Category: Security

Ye and wife Bianca Censori shocked the Grammy Awards on Sunday when the model walked the red carpet in a sheer dress that left little to the imagination — moments before they escorted out of the building.

The couple reportedly did not have an invitation to the show.

The 47-year-old rapper formerly known as Kanye West, in all black and a gold chain, and Censori, 29, in a long black fur coat, made a surprise appearance at the awards show and posed for photos outside Crypto.com Arena before she suddenly disrobed to reveal a completely sheer dress

Sunday marked the first time West has attended the Grammys since 2015.

West and Censori married in Dec. 2022, though rumors flew last fall that their relationship was “rocky.” In March 2024, West shared an Instagram Reel of his wife wearing a lacy bodysuit days after wearing a similarly skimpy outfit at Milan Fashion Week.

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The rapid decimation of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s workforce in recent days led congressional Democrats to vent their fury Monday over billionaire Elon Musk’s attacks on the agency, while Republicans said USAID was wasting taxpayers’ money and they would be content to see it absorbed into the State Department.

Democrats said President Donald Trump had created a constitutional crisis over the agency, and late Monday afternoon the White House released a list of items it said represented “waste and abuse” at the agency.

As events unfolded rapidly, the State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been appointed by Trump as acting USAID administrator.

Democrats pinned the blame on Musk, the White House adviser and head of the Department of Government Efficiency. During an early Monday talk on X, Musk reportedly said he was acting with “the full support of the president” to shut down USAID, the government’s biggest foreign aid agency.

“We will use every power that we have in our disposal in the United States Senate,” Sen. Christopher S. Murphy D-Conn., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the Senate State-Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee, said at a rally outside USAID headquarters. “This is a constitutional crisis that we are in today. Let’s call it what it is. The people get to decide how we defend the United States of America. The people get to decide how their taxpayer money is spent. Elon Musk does not get to decide.”

Senate Republicans on Monday offered a few muted concerns about the way Musk has implemented the rapid freezes and shutdowns at USAID but most of them defended his actions and didn’t join Democrats in their worries about executive branch usurpation of Congress’ Article 1 authorities.

The decimation of USAID’s workforce has hobbled both the U.S.’s ability to respond to humanitarian disasters around the world and to undertake the evaluations and assessments that the Trump administration and Republicans say are needed before taxpayer-funded international assistance can be resumed.

Hundreds of USAID contractors were already furloughed due to Trump’s executive order last month halting nearly all foreign assistance work. Nearly all of the agency’s Washington-based workers received an email Sunday telling them not to come into the office the next day and to work remotely instead.

Both Trump and Rubio offered support for Musk and criticized the agency. The White House on Monday afternoon said USAID has been unaccountable to taxpayers as it “funnels massive sums of money to the ridiculous — and, in many cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight.” It listed about 10 items, several related to diversity, equity and inclusion aid.

More than 200 USAID workers and supporters gathered outside the agency’s headquarters at the Ronald Reagan Building on Monday afternoon for an impromptu rally with roughly a dozen Democratic lawmakers. Some of those gathered held aloft hand-colored signs that read “USAID saves lives.”

“We are going to fight in every way we can, in the courts, in public opinion, with the bully pulpit, in the halls of Congress, and here at AID itself,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. “We are not going to let this injustice happen. Congress created this agency with the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. If you want to change it, you got to change that law. It is a matter of statute. It’s a matter for Congress to deal with, not an unelected billionaire oligarch named Elon Musk.”

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said he was supportive of the administration’s exploration of reorganizing USAID within the State Department..

“The greatest national security threat that Americans face is our skyrocketing national debt. We must confront this, and to do so hard choices will need to be made, and all parts of government will have to be looked at very closely,” Risch said in a statement, noting he would work “in consultation” with Rubio as the secretary begins “the process of merging USAID into State.”

