violence

Cassie is celebrating a new personal milestone: her baby boy with husband Alex Fine has arrived.

The “Me & U” singer on Tuesday gave birth to her third child in a New York hospital, sources confirmed to TMZ and People. She and “MobLand” actor Fine welcomed their newest family member after the former was rushed to the hospital Tuesday and admitted into the labor and delivery unit, according to TMZ.

A representative for Cassie, 38, did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for confirmation and additional information.

The singer (born Casandra Ventura) married Fine, 32, in October 2019 months after meeting him earlier that year at a gym where he worked as a wellness consultant. They also share daughters Frankie, 5, and Sunny, 3.

Cassie announced her pregnancy in February via Instagram, sharing photos from an intimate family photo shoot. She captioned the post — which prominently featured her baby bump and her loved ones surrounding her — with a few emojis, including a blue heart. Fine, also known for the series “American Primeval” and “1883,” said in his own Instagram post at the time that his growing family was the “best gift I could ask for.”

The “Long Way 2 Go” musician enters her newest chapter of motherhood less than two weeks after she testified against ex-boyfriend and disgraced music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in his federal sex trafficking trial in New York. During her four days of testimony, Cassie shared disturbing allegations about her relationship with the Bad Boy Records boss — including his alleged fits of violence, threats of blackmail and his notorious sexual marathons called “freak-offs.” She sued Combs in the fall of 2023, helping set the stage for additional lawsuits from other accusers, federal raids on Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami and more legal fallout.

“I hope my testimony has given strength and a voice to other survivors and can help others who have suffered to speak up and also heal from abuse and fear,” Cassie said in a statement shared by her attorney Douglas Wigdor. “For me, the more I heal, the more I can remember. And the more I can remember, the more I will never forget.”

Fine, in a statement through Wigdor, also shut down narratives that he saved his wife from Combs. “To say that is an insult to the years of painful work my wife has done to save herself,” he said. “Cassie saved Cassie.”

He added: “She alone broke free from abuse, coercion, violence and threats.”

Fine concluded, noting “this horrific chapter is forever put behind us” and asked for privacy ahead of the arrival of his son with Cassie.

Times staff write Richard Winton and former Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.

Claude fears he may soon die – either from starvation or violence – as he waits at a food distribution tent in a refugee camp in Burundi.

He is among thousands of Congolese refugees trapped between a brutal conflict across the border and severe reductions in international food assistance.

A former bouncer from Uvira, a town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Claude fled after violence erupted in the east, sparked by the rapid advance of the Rwanda-backed M23 group.

Armed groups “were shooting, killing each other, … raping women,” recalled the 25-year-old, who escaped across the border into Burundi in February.

In the overcrowded Musenyi camp, Claude now faces a different struggle as food rations dwindle.

Hunger has fuelled new tensions within the camp, prompting Claude to join volunteers who patrol the area to prevent theft of what supplies remain.

“When I arrived here, I was given 3.5kg [7.7lb] of rice per month. Now it’s a kilo [2.2lb]. The 3kg [6.6lb] of peas have dropped to 1.8kg [4lb]. What I get in tomato sauce lasts one day. Then it’s over,” said Claude, whose name has been changed for security reasons, as have the names of other refugees interviewed.

Some of the most desperate resort to slashing neighbours’ tents in search of food, he added, while gangs “spread terror”.

“The reduction of assistance will lead to many crimes,” he warned.

Oscar Niyibizi, the camp’s deputy administrator, described the cut in food rations as a “major challenge” that could “cause security disruption”.

He urges refugees to cultivate land nearby but said external support remains desperately needed.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump slashed its aid budget by 80 percent, and other Western nations have also reduced donations. As a result, many NGOs and United Nations agencies have been forced to close or significantly scale back their programmes.

These cutbacks have come at a “very bad time” as fighting escalates in the DRC, according to Geoffrey Kirenga, head of mission for Save the Children in Burundi.

Burundi, one of the world’s poorest countries, has received more than 71,000 Congolese refugees since January while still hosting thousands from previous conflicts.

Established last year to accommodate 10,000 people, the Musenyi camp’s population is now nearly twice that number.

In addition to food shortages, the reduction in aid has led NGOs to discontinue support services for survivors of sexual violence, who are numerous in the camp, Kirenga said.

