Category: Security

Justin Timberlake didn’t go out with a bang for the final U.S. stop of his Forget Tomorrow World Tour, canceling the concert just before showtime.

The plug was pulled Thursday after the doors had already opened at Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, and just 10 minutes before the opening act was set to take the stage.

The “Cry Me a River” crooner took to social media to explain that he “went into soundcheck battling the flu” and that the illness had “gotten the best” of him.

“You guys. I’m heartbroken. I have to cancel the show tonight,” he wrote on Instagram. “It kills me to disappoint you, and my team worked so hard to make this show happen. I want to reassure you, you’ll be getting refunds for your tickets. I love you all.”

Timberlake was originally scheduled to perform the Columbus concert in October but it was postponed to February after he reportedly came down with laryngitis and bronchitis.

The rescheduled show was the last of Timberlake’s U.S. leg of his international tour, in support of “Everything I Thought It Was,” his first album in six years. He plans to continue touring next month in Europe and South America.

Promoter Live Nation hasn’t announced a rescheduled date for the Columbus show, but Ticketmaster confirmed the availability of a refund.

“You don’t need to do a thing,” it wrote on its website. “We’ll issue a refund to the original method of payment used at time of purchase, as soon as funds are received from the Event Organizer. It should appear on your account within 14-21 days.”

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© 2025 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Kuwaiti National Guard is conducting a joint military exercise this week with the UAE National Guard to enhance cooperation and share expertise in military operations.

Lt. Gen. Eng. Hashem Al-Rifai, undersecretary of the Kuwaiti National Guard, received on Tuesday Maj. Gen. Saleh Al-Ameri, commander of the UAE National Guard, and his forces, the Kuwait Press Agency reported.

The military exercises, also known as CPX — Shield, are being conducted at the Kuwaiti National Guard’s Command Center, at Sheikh Salem Ali Camp.

This is the 20th edition of the exercises, called Nasr 20, which Kuwait carries out regularly and which involves other security branches in the country as well as forces from neighboring and allied countries.

Al-Rifai conveyed to the Emirati forces the greetings of the National Guard’s leadership, Sheikh Mubarak Humoud Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and his deputy Sheikh Faisal Al-Nawaf Al-Sabah.

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© 2025 the Arab News

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The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that more than 1,600 sexual assault cases against Uber will be allowed to continue before a single San Francisco judge, a move with far-reaching implications for the ride-hailing app and its cohort in Silicon Valley.

The decision issued Monday upholds an earlier ruling by a council of federal judges appointed to centralize civil suits from across the country.

Experts said the litigation is being followed closely by home-sharing platforms, dog-walking services and other “independent-contractor” apps, which have also been hit with stacks of sexual assault liability claims, along with Uber’s main competitor, Lyft.

Uber argued a four-year-old clause in the fine print of its user agreement barred riders from joining any mass lawsuit against the platform.

Hundreds of rape survivors claim the tech giant skimped on driver background checks, failed to report sexual violence to police and allowed sex offenders to drive for the company — all while banking millions in “rider safety fees.”

The appellate court said federal law trumps Uber’s terms of use agreement, which U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer of California’s Northern District had previously deemed “unenforceable.”

Judge Lucy Haeron Koh wrote in the higher court’s decision that 50 years of precedent stood against the type of reversal sought by the ride-sharing app, with not “a single instance” on the record to justify blocking what’s known as “centralization.”

“Uber has not convinced us that we should be the first,” the judge wrote.

Experts said the ruling marks a legal line in the sand for agreements app users must accept before ordering takeout, posting a thirst trap, borrowing an ebook or viewing their lab results. The lengthy waivers are unavoidable, and have become ever-more-indemnifying, experts said.

“Most people don’t even read those terms of use,” said Lindsay Nako, executive director of Impact Fund, a social justice litigation group — yet the click-to-agree contracts tightly control what happens if they’re injured.

Uber did not respond to requests for comment, but in its appeal to the 9th Circuit, the platform’s attorneys argued a “non-consolidation clause” in its terms of use was actually better for plaintiffs because it ensured each case would be heard on its own merits rather than in one clearinghouse proceeding.

“The terms of use allow plaintiffs to have their day in court,” Uber’s lawyers wrote. “Plaintiffs simply agreed to do that individually.”

But Nako and others tracking the case said if Uber could easily unwind cases the government binds together, other big companies would write identical provisions into their own terms of use, tangling federal civil courts in endless duplicative lawsuits — making it much harder for victims to collect damages.