U.S. foreign assistance amounts to less than 1% of the federal budget. USAID oversaw over $40 billion in combined appropriations from the State-Foreign Operations and Agriculture spending titles in fiscal 2023, according to a January Congressional Research Service analysis. The CRS noted some USAID programs are jointly managed with the State Department, making it difficult to know what the precise budget of the agency is.

At the White House, Trump broadly defended Musk’s actions.

“They’re finding tremendous amounts of really bad things, bad spending,” the president said. “And some of the things that they’ve been doing is, is just terrible … Elon can’t do and won’t do anything without our approval. And we’ll give them the approval.”

Democrats focused their anger on Musk rather than the president.

“Just like Elon Musk did not create USAID, he doesn’t have the power to destroy it,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

Democrats are focusing on the apparent conflicts of interest for Musk, the CEO of Tesla, Space X, and the social media company X. His ownership of companies that are major federal contractors may allow him to gain financially from Republican plans for reconciliation this year that would include more defense spending and an extension of tax breaks. Republicans are expected to justify the expenditures by cost-cutting elsewhere in the federal budget.

“My frustration with USAID goes back to my time in Congress,” Rubio said on Monday in San Salvador, El Salvador, where he was on his first foreign visit as secretary. “It’s a completely unresponsive agency. It’s supposed to respond to policy directives at the State Department and it refuses to do so. So the functions of USAID — there are a lot of functions of USAID that are going to continue, that are going to be part of American foreign policy, but it has to be aligned with American foreign policy.”

Republicans have previously floated the idea of merging the semiautonomous USAID with the State Department, but development experts have championed the current structure as providing more flexibility and impact to U.S. foreign policy implementers as well as more opportunities for American soft power around the world.

Even as Trump can use executive action to steer some USAID foreign assistance functions toward the State Department, “wholesale dissolution of the agency or formal transfer of functions provided by Congress would require legislation,” said Tess Bridgeman, a senior fellow at New York University’s School of Law’s Reiss Center on Law and Security, in a Saturday analysis for the national security news site Just Security.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., also gave his support to the State Department absorbing USAID.

“I would be absolutely for, if that’s the path we go down, removing USAID as a separate department and having it fall under one of the other parts of the United States Department of State, because of its failure,” Mast said in a Sunday interview with CBS’ Face the Nation.

Democrats say they will use whatever power they can, including things like slow-walking the confirmation process for noncontroversial Trump nominees, to pressure the White House and Musk to back off their efforts to muscle through a reorganization of USAID.

“Since we don’t have many Republican colleagues who want to help us, we are doing everything we can with our colleagues, through the courts, to make sure that we uphold the rule of law, stop this illegal shutdown of AID, and stop the other illegal actions around the government,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.

Rubio last week issued a waiver to continue humanitarian assistance, using authority granted by Trump’s executive order. But since USAID is the main implementer of humanitarian assistance, the decision to put dozens of the agency’s senior leadership on leave and furlough hundreds of the agency’s contractors leaves in doubt whether the aid can be disbursed.

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Babies born with heart defects may be at increased risk for cancer within the first 10 years of life, according to new research that suggests mothers may also be at risk.

“Our research highlights the importance of maternal factors and genetic traits and understanding how they may be connected,” study author Dr. June Huh said in a news release. Huh is a professor of cardiology in the department of pediatrics at the Heart Vascular Stroke Institute at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul.

Heart defects are the most common type of birth defect in the U.S. In North America, heart defects affect 12 of every 1,000 live births, according to American Heart Association statistics. These include structural abnormalities, such as openings between the heart’s chambers, and severe malformations, such as the absence of heart chambers or valves.

Medical advances have allowed children with heart defects to live longer than they once did, but some research suggests they may be at higher risk for other conditions, such as cancer.

In the study, published in the AHA journal Circulation, researchers analyzed health data for more than 3.5 million live births in the Korean National Health Insurance Service database between 2005 and 2019. The newborns and their mothers were followed for a median period of 10 years.

