of Lopa, which has been attributed to the Cooperative for the Development of Congo (CODECO) armed group. The organisation emphasised that these attacks targeted places of worship, schools, health centres, and hospitals, thereby constituting serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights.

“MONUSCO encourages the provincial authorities to continue to promote dialogue between all communities in Ituri in order to reduce tensions. It reaffirms its constant engagement in favour of dialogue, social cohesion and the search for lasting solutions for peace in the Eastern DR Congo. It remains fully mobilised on the side of the Congolese authorities and the local communities in order to reduce tensions, protect civilians and support the stabilisation efforts in the affected zones,” the MONUSCO statement noted.

Ituri province has been the site of armed violence and inter-communal conflicts for several years. This violence persists despite an agreement reached on June 28 between six local groups: CODECO, Zaire/Auto-Defence, MAPI, the Patriotic Resistance Front of Ituri (FRPI), the Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) militant group, and Chini Ya Tuna. The accord aimed at ceasing hostilities was signed in Aru, a village near the border with Uganda, northeast of Bunia, the provincial capital. This agreement was facilitated within the framework of the Aru II dialogue, which had the support of the Congolese government and international partners.

Following the signing of the bilateral peace accord between the DR Congo and Rwanda, six armed groups have agreed on a truce in the northeastern part of the DR Congo. The UN mission in Congo has saluted the crucial progress and called on armed groups that refused to sign the agreement to join the peace process.

More than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed in several days of sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal regions earlier this year, a government committee tasked with investigating the attacks has found.

The committee said it had identified 298 suspects implicated in serious violations during the violence in the country’s Alawite heartland that left at least 1,426 members of the minority community dead in March.

Tuesday’s findings come after a new wave of violence involving the country’s Druze community, raising further questions over the new government’s ability to manage sectarian tensions and maintain security after the December overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad – himself an Alawite.

The March violence took place in a predominantly Alawite region of Syria’s coast, where government forces and allied groups were accused of carrying out summary executions, mostly targeting Alawite civilians, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights saying more than 1,700 people were killed.

The committee’s report said there was no evidence that Syria’s military leadership ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

The committee’s investigation documented “serious violations against civilians on March 7, 8 and 9, including murder, premeditated murder, looting, destruction and burning of homes, torture and sectarian insults”, spokesman Yasser al-Farhan told a news conference in Damascus.

The committee confirmed “the names of 1,426 dead, including 90 women, with most of the rest being civilians” from the Alawite community, he said, adding that an unspecified number of further dead had not been verified.

The investigation also “identified 298 individuals by name” who were suspected of involvement in the violations, al-Farhan continued, describing the figure as provisional.

These have been referred for prosecution, and 37 people have been arrested, officials told journalists.

They didn’t say how many suspects were members of security forces.

‘Bigger than just violations’    

Authorities have accused gunmen loyal to al-Assad of instigating the violence, launching deadly attacks that killed dozens of security personnel.

The committee said 238 members of the army and security forces were killed in the attacks in the provinces of Tartous, Latakia and Hama.

About 200,000 pro-government military reinforcements then converged on the area, according to al-Farhan.

Jana Mustafa, a 24-year-old student from Baniyas whose father was killed during the violence, said she had not been waiting for the report “because the truth was clear to me”.

“The number of bodies, the mass graves and the screams of the victims were enough to clarify what happened,” she said, expressing disappointment that the committee’s announcements appeared to include “justifications for everything that happened”.

“The issue is bigger than just violations. It was directed against an entire sect,” she added.

The committee said it based its report on more than 30 on-site visits, meetings with dozens of people in the towns and villages where violations occurred, and testimonies from hundreds of witnesses and victims. It also heard from government officials.

Al-Farhan said the committee had identified people “linked to certain military groups and factions” among those involved in the violence, adding it believed they “violated military orders and are suspected of committing violations against civilians”.

‘Disappointed and frustrated’

Rama Hussein, 22, whose three sisters, two cousins and grandfather were killed in the Jableh region, said she was “sad, disappointed and frustrated” with the committee.

“No one listened to my testimony, no one visited us – I don’t know who this committee met or who they saw,” she said.

“I hope we see real accountability, not just reports and press conferences,” she said, calling for compensation for the families of those killed.

Human rights groups and international organisations have said entire families were killed, including women, children and the elderly.

Gunmen stormed homes and asked residents whether they were Alawite or Sunni before killing or sparing them, they said.

Committee chairman Jumaa al-Anzi said authorities had been consulted to identify individuals who appeared in videos on social media documenting violations, and that some of them were included among the suspects.

The body said two lists of people “suspected of involvement in attacks or violations” had been referred to the judiciary.

Al-Anzi, the committee’s chair, said that “we have no evidence that the [military] leaders gave orders to commit violations”.

The presidency had said new Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa had received the committee’s report on July 13, the same day that sectarian violence erupted in the Druze-majority province of Suwayda.

Those clashes broke out between Sunni Muslim Bedouin clans and Druze armed groups, and government security forces who intervened to restore order.

Druze armed groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities.

Hundreds have been killed, and the United Nations says more than 128,500 people have been displaced. The violence has largely stopped as a ceasefire takes hold.

The committee chair said the violence in Suwayda is “painful for all Syrians” but “beyond the jurisdiction” of his committee.

“Time will reveal what happened and who is responsible for it,” he said.

July 19 (UPI) — One day after reaching a ceasefire with Israel, Syrian military forces began moving into the country’s Suwayda Governorate, where dozens of people have been killed in recent days amid fighting between warring tribes.

“Internal Security Forces have begun deploying in Suwayda province as part of a national mission with the primary goal of protecting civilians and restoring order,” Syrian Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Dean Baba told CNN in a statement, adding the move came “following the bloody events caused by outlaw groups.”

This past week has seen continued fighting in southern Syria between several of the country’s minority groups, including the Arab Druze and Bedouins.

At least 30 people were killed and over 100 injured during clashes between armed groups on Monday in the Suwayda Governorate capital city of As-Suwayda.

That fighting continued Saturday, with further violence between Bedouin and Druze factions. Witnesses reported sporadic gunfire and columns of smoke in the city, which has a population of around 138,000 people in its metropolitan area.

“Syria is not a playground for separatism or sectarian incitement. Now more than ever, it is essential to return to the path of reason and come together on a unified national foundation,” Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a speech Saturday on state TV, translated to English by CNN.

He added the continued fighting was a “dangerous turning point in Syria’s security and political landscape.”

On Friday, al-Sharaa said his country had reached a ceasefire with Israel, after the Israel Defense Forces intervened in Syria.

Israeli warplanes bombed parts of Syria, including the capital of Damascus. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was meant to protect the Druze minorities, which are also prevalent in Israel.

At the time, al-Sharaa accused Israel of “trying to drag us into war.”