By blocking the clause, the experts said, the court preserved rights most users never realize they’ve been asked to give away.

“It’s a great win for consumers and a bad day for tech companies,” said Kathryn Kosmides, an advocate at Helping Survivors, a partnership between victims’ advocates and personal injury lawyers. “This latest ruling sets precedent around app safety. A lot of companies are very nervous about what happens [next] in this case.”

In one sense, the ruling is simple: By siding with survivors and the panel, the 9th Circuit affirmed the court’s right to manage its own business. Combining alike cases saves taxpayers money, helps ease court backlogs and avoids precedent-setting decisions that may be in conflict, Koh wrote in her decision.

It is also incredibly common. About 70% of federal civil action is currently adjudicated as part of a multidistrict case, Breyer estimated.

“It’s a mind-bogglingly huge number,” Nako said of the multidistrict caseload.

Advocates say arguing a single case in a single courthouse is easier and cheaper than arguing hundreds in courtrooms across the country. It’s also good for plaintiffs, who largely seek the same sets of documents from the companies they sue.

Consolidated litigation can make it easier for plaintiffs to prove the wrongdoings they allege are systemic, experts said. Companies that lose or settle such cases are more likely to have to change how they operate, rather than simply paying out.

Johnson & Johnson was forced to stop using talc in its baby powder in 2023, following a multidistrict case that unearthed records showing it had known the ingredient caused reproductive cancers for half a century.

A consolidated suit against Oxycontin-maker Purdue, widely considered the engine of the opioid crisis, resulted in the largest award for damages in American history.

In Uber’s case, a loss could mean having to beef up background checks, tighten rules around who can contract to pick up passengers, drop drivers reported for misconduct, and install cameras to record every ride, among other changes.

Such changes would be expensive and potentially unpopular. But they aren’t the only outcome the ride-hailing app is trying to avoid.

Centralized cases can unearth huge troves of evidence that would never otherwise be part of the public record. Uber has been fighting for months to avoid discovery in California’s Northern District while the appellate court weighed whether the case could stay there.

“Does Uber want this data they had about sexual assaults becoming public? Hell no!” Kosmides said.

Now that the 9th Circuit has rejected its appeal, “there is no incentive to take this through discovery and to a courtroom with a jury, because ultimately in civil litigation, discovery becomes public,” she said.

“I think we will see more of those being pursued,” Kosmides said.

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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The Iranian government “wanted desperately” to kidnap and kill dissident journalist Masih Alinejad on the streets of New York City for shining a light on the regime’s torturous oppression of women, a Manhattan jury heard in opening statements Tuesday in the murder-for-hire case against two Eastern European gangsters.

“They smeared her in state-run news media. They imprisoned her brother. They even attempted to kidnap her and bring her back to Iran. And when they failed, when they couldn’t silence her or intimidate her or kidnap her, they hired these men,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Harris Gutwillig said in Manhattan federal court, looking over at Rafat Amirov and Polad Omarov.

“The government of Iran wanted desperately Masih Alinejad murdered, and you will hear why.”

Rafat Amirov, left, and Polad Omarov. Amirov and Omarov are members of the “Thieves in Law” enterprise, one of Russia’s oldest organized crime gangs that originated in Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s gulags.

The men Gutwillig called “guns for the government of Iran” have pleaded not guilty to murder-for-hire, conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire, attempted murder in aid of racketeering, and possession and use of a firearm in the case alleging they participated in a plot to kill Alinejad, who contributes to Voice of America and other outlets, at her Flatbush, Brooklyn home in July 2022 at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran.

Their trial is expected to shine a light on the far-reaching tentacles of the Iranian regime.

The journalist, author, and human rights activist, a prolific critic of Iran’s discriminatory treatment of women and human rights abuses, fled the country for the U.S. in 2009 and has since survived numerous attempts on her life. She became a U.S. citizen in 2019.

In 2021, an Iranian intelligence official and four accomplices were indicted for spying on her for months and hatching a plan to kidnap her and transport her to the East River, where they planned to ferry her by boat to Venezuela, according to court records.

The regime didn’t give up, Gutwillig said Tuesday, noting it was Alinejad’s encouragement to Iranian women to share pictures and videos on social media refusing to abide by the mandate to wear hijabs in public that particularly “enraged” the Iranian regime.

“Masih Alinejad is one of their main targets — that is because she stood up to the government of Iran by taking aim at one of its core rules, and that core rule is forcing a woman to cover her head … If women in Iran do not comply, they may be arrested or beaten by the morality police,” he said.