His gravest concern is that “deaths from hunger” may become inevitable.

The World Food Programme has halved rations since March and warned that without renewed US funding, all assistance could end by November.

According to the UN, hundreds of Congolese refugees are compelled to risk returning across the border in search of food.

Actions, we know, have consequences. And an apparent Marxist’s cold-blooded murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington on Wednesday night was the natural and inevitable consequence of a conscientious, years-long campaign to dehumanize Jews and otherize all supporters of the world’s only Jewish state.

Seriously, what did you think was going to happen?

Some of President Trump’s more colorful all-caps and exclamation-mark-filled social media posts evince an impending jackboot, we’re sometimes told. (Hold aside, for now, columnist Salena Zito’s apt 2016 quip about taking Trump seriously but not literally.) Words either have meaning or they don’t. And many left-wing Americans have, for a long time now, argued that they have tremendous meaning. How often, as the concept of the “microaggression” and its campus “safe space” corollary took off last decade, were we told that “words are violence”? (I’ll answer: A lot!)

So are we really not supposed to take seriously the clear calls for Jewish genocide that have erupted on American campuses and throughout American streets since the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023? Are we really supposed to believe that chants such as “globalize the intifada,” “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” are vague and open to competing interpretations?

That doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

When pro-Israel Jewish American Paul Kessler died after being hit on the head during a clash of protesters in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 5, 2023, that is what “intifada revolution” looks like in practice. When Israeli woman Tzeela Gez was murdered by a jihadist while en route to the hospital to deliver her baby earlier this month, that was what “from the river to the sea” looks like in practice. And when two young Israeli Embassy staffers were executed while leaving an event this week at Washington’s Capital Jewish Museum, that is what “globalize the intifada” looks like in practice.

Really, what did you think was going to happen?

Indeed, it is the easily foreseeable nature of Wednesday night’s slayings that is perhaps the most tragic part of it all. The suspect in the deaths of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim left behind a handy manifesto laying out a clear political motivation. This was not a random drive-by shooting. Hardly. This was a deliberate act — what appears to be an act of domestic terrorism. And the suspect, Elias Rodriguez, has a long history of involvement in far-left activist causes. If the killer intended to target Jews, then the fact that both victims were apparently Christian only underscores the “globalize” part of “globalize the intifada.”

Zito had it right back in 2016: Trump’s social media posts should be taken seriously, not literally. But when it comes to the murderous, genocidal clamoring for Jewish and Israeli blood that has become increasingly ubiquitous ever since the Jews themselves suffered their single bloodiest day since the Third Reich, such anti-Israel and antisemitic words must be taken both seriously and literally.

A previous generation of lawmakers once urged Americans to fight the terrorists “over there” so that they can’t harm us “here.” How quaint! The discomfiting reality in the year 2025 is this: The radicals, both homegrown and foreign-born alike, are already here. There are monsters in our midst.

And those monsters are not limited to jihadists. Domestic terrorists these days come from all backgrounds. The deaths of two Israeli diplomats are yet another reminder (not that we needed it): Politically motivated violence in the contemporary United States is not an equivalent problem on both the left and the right.

In 2012, Floyd Lee Corkins attempted to shoot up the socially conservative Family Research Council because he heard it was “anti-gay.” In 2017, James Hodgkinson shot up the Republican congressional baseball team a few weeks after posting on Facebook that Trump is a “traitor” and threat to “our democracy.” In 2022, Nicholas Roske flew cross-country to try to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and thus prevent Roe vs. Wade from being overturned. Earlier this year, anti-Elon Musk activists burned and looted Teslas — and assaulted Tesla drivers — because of Musk’s Trump administration work with his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency. And who can forget Luigi Mangione, who is charged in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare Chief Executive Brian Thompson?

Both “sides” are not culpable here. They just aren’t. Israel supporters in America aren’t out there gunning down people waving the PLO flag. Nor are capitalists out there gunning down socialists.

There is a real darkness out there in certain — increasingly widespread — pockets of the American activist left. Sure, parts of the right are also lost at the moment — but this is not an apples-to-apples comparison.

Regardless, the violence must end. And we must stop treating open calls for murder or genocide as morally acceptable “speech.” Let’s pull ourselves back from the brink before more blood is shed.