Overall, children born with a heart abnormality had a 66% higher incidence of cancer in their first decade of life than those without heart defects. Cancer risk was more than double in newborns with heart defects involving blood vessels or heart valves and twice as high among those with complex heart defects compared to newborns without heart defects.

Leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma were the most common types of cancer to be diagnosed among children both with and without heart defects.

Mothers, too, faced a higher cancer risk after giving birth to babies with heart defects. They were 17% more likely to be diagnosed with cancer in the decade that followed than women who gave birth to children with healthy hearts.

Researchers don’t yet understand the mechanisms that may be responsible for this link but say it could be due to the mother’s genetic predisposition to cancer or a mutation that’s contributing to both cancer and congenital heart defect risks in newborns.

“The genetic variants inherited from the mother may provide the necessary environment for cancer to develop in congenital heart defect patients, highlighting a possible shared genetic pathway underlying both conditions,” Huh said.

Dr. Keila N. Lopez, a pediatric cardiologist at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, said in the news release that she was surprised by the study’s finding of a cancer association among mothers of infants with heart defects.

“This finding needs to be further explored to understand if there are environmental factors affecting genes (epigenetics) or stress-related changes linking congenital heart defects with maternal cancer risk,” said Lopez, who was not involved in the research.

“There is some data that suggests stress is related to cancer risk, and having a child with a congenital heart defect can be very stressful,” she said. “So having studies that investigate and demonstrate all the links between cancer and congenital heart defects will help us understand lifelong risks of not only heart defects but also the development of cancer within families.”

The study, Lopez said, also emphasizes the importance of seeing a pediatric cardiologist and primary care physician for follow-up care, including lifelong surveillance for children born with heart defects.

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© 2025 American Heart Association, Inc. 

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Europeans “are parasites”. After the scandal of the Signal chat with the Pentagon’s plans for the attack in Yemen, mistakenly shared with the director of the Atlantic magazine and become public knowledge, Donald Trump does not apologize but relaunches the accusations of his deputy J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against Europe that emerged from the top secret chat.

The exchange between the representatives of the US administration shows all the contempt against the Old Continent. “I can’t stand having to save Europe again”, Vance writes about a US raid against the Houthis. “I fully share your hatred for the European parasite, it’s pathetic,” Hegseth replied. And to make matters worse, the US president himself commented: “I agree, they are parasites (the Europeans, ed). They have been for years, but we don’t blame them, we blame Biden,” Trump said, referring to trade and tariffs.

As for the leak due to the “mistaken” inclusion of journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the chat by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump downplays it, saying Waltz “probably” won’t use it again and that no classified information was leaked anyway: the attack on the Houthis was a great success. “The only hiccup in two months, and it turned out to be no big deal,” Trump told Nbcnews, reiterating his confidence in his national security team and repeating that the presence of a journalist in the chat “had no impact whatsoever” on the military operation.

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt had anticipated on X that “no war plans were discussed, no classified material was posted in the chat.” “Goldberg is well known for his sensationalism,” Leavitt said, presenting what she calls “the facts.” Regarding the use of Signal, the spokeswoman explained that the White House legal office “has provided a list of different platforms on which senior officials of President Trump can communicate as securely and efficiently as possible.”

However, CIA Director John Ratcliffe called the inclusion of a journalist in a Signal group chat among Trump administration officials discussing war plans “obviously inappropriate.” Ratcliffe’s comment came at the height of a tense exchange with Democratic Senator Michael Bennet during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, during which the Colorado senator pressed him on CIA rules regarding the handling of classified information and whether those rules were followed in the Signal chat reported by The Atlantic. “Does the CIA have rules about handling classified information? Yes or no?” Bennet asked, getting an affirmative answer.

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Anna Kendrick had a simple — and shady — answer when asked about reuniting with Blake Lively for the sequel to “A Simple Favor” amid the latter’s enduring legal battle with Justin Baldoni.

The “Woman of the Hour” star and director, 39, was signing autographs at Friday’s SXSW premiere of “Another Simple Favor” when “Entertainment Tonight” asked the $400-million question: “What does it mean to be working with Blake again?”