“She shined a light on the government’s oppression of women, (and) that enraged the regime.”

In the case on trial, Gutwillig said evidence including a tranche of electronic communications would show Amirov and Omarov accepted $500,000 from the Iranian government to plan Alinejad’s killing, which included stalking and preparing to murder her.

The feds allege that after a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard enlisted Amirov for help executing the hit, he hired Omarov via Iran. Omarov, who was in Eastern Europe, recruited Yonkers-based Khalid Mehdiyev of Azerbaijan, who was wired $30,000 to secure an AK-47 and surveil Alinejad round-the-clock during a seven-day stakeout outside her home — tracking where and when she bought coffee and what time she watered her flowers.

Mehdiyev, indicted alongside Amirov and Omarov in January 2023, is cooperating with the feds, Gutwillig said Tuesday. He was outside Alinejad’s home on the cusp of carrying out the killing on July 28, 2022, when she sensed something was off and fled the area. He was pulled over by the NYPD after running a stop sign 15 minutes later and found to have an AK-47 assault rifle, 66 rounds of ammunition, $1,100 in cash, and a black ski mask.

In the defense’s opening statement Tuesday, lawyers for Amirov and Omarov said they had no intent of killing Alinehad and that the evidence against them was wholly circumstantial. They framed Mehdiyev’s cooperation as an attempt to save himself.

“The evidence will show Mr. Mehdiyev knew he was in serious trouble within hours of his arrest,” lawyer Michael Martin said, adding that the trail of electronic evidence held up by the feds had no “fingerprints” belonging to his client. He called the cooperator a “murderer, a kidnapper, an arsonist, a robber, an extortionist, a scammer, a fraudster and a liar.”

Attorney Michael Perkins said Omarov, “in simple terms,” was a scam artist who sought only to screw the Iranian regime out of payment to carry out the hit.

“Mr. Omarov did little more than forward some WhatsApp messages,” Perkins said, adding the evidence would show he never intended to kill the journalist. “Mr. Omarov had no intention — no agreement — with anyone to kill Ms. Alinejad.”

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© 2025 New York Daily News.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Haiti’s criminal gangs on Thursday set fire to the premises of historic Radio Télévision Caraibes, leaving the multistory building of the popular radio and television station charred by black smoke in a week marked by repeated assaults by a powerful gang alliance in neighborhoods around downtown Port-au-Prince.

Members of the Viv Ansanm — Living Together — alliance, which has already destroyed dozens of schools since the start of this years, according to a tally by the United Nations, have been escalating their attacks since a Haitian government task force earlier this month began dropping explosive drones in gangs’ strongholds. The operation, which has yet to take out any of the well-known gang leaders, has had a positive psychological effect in the population, but it has also made an already deteriorating and unpredictable security landscape even more menacing.

Gangs, for example, attacked the capital from several angles two nights ago. At one point, they raided the courtyard of the famed Hotel Oloffson, putting in danger the lives of dozens of young girls who live nearby and the Roman Catholic nuns who care for them, before police and a neighborhood self-defense brigade managed to push them back. Once a favorite haunt of celebrities, including the novelist Graham Greene, who authored the 1966 classic “The Comedians,” the Oloffson, like other institutions in downtown Port-au-Prince, has become a no man’s land because of the escalating gang assaults.

On Thursday, Caraibes became the latest victim of the ongoing siege. At about 5:30 a.m. clouds of black smoke were seen coming from the radio station’s building on Ruelle Chavannes and covering its transmitting antenna, according to videos and photographs shared with the Miami Herald by owner Patrick Moussignac. In one video, the remnants of a burned-out vehicle was observed in the middle of the road.

The extent of the damage to the building and its audio, photos and film archives detailing more than 50 years of Haitian history, and once stored in its basement, remain unclear. Since last year, the station’s owners had been forced to relocate staff and broadcast from elsewhere in Port-au-Prince because of the attacks in downtown Port-au-Prince that have even shuttered the country’s biggest public hospital.

“The guys set fire to the radio station. It’s going up in flames,” a voice said in a whisper to Moussignac as he explained he was secretly recording the video and feared they would open fire on him if he were detected. “Do you see the windows? All have burned.”

Radio Télévision Caraibes, which has been located in downtown Port-au-Prince since the 1960s, is considered the first radio station to cultivate a widespread and popular audience in Haiti, where journalists have long come under attack and continue to lose their lives in the course of their work.