Josh Hammer’s latest book is “Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West.” This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer

Despite the recent peace accord signed by the government of the Central African Republic (CAR) and two rebel groups, the warring parties have continued attacking each other, with unarmed civilians at the receiving end.

The latest clashes occurred on May 15, 2025, between the CAR soldiers and dozens of rebels around the Mambere prefecture of the country. Events leading to the clashes remain unknown, but local media reports reveal that a soldier was injured during the fighting.

The incident came 24 hours after another attack in the town of Ouadda, situated 204 kilometres from Bria in the Haute-Kotto prefecture. There, the armed group, Rassemblement de la Nation Centrafricaine (PRNC), carried out an offensive which resulted in the death of five soldiers and two civilians.

The CAR authorities have not made any declaration concerning the incidents, and the exact circumstances of the clashes and the details of the armed groups involved remain unclear.

The country has been embroiled in a brutal civil war since 2013, when the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim rebel coalition, seized power and ousted President François Bozizé. This marked the beginning of a devastating conflict that has ravaged the country, causing widespread displacement, hunger, and human rights abuses.

Historical grievances played a significant role in the conflict’s escalation. The Séléka rebels accused the government of failing to abide by previous peace agreements, which led to their takeover. Religious and ethnic tensions between the mostly Muslim Séléka rebels and the predominantly Christian Anti-balaka militias have fueled the conflict. 

Over 737,000 Central Africans are registered as refugees, and 632,000 are internally displaced. Half of the population lacks access to sufficient food, and the country ranks worst on the Global Hunger Index. The healthcare system is barely functioning, with a shortage of skilled health workers and medical supplies. The ongoing conflict has had a profound impact on the country’s development and its people. The situation remains complex, with multiple factors contributing to the crisis. 

WASHINGTON — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that federal law enforcement is investigating a social media post made by former FBI Director James Comey that she and other Republicans suggest is a call for violence against President Trump.

In an Instagram post, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk” under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for “86 47.”

Numerous Trump administration officials, including Noem, said Comey was advocating for the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” Noem wrote.

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by the Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

The post has since been deleted. Comey subsequently wrote, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

“It never occurred to me,” Comey added, “but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Comey’s original post sparked outrage among conservatives on social media, with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Comey of calling for his father’s killing.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel said he was aware of the post and was conferring with the Secret Service and its director.

James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, noted that the post came at a delicate time given that Trump is traveling in the Middle East.

“This is a Clarion Call from Jim Comey to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East,” Blair wrote on X.

Comey, who was FBI director from 2013-17, was fired by Trump during the president’s first term amid the bureau’s probe into allegations of ties between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Comey wrote about his career in the bestselling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.”

He is now a crime fiction writer and is promoting his latest book, “FDR Drive,” which is being released Tuesday.

MEXICO CITY — In a packed nightclub in Mexico City, hundreds of young people sang along as a band played a popular song narrating the life of a foot soldier for the Sinaloa drug cartel.

I like to work/ And if the order is to kill / You don’t question it.

And for those who misbehave/ There’s no chance to explain/ I throw them into the grave.

Narcocorridos — or drug ballads — are more popular than ever in Mexico, where a new generation that came of age during the ongoing drug war has embraced songs that recount and often glamorize both the spoils and perils of organized crime.

But the genre is increasingly under attack. About a third of Mexico’s states and many of its cities have enacted some kind of ban on the performance of songs about narcos in recent years, with violators subject to heavy fines and jail time.

Mexico City may be next. Mayor Clara Brugada said she plans to introduce a law that would bar the songs from being played at government events and on government property.

“We can’t be promoting violence through music,” she said.

Musicians perform at the popular Los Guitarrazos event in Mexico City, where narcocorridos, or drug ballads, are common.

The bans, which come amid President Trump’s hyper-focus on drug trafficking in Mexico, have sparked debates here about freedom of expression and state censorship and have raised provocative questions: Do narcocorridos merely reflect reality in a nation gripped by powerful drug gangs? Or do they somehow shape it?

Said Amaya, the organizer of Guitarrazos, the event at the nightclub in Mexico City where multiple singers performed narcocorridos last week, said government focus should be on improving security, not persecuting young musicians.

“If you change the reality, the music might change,” Amaya said. “But you’re not going to change the reality by censoring songs.”