“Oh, you know…” Kendrick said, avoiding the question as she quickly walked off to take a selfie with fans.

Lively, meanwhile, took a slightly different approach when “ET” asked what it meant to be back working with Kendrick.

“Oh, it’s the best. I’m so happy to be here,” she said — though it’s unclear whether “the best” was in reference to the actress’ working relationship, the excitement around the film or the fact that fans were still clamoring to get their photos taken with the former “Gossip Girl” star amid her headline-grabbing drama with Baldoni.

Lively in late December filed a lawsuit accusing her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star of sexual harassment on the film’s set and a retaliatory smear campaign — allegations highlighted in a deep dive by The New York Times. Baldoni then hit the paper with a $250 million libel lawsuit, claiming they “cherry-picked and altered” the communications included in the report.

The video player is currently playing an ad. In January, Baldoni filed a $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane, accusing them of civil extortion and defamation.

The two sides have continued to sling insults and allegations in the weeks since, with Lively claiming other actresses can back up her claims of a “toxic set.” Baldoni and his lawyers — who have said it was Lively who created a hostile work environment — amended their initial lawsuit with claims that metadata proves she was plotting with The New York Times on its“well-calculated hit piece.”

News broke last month that “Another Simple Favor” would have its world premiere at the Austin, Texas-based media festival on March 7, nearly a year to the day before the dueling lawsuits are slated to head to trial.

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Blake Lively is reportedly struggling amid the never-ending feud and dueling lawsuits with her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star Justin Baldoni.

The “A Simple Favor” star, 37, “is very stressed, upset, and just wants all of this to be done,” an insider told Us Weekly.

Lively accused Baldoni, 41, of sexual harassment and a retaliatory smear campaign in a complaint filed just before Christmas. Prior to the filing, much of the evidence in Lively’s suit was laid out in a New York Times piece. Baldoni sued the newspaper for $250 million on Dec. 31, as Lively was suing him.

Last month, the “Jane the Virgin” alum filed a $400 million lawsuit against Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and publicist Leslie Sloane for alleged defamation and civil extortion.

Reynolds, 48, “has been consoling” his other half but is “more confident that the truth will prevail in court,” said the source.

That’s exactly how the “Deadpool” star presented the couple in an Instagram story Monday, which showed a selfie of Lively grinning as he stood behind with a tight-lipped smile.

The picture was shared the same day as the first hearing in the case, which is scheduled to head to trial March 9, 2026.

Attorneys for both camps appeared in Manhattan Federal Court Monday, during which Judge Lewis Liman did not implement a gag order on Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman as Lively’s legal team suggested it might request one, but Liman cautioned both sides to tone down efforts to try each other in the court of public opinion.

Last week, Lively, Reynolds and Sloane told Liman they were seeking to dismiss Baldoni’s suit.

On Friday, Baldoni amended his lawsuit against Lively to include new alleged evidence that his team says proves Lively and The Times were working together on the so-called “hit piece” as early as Oct. 31.

Also over the weekend, Baldoni’s side released a long-promised website containing the amended complaint and a 168-page “timeline of relevant events,” which Lively’s lawyers asked Liman to strike. He did not immediately rule one way or the other.

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The Senate voted along party lines Tuesday to confirm Jay Bhattacharya as the next director of the National Institutes of Health. The vote was 53-47.

As director, Bhattacharya would oversee the $48.6 billion agency, the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research.

Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, has been a vocal critic of the NIH.

He gained attention as a co-author and signer of The Great Barrington Declaration, a controversial open letter from scientists issued in October 2020 that expressed concern with restrictive COVID-19 policies and called for a more targeted approach.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee advanced his nomination on party lines earlier this month. The Senate voted to end debate on his nomination earlier Tuesday on a 53-46 party line vote.

During his confirmation hearing, Bhattacharya said he would prioritize rebuilding trust in science, increasing overall transparency and seeking new solutions to combat chronic disease.