The radio station is not just a go-to for news, but it has also been the go-to-station for desperate Haitians seeking financial help with medical bills, ransom payments to kidnappers and to get a temperature of the politics. For years, the station led the country’s political debate and the shaping of public opinion with its popular political talk show “Ranmase,” where movers and shakers who make the news engaged in a verbal free-for-all every Saturday. The station has also caught flak in the past for allowing unpopular political figures from using its airwaves to defend their positions.

On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said “the levels of displacement are reaching new heights amid escalating violence in the country.”

“According to the International Organization for Migration in just three weeks, between the 14th of February and March 5th, more than 40,000 human beings were displaced in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. This is the highest number of people uprooted and recorded in such a short period since 2021, when the displacements due to gang violence began to be tracked,” Dujarric said.

Humanitarian groups, he said, also continue to face major access challenges due to the security risks and resources constraints. Funding shortages are leading to rapidly deteriorating conditions in displacement sites across Port-au-Prince, with many of those who have been displaced living dangerously close to areas with active fighting. Last week, stray bullets led to the death of at least one person in a displacement camp and others being injured.

This is the second time in 11 months that Haiti’s media outlets have lost a symbol of the nation’s hard-fought press freedom. Last April, armed gangs set fire to the premises of the country’s oldest newspaper and the hemisphere’s oldest French-language daily, Le Nouvelliste. The building and its presses were vandalized and looted, leading to a huge financial blow.

“The press continues to take hits,” Frantz Duval, the editor-in-chief of Le Nouvelliste said on Thursday while live on the newspaper’s Magik9 radio station as images of a burning Radio Caraibes circulated. He noted that prior to the latest attack, the radio station had already been forced to abandon its building and change its address because it was no longer safe for its employees.

“However, the building had remained as an institution,” Duval said. Day after day, Duval said, parts of Port-au-Prince are being forced to be abandoned.

“The cancer is advancing on Port-au-Prince; more and more areas, more and more neighborhoods, more and more streets, more and more homes, people are being forced to flee, and more and more institutions that are disappearing with their histories, with all that they represent in the history of the country.”

Whether it’s the family albums that the more than one million who are displaced were unable to retrieve or official or media archives that have gone up in flames amid the gang attacks, it’s the same, Duval said.

“It’s memories we are losing; it’s humanity we are losing,” he said. “It’s our history we are losing.”

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© 2025 Miami Herald.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Hassan Suleiman huffed in the morning sun, sweating despite the ice-cold water running up to his shins under the weight of the child sitting on his shoulders, a backpack and a full-to-bursting plastic bag he carried across the Kabir River.

Behind him were his wife, mother-in-law and other relatives, gingerly making their way into the riverbed. Behind them snaked many more people, an ever-growing line, all fleeing the violence engulfing their country for the relative safety of Lebanon.

It had been five days since clashes between loyalists of deposed President Bashar Assad and Syrian government forces had devolved into a sectarian slaughter, turning the villages nestled in the emerald lushness of Tartus province into abattoirs.

In that time, hundreds of civilians — nearly 1,000, some activists say — were chased down, tortured and shot in a frenzy of vengeance predominantly against Alawites, coreligionists of Assad. Many hard-line Sunni Islamists count members of the Alawite sect as infidels.

Though Syrian officials insisted the situation was now under control, and that government-affiliated groups that targeted civilians would be punished, Suleiman, an Alawite farmer, was taking no chances.

His village, Ransiyah, was barely a mile and a half away from the river, which marks a portion of the border between Lebanon and Syria. That made it close enough for him to make furtive trips to get belongings from his home. But he kept visits brief, fearing he wouldn’t have enough time to escape if state-aligned gunmen came to attack.

“The government are liars,” he said. “Yes, maybe it’s calm during the day. But at night they come and slaughter you.” He glanced at people who gathered Monday on the Syrian side of the river, taking off their shoes and rolling up their pant legs before dipping their feet into the water.

Suleiman sighed.

He had come to Lebanon on Friday, along with other men because men were being targeted. Were it up to him alone, he said, he would risk returning to Syria.

But he had to think of his daughter: In his mind were dozens of videos feverishly circulated among villagers, depicting what was said to be pro-government fighters lining up residents and executing them with an AK-47 bullet to the head.

“If someone from the government comes for us and you use a rifle to kill him, you’re [branded] a criminal; you’re then held accountable and they slaughter you.”

One the other hand, if you don’t defend yourself, he said, “he kills you. There’s no solution.”

Near him was Abu Ali, 35, who had just crossed with his wife and three sons. He had escaped the first days of the unrest from Tartus city to his hometown village of Sheikh Saeed, 22 miles north of the Lebanese border. Then he decided to flee the village too.