Drug ballads belong to the genre of corridos, a musical tradition born in the 1800s that helped chronicle life at a time when many people couldn’t read or write.

Each song told a story. There were corridos about the exploits of bandits and outlaws, some of them Robin Hood-esque characters who outwitted oafish authorities and helped the poor. Others narrated chapters of the Mexican Revolution or the U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846.

In more recent years, as Mexico became a key gateway for the U.S. drug market, enriching some people and claiming the lives of hundreds of thousands of others, musicians have described that, too.

“The entire social history of Mexico is narrated through corridos,” said José Manuel Valenzuela Arce, a sociologist in Tijuana. “It’s an intangible part of our cultural heritage.”

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1. An audience member wears a diamond chain on the dance floor at Los Guitarrazos. 2. Drug ballads belong to the genre of corridos, a musical tradition born in the 1800s that helped chronicle life at a time when many people couldn’t read or write.

Valenzuela wrote a book about the newest version of drug ballads, known as corridos tumbados, which combine acoustic guitar, brassy horns and the aesthetic and lyrical content of U.S. gangster rap. Proponents of the music, like artist Peso Pluma, who performs in ballistic vests and sings of diamond-encrusted pistols and shipments of cocaine, have brought the genre to global audiences.

The 25-year-old musician, whose name translates to “Featherweight,” was the seventh most streamed artist in the world on Spotify last year. In 2023, former President Obama included in his top 10 songs of the year a Peso Pluma song that does not touch on drug trafficking.

Musicians dedicated to the genre have long faced backlash from the government, which since the 1980s has tried, at various times, to ban the music.

But the long-standing controversy exploded back into public life this year after a concert in Michoacan state by the band Los Alegres del Barranco, which displayed images of Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes, better known as El Mencho, who heads the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. The band played at a venue not far from a gruesome cartel training camp that authorities had just discovered.

The concert outraged many Mexicans, and Michoacan Gov. Alfredo Ramírez Bedolla soon announced a ban on public performances that glorify crime and violence. That was followed by similar measures in other states, including Aguascalientes, Queretaro and Mexico state.

A performer plays his guitar with a beer bottle at Los Guitarrazos, a Mexico City event featuring artists playing the northern Mexican genre corridos.

Days later, the Trump administration announced it was revoking the U.S. visas of the members of Los Alegres del Barranco.

“The last thing we need is a welcome mat for people who extol criminals and terrorists,” Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau said on X.

President Claudia Sheinbaum says she does not support the bans, but also doesn’t support the music. She recently announced a national song competition for compositions about subjects other than drug trafficking.

“More than banning, it’s about educating, guiding, and getting young people to stop listening to that music,” she said.

But the bans have momentum — a recent poll found that 62% of those surveyed support prohibitions on narcocorridos — and they have put the genre’s stars in a tricky position. Their fans demand they play their hits, but doing so is increasingly risky.

Performing in one of the states that had banned the songs last month, artist Luis R. Conríquez refused to play his ballads that romanticize drug traffickers.

Audience members were enraged, forcing him off stage as they flung insults, beer bottles and chairs, and later destroyed his band’s instruments.

A singer performs at Los Guitarrazos, an event featuring artists playing the northern Mexican genre corridos, on Tuesday, May 6, 2025 in Mexico City, Mexico.

Others musicians, such as corridos tumbados star Natanael Cano, have pressed on despite the bans.

The 24-year-old performed at an annual fair in Aguascalientes state this month just days after the local authorities warned musicians not to play narco songs.

He began his set with songs from his repertoire that touch on love and other subjects. But soon fans were pleading for popular songs such as “Cuerno azulado,” which talks about blue-tinted AK-47s and pacts between drug traffickers and the government.

Cano first told audience members they should press their leaders to roll back the bans.

“You have to ask your government,” Cano said. “Don’t come here asking me for it.”

Audience members at a club in Mexico City where musicians performed narcocorridos, a genre many states are trying to outlaw.

But eventually he acquiesced, playing a song called “Pacas de Billete,” or “stacks of cash,” which alludes to “El Chapo,” the Sinaloa drug cartel kingpin Joaquín Guzmán. After the event’s organizers cut the sound, Cano’s team activated their own audio system. Eventually, though, the lights were turned out and the artist left the stage and headed directly to the airport. Local authorities have not pressed charges against him.