At that hearing, Democrats criticized the administration’s freezing of NIH grants and workforce reductions, but Bhattacharya deflected, saying he would reexamine those issues after his confirmation.

But he also stopped short of condemning those cuts and argued he doesn’t believe that President Donald Trump intends to slow down science, even though the agency has been criticized for canceling meetings of committees that recommend projects NIH should fund.

“I fully commit to making sure that all the scientists at the NIH and the scientists that the NIH supports have the resources they need to meet the mission of the NIH, which is to make America do research to make America healthy,” he said then.

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President Donald Trump’s federal funding cuts are being felt from farms in the Heartland to food banks in Chicago.

More than $1 billion in assistance that usually flows into the U.S. Department of Agriculture for two programs that help local farmers, schools and food banks has already vanished. Now the administration is threatening to slash the agency’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides low-income families with benefits to help supplement their grocery budgets.

All of that is leaving farmers, a key voting bloc for Trump, without what was once a safe outlet for their produce. Food banks are also receiving less aid at a time when demand is surging — after all, consumers were already grappling with the rising cost of everything from meat to eggs.

In the west side of Chicago, Wendy Daniels has seen an increase of about 25% in the number of new people coming through her food bank since January. That’s a worrying trend, she says, as tariffs, inflation and funding cuts are set to squeeze grocery budgets while making it more expensive for food banks to cover their operating costs.

“I’m $5,000 over budget, and it is March and guess what, I’m not going to stop purchasing because our families need food,” said Daniels, whose Breakthrough Urban Ministries food bank near the Garfield Park neighborhood runs a fiscal year that ends in June. “So we will probably end up in a $15,000 budget deficit by the end of the year.”

Funding cuts to the USDA include about $421 million for the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program, where states can purchase food from farmers and then give it to organizations that help underserved communities, like food banks. Some $660 million in funds were also cut for Local Food for Schools, a program that allows states to buy food and distribute it to schools and child care facilities.

In Illinois, the state Department of Agriculture also said the Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program, which offers better market opportunities and new streams of revenue to small and mid-sized agricultural producers, also ceased to operate.

SNAP Cuts

Cuts to SNAP would impact about 1.9 million people in Illinois, 1.5 million in Michigan, 1.4 million in Ohio, 705,000 in Wisconsin and 610,000 in Indiana, according to a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Federal SNAP spending totaled $112.8 billion in 2023, according to the USDA.

“You’re taking food away from families — it’s not Democratic families, or Independent families or Republican families, it’s all families,” said Democratic Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi. “It’s people in all states.”

The USDA confirmed cuts to the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program and Local Food for Schools.

There’s also uncertainty around the Emergency Food Assistance Program Funding, which aids food banks. In a letter to the USDA Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and 25 other senators questioned the agency on reports that a part of the program was paused.

“A cancellation of these funds could result in $500 million in lost food provisions to feed millions of Americans at a time when the need for food shelves is extremely high due to costly groceries and an uncertain economy,” the senators said.

In a statement to Bloomberg, the USDA said the administration of President Joe Biden “created unsustainable programming and expectations using the Commodity Credit Corporation” but that the USDA continued to purchased food for the TEFAP, which aids food banks.

Shipments Pause

Still, the Greater Chicago Food Depository said in a statement on Tuesday that it had just learned that 1.7 million pounds, or 52 truckloads, of government food that was set to arrive between April and August was suspended. The shipments, purchased through Commodity Credit Corporation funding, amounted to $3.3 million and included dairy, pork, chicken, eggs, dried plums and cranberries.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said the Trump administration is “turning their backs on America’s Dairyland and betraying our farmers.” Trump won the state, which distributed about $4 million in food last year, with a majority of rural voters.

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, also a Democrat, criticized Trump and Elon Musk for cutting a $12 million award used to provide local food to schools and child care programs.

