A Southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government, and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang, the mayor of Arcadia, was charged in April with one count of acting in the United States as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favourable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by...

Netflix was sued on Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who accused the streaming company of spying on children and other consumers by collecting their data ‌without consent and designing its platform to be addictive. The lawsuit says that for years, Netflix has falsely represented to consumers that it did not collect or share user data, when it actually tracked and sold viewers’ habits and preferences to commercial data brokers and advertising technology companies, making billions of...

The Treasury Department wants US banks and other financial institutions to monitor for suspected Iranian money-laundering networks that use their funds to smuggle sanctioned oil through shell companies and cryptocurrency networks. The move, which effectively deputises the global financial system to help disrupt Iran’s sanctions-evasion infrastructure, comes as the US and Iran reached another impasse over how to end their war while their ceasefire has grown increasingly shaky. US President Donald...

Two South Florida police officers claim Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s recent action thriller The Rip used too many real-life details in its fictionalised narrative, causing harm to the officers’ personal and professional reputations, according to a defamation lawsuit. Jason Smith and Jonathan Santana, sergeants in the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, filed the lawsuit in Miami federal court earlier this month against Artists Equity, a film-production company owned by Affleck and Damon. Court filings...

With the war in the Middle East entering its third month, questions have surfaced over its geopolitical ramifications in the region and beyond. An entity that has drawn particular scrutiny is Brics. The 10-member grouping is defined less by a clear set of common values and more by contingently overlapping interests. It does not and cannot speak with one voice on the conflict. Two Brics members, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), are at loggerheads: Tehran has launched missile and drone...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa faced down calls to resign on Monday over a scandal in which thieves stole bundles of cash in foreign currency hidden in a sofa on his ranch. In a televised address to the nation, Ramaphosa said he respected a constitutional court ruling that revived impeachment proceedings against him ‌last week but pledged to defend himself. “While there have been calls in some circles that I should resign, nothing in the Constitutional Court judgment compels me to...

The widow of a man killed in last year’s mass shooting at Florida State University is suing ChatGPT maker OpenAI, blaming the company’s artificial intelligence chatbot for giving advice on how to carry out the rampage. The lawsuit comes after state authorities disclosed that ChatGPT gave information to the shooter about what time and location would maximise victims on campus, as well as the type of gun and ammunition to use. Authorities say he was also told that an attack can get more media...

Two Israeli soldiers will spend weeks in military prison for desecration of a Christian object after one stuck a cigarette in the mouth of a statue of the Virgin Mary in southern Lebanon and the other photographed it. The photo of the soldier, a cigarette dangling from his own mouth, went viral and sparked widespread outrage. It was the latest act by Israeli forces to be denounced as anti-Christian in southern Lebanon, where Israel launched a ground invasion earlier this year to target the...

A Bolivian court on Monday reissued a warrant for the arrest of former president Evo Morales on charges of trafficking a minor after he failed to show up for the start of his trial. Bolivia’s first Indigenous president is accused of fathering a child with a 15-year-old girl while in office. The parents of the teen are accused of consenting to the relationship in exchange for favours from Morales. The former socialist leader, who governed from 2006 to 2019, rejects the accusations. Morales did...

Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people thought to be immigrants found inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, on Sunday as a “potential human smuggling event”. A Union Pacific employee found the bodies of six people inside a shipping container Sunday afternoon, said Jose Baeza, the Laredo Police Department public information officer. Dr Corinne Stern, the Webb County medical examiner, is conducting autopsies and...

Eighty-five Russia-linked people and entities have been sanctioned as part of a UK government crackdown on “pro-Kremlin narratives abroad”. The sanctions, imposed on Monday, were designed to target 29 individuals and organisations thought to have helped Russia forcibly deport and militarise Ukrainian children. More than 20,000 Ukrainian children have been taken to Russia and the territories which it has occupied, according to the UK Foreign Office. A further 56 individuals and organisations have...

The ⁠man accused of attempting to assassinate US President Donald Trump at a White House reporters’ gala last month pleaded not guilty ‌to all charges on Monday. Cole Allen, 31, of California, did not speak in court as his lawyer Tezira Abe entered the plea on his behalf. The charges include attempted assassination of the president, assault on ⁠a federal officer and firearms offences. Prosecutors allege Allen fired ‌a shotgun at a US Secret Service agent and stormed a security checkpoint ‌in a...