A few years ago, Cano was slapped with a $50,000 fine for performing narcocorridos in Chihuahua, one of the first states to enact a ban.

Los Alegres del Barranco, the band that flashed a picture of El Mencho in Michoacan, has tried to skirt the laws in recent days with karaoke events in which they play the music but project lyrics for the audience to sing.

For many stars, the bigger threat may be organized crime itself. Drug traffickers often pay to be featured in songs — Peso Pluma has acknowledged taking money from them — and dozens of the genre’s stars have been killed over the years, sometimes by rivals of the hit men and drug dealers they’ve portrayed. Peso Pluma canceled an appearance in Tijuana last year after he received death threats.

Those who support the bans say they are necessary to keep the next generation of young people from romanticizing violence, and to honor those who have lost loved ones to bloodshed.

“Will we tell the victims and their families that it is better to respect the freedom of expression of those who advocate violence than to take measures to safeguard the lives of Mexicans?” columnist Mauricio Farah Gebara wrote in Milenio newspaper.

But for the genre’s devotees, the bans smack of classism.

A musician plays the double bass.

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1. An audience member records the musicians play. 2. An audience member wears a diamond chain bracelet.

It’s a double standard, said a musician named Rosul, who often performs narcocorridos and who attended the lively party in Mexico City last week.

“Netflix can release a series about drug traffickers and win awards and get applause,” she said. “But if somebody from the ‘hood sings about the same thing, it’s an apology for violence?”

Banning the genre, she said, is a losing battle. Young people, after all, hate being told what to do.

“This only makes it more appealing,” she said. “This will only make us stronger.”

Times special correspondent Cecilia Sánchez Vidal contributed to this report.

THIRTEEN security guards kidnapped from a major gold mine have been found dead after being kept hostage for a week.

The security staff disappeared in the mountains near Pataz, northern Peru, as bloody mining turf war grips the region.

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The group has been sent out to confront a group of illegal miners in the area, but were attacked and snatched.

Throughout the week, the gang sent threatening messages to the victims’ families.

The mining company that employed the workers, La Poderosa, said search-and-rescue teams recovered their remains on Sunday.

The company said on Sunday: “This morning, after intense search efforts, the police rescue team was able to recover the bodies of the 13 workers who were kidnapped […] by illegal miners in collusion with criminal element.”

It continued: “The spiral of uncontrolled violence in Pataz is occurring despite the declaration of a state of emergency and the presence of a large police contingent which, unfortunately, has not been able to halt the deterioration of security conditions in the area.”

Peru‘s interior ministry said organised crime investigators were probing the deaths, and vowed its agents were “fully empowered to use their firearms if the circumstances warrant it”.

In the city of Trujillo, west of Pataz, some of the victims’ relatives waited for the bodies of their loved ones to be transferred to the morgue there.

Abraham Dominguez, whose son Alexander was found dead, told channel Canal N: “We want justice, that this doesn’t just stop here.”

Peru declared a state of emergency last month after being plagued by a wave of violent crime – with the mining industry a particularly vicious battleground.

La Poderosa said 39 of its workers had been killed by criminal groups fighting for control of the mines around Pataz since it began operations there in the 1980s.

In December 2023, illegal miners attacked the same site with explosives, killing nine people and wounding at least 20.

A gang armed with explosives and other weapons burst into the mine, taking four people hostage.

Bodies recovered from outside the mine showed signs of burns resulting from the detonation of explosive devices.

The attackers raided the mine, “violently confronting internal security personnel from the company“, Peru’s interior ministry said at the time.

At least seven arrests were made and weapons seized following that attack.

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La Poderosa drafted in more security guards in response to the string of attacks.

Following the 2023 assault, Angela Grossheim, the head of the mining industry group SNMPE, said: “Formal mining is under attack.

“Illegal mining today is the country’s main illicit activity, even bigger than drug trafficking.”

Peru is a major gold and copper supplier for the world.

It has an unusual tolerance for illegal miners, which it allows to operation with some protections as they plan to legalize their operations.

Illegal mining boomed into a lucrative industry as the metals became more lucrative and new mining techniques emerged.

The Peruvian government has struggled to mount a response – and the turf wars are increasingly lawless.