“I’s just the latest terrible cut with real impact on families across Massachusetts,” Healey said earlier this month. “There is nothing ‘appropriate’ about it.”

Farmer Impact

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, one of Trump’s most vocal critics, said farmers in the biggest U.S. soybean-producing state need the business brought in by USDA programs. In their pursuit to cut government spending, the administration has “made farmers the collateral damage in that endeavor,” said the Democrat, who is expected to have White House ambitions for 2028.

“Cutting the funding leaves farmers on the hook for expenses they incurred believing they would be reimbursed and leaves our most vulnerable, food-insecure communities without meat, fresh produce and other nutritious donations they were promised,” Jerry Costello II, director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture, said of the Local Food Purchase Assistance Program. “The federal government broke its promise, and the people of Illinois are paying the price.”

A number of food banks in Chicago met officials including Krishnamoorthi on Thursday to discuss potential cuts to SNAP. The program provides nine times more meals than all the food banks in the country are able to, said Kate Maehr, chief executive officer of the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

“At a time of unprecedented need, which we are in, there is not a world in which charity can replace SNAP,” she said.

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Hamdan Ballal, one of the two Palestinian filmmakers who co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” is free. He was released Tuesday from Israeli custody, less than a day after Israeli military and police detained him and three other people following a brutal attack Monday by settlers in the occupied West Bank.

Ballal was released from an Israeli police station in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. He had bruises on his face and blood on his clothes. Upon his release, the filmmaker told the Associated Press that he was in custody at an army base and forced to sleep under an air conditioner.

“I was blindfolded for 24 hours,” he told AP. “All the night, I was freezing. It was a room, I couldn’t see anything … I heard the voice of soldiers laughing about me.”

Ballal was detained Monday evening after a group of masked settlers descended on the Palestinian village Susiya in the Masafer Yatta area and beat him in his head and stomach, his Israeli co-director and journalist Yuval Abraham and activist group Center for Jewish Nonviolence alleged. Abraham said in a tweet shared Monday that “soldiers invaded the ambulance (Ballal) called, and took him.” Activist Basel Adra, another Palestinian co-director of “No Other Land,” also tweeted about Ballal’s detainment Monday, sharing a photo of a person with their hands behind their back being escorted into a vehicle bearing the Israeli flag. “Hamdan…is still missing after soldiers abducted him, injured and bleeding,” Adra said.

Palestinian residents said the settlers, some wearing masks, some carrying guns and some in military uniforms, attacked as residents were breaking for their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, AP reported.

The filmmaker’s wife Lamia Ballal recounted her husband’s detainment and the attack to AP. She said she heard Ballal being beaten outside their home and heard him screaming, “I’m dying.” Lamia Ballal said her husband was beaten by three men in uniform using the butts of their rifles. She told AP the attention surrounding “No Other Land’s” Oscar win earlier this month led settlers to “attack us more.”

The Center for Jewish Nonviolence on Monday posted dashcam footage on Bluesky of someone shoving three people and punching one member of the group. The video later shows another person — whose face is covered by a mask — joined by several others, picking up an object from the ground and hurling it at the vehicle, destroying the windshield. Video recorded and shared by Anna Lippman, a delegate for the activist group, shows an alternate angle of the confrontation. Lippman also tweeted photos of a vehicle with shards of glass in the passenger seats.

Lippman told The Times via social media messages Monday that more than a dozen settlers attacked Susiya and destroyed property. She also said that Israeli soldiers took Ballal from the ambulance where he was receiving care, and detained two other Palestinian men.

In a Monday statement, a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces shared its account of the “violent confrontation.” The spokesperson said the dispute broke out after several people it described as “terrorists” allegedly hurled rocks at Israeli citizens and damaged their vehicles. The incident involved “mutual rock-hurling between Palestinians and Israelis at the scene,” the statement said.

IDF said its members and Israel police responded “to disperse the confrontation,” and that the people it described as “terrorists” started hurling rocks their way. The spokesperson said Israeli military and police forces also detained an Israeli person allegedly involved in the confrontation and took all four detainees for further questioning. The IDF spokesperson also denied allegations it detained someone from inside an ambulance. The Times learned Monday afternoon that Israeli forces had detained Ballal on suspicion of hurling rocks at IDF and police.

The IDF spokesperson did not immediately respond Tuesday to The Times’ request for more information about Ballal’s release and the status of the three other detainees. The spokesperson also did not immediately respond to The Times’ inquiry about Ballal’s claims about the conditions of his detainment.

The attorney representing Ballal and the two other Palestinian men who were detained did not immediately respond to The Times on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, Adra tweeted photos of Ballal receiving medical care. He wrote that his co-director “was beaten by soldiers and settlers all over his body.” He repeated claims that Israeli soldiers left Ballal “blindfolded and handcuffed” for the entirety of his time in custody. The photos show Ballal lying on a medical exam table with two medical personnel around him, one wrapping a blood pressure monitor around the director’s left arm. Dark stains that look like blood dot the sleeves and the front of Ballal’s striped shirt.

Just weeks ago, Ballal joined his “No Other Land” co-directors Adra, Abraham and Israeli filmmaker Rachel Szor in accepting the documentary feature prize at the 97th Academy Awards. The film, which recently became the subject of controversy in Miami Beach earlier this month, documents Israel’s demolition of Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta and displacement of its communities in favor of Israeli military training grounds.

Despite a lack of commitment from U.S. distributors, various theaters across the country are screening “No Other Land,” including the Laemmle Theatres’ Santa Monica and Glendale locations and the Lumiere Theater in Beverly Hills. The American Documentary and Animation Film Festival in Palm Springs will host a screening of the film Friday at the Palm Springs Cultural Center.

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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.

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In August, a manufacturer of DNA testing kits sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department warning officials to stop using certain test kits that had proved prone to giving incomplete results.

The letter eventually landed in front of a civilian employee at the department’s Scientific Services Bureau — but the employee didn’t throw the kits out or send them back, sheriff’s officials said Wednesday.

Instead, the department kept using the faulty kits for another six months, testing thousands of samples from an array of criminal cases and investigations.

It wasn’t until Monday that a Scientific Services Bureau supervisor discovered the testing-kit company’s notice and officials realized what had happened.

Now, the department has opened an internal administrative investigation into the incident as officials face the daunting task of retesting 4,000 samples and figuring out how much the flawed kits may have affected criminal cases. In some cases, existing samples may be too small to retest, the department said.

“We take the integrity of our criminal investigations and the reliability of our forensic testing very seriously,” Sheriff Robert Luna said in a news release Wednesday afternoon. “The Sheriff’s Department is working diligently to assess the impact and to prevent such situations from occurring again.”

The department did not provide a copy of the company’s letter and declined to name the company. Sheriff’s officials said the civilian employee involved in the incident is no longer with the department but did not specify why the person left or when.

In total, the department used the defective kits for eight months, from July 2024 through February 2025.

“Based on the information provided by the DNA testing kit manufacturer,” the department said, “the use of the affected kits may have led to incomplete or suboptimal results but is not likely to have falsely identified any individual.”

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman said his office had begun working with the Sheriff’s Department to assess the scope of the problem and make sure those involved — including defendants, victims and the public — are kept informed.

“We will follow the facts in whichever direction they take us on any individual case and make decisions that are in full accordance with the law on how to remedy any particular situation that requires such remediation,” he wrote in a statement. “Ensuring the integrity of the criminal justice process to build and maintain trust in its outcomes is paramount as we go forward.”

Brooke Longuevan, president of the public defenders union, called the situation “deeply concerning.”

“This failure will undoubtedly delay criminal cases, leaving our clients in custody waiting even longer for their trials to move forward,” she said. “Serious oversights like this not only jeopardize the integrity of individual cases but also sow public distrust in the criminal legal system and call into question the efficacy and accuracy of criminal investigations.”

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