“We left this morning because we were told gunmen came to our building in Tartus and they have been picking up fighting-age men,” Abu Ali said, pointing to his sons, all young men over the age of 18. Like many interviewed, he refused to give his full name for fear of reprisals, citing relatives still in Syria.

“In half an hour, you’ll find all the villagers in this area here on this side. No Alawite will remain there.”

During Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, Lebanon hosted some 1.5 million to 2 million Syrians; around 260,000 of them had returned home after Assad’s fall in November.

But the recent unrest, which has so far triggered an exodus of some 7,616 into Lebanon, was for authorities here an unwelcome reversal.

“We’ve received them because it’s a humanitarian situation, but our situation as a municipality is below zero,” said Ali Ahmad al-Ali, the mayor of Masaoudiyeh, an Alawite-dominated village near a kink in the narrow and shallow Kabir River. In fatter years, he would have an annual budget of $220,000 to deal with the refugee influx. But Lebanon’s multiyear currency crisis has slashed that figure down to around $4,000.

“We have 550 families so far,” Al-Ali said, adding that they were being sheltered in Masaoudiyeh’s mosque and school and residents’ houses.

“And as I’m talking to you, I was just told four or five new ones arriving. We can’t keep up.”

Sitting in a drab cinder-block shed lined with wool blankets and thin mattresses was Amaar Saqo, a farmer from the village of Khirbet al-Hamam — his makeshift home since Friday, when he escaped with his wife, six kids and other members of his extended family after gunmen surrounded nearby villages.

“We left at 4 a.m. I took nothing from my house but what you see me wearing,” Saqo said, adding that the house had since been burned.

“They say they’re chasing regime loyalists. Is my kid a regime loyalist? Is my wife a regime loyalist?”

Clashes began Thursday, when 16 security personnel were killed in the rural areas of Syria’s Alawite-dominated coast, in what appeared to be an armed coup attempt by Assad loyalists against interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who led a coalition of Islamist factions to topple Assad. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, or SNHR, a war monitor, counted 172 security personnel killed by antigovernment forces, who also killed 211 civilians, some in sectarian attacks.

As more security forces were surrounded and killed by pro-Assad militants, the government called for reinforcements, drawing in factions and armed gunmen.

Though they largely put down the putsch, many then turned their wrath on Alawites, a largely impoverished minority that constitutes some 10% of the country’s population and which dominated Assad-era security services and state bureaucracy. (Alawites say that though some did benefit from their link to the previous government, Assad’s cronyism was ecumenical, benefiting a tiny circle of people from all sects.)

The SNHR said 420 people were killed by the government troops and allied factions, including a large number of civilians. Another war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, put the death toll among civilians at 973. Other activists say thousands are dead.

In recent days, Al-Sharaa ordered the formation of a committee to investigate and punish violations against civilians.

But in a climate where distrust was the dominant emotion, Saqo and many others interviewed here insisted government forces were now working to frame those they had slaughtered, dressing their corpses in uniforms and planting guns on them in an attempt to prove the military’s argument that it was fighting terrorism.

There was little evidence for that, or for pro-government figures’ insistence that it was the Assad loyalists who committed the worst infractions in order to sully Al-Sharaa’s image and sabotage his attempts at gaining international legitimacy.

But reports of continued attacks were eagerly picked up to bolster the competing narratives of the rival camps: On one side is a once-powerful minority unwilling to relinquish its influence, on the other an Islamist government with Al Qaeda roots finally removing its mask of civility.

But for the people wading across the Kabir River, their concern is going home and being safe.

“We want international intervention. Russia, U.N. — anyone. We won’t go back home without protection,” said Khadija, a woman in her 50s staying with her sons at the school, repeating a common view among the refugees here.

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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 The Federal Emergency Management Agency plans to hire more than two dozen temporary workers to help with fire recovery efforts in Southern California.

The agency announced the expanded workforce Thursday, saying the new employees would help in the Eaton and Palisades disaster areas.

The workers will be hired for four months and possibly have their employment extended, depending on need, a FEMA spokesperson said.

Twenty-six positions are available in acquisitions, civil rights, external affairs, disaster field training operations, hazard mitigation, human resources, individual assistance, information technology, human resources and other areas.

An announcement from FEMA said the expedited hiring process is intended to quickly grow its workforce while ensuring that it benefits from the local knowledge of hires from the Los Angeles area.

“Local hire work is part of an expedited process that helps quickly grow the FEMA workforce while also providing economic stimulus and good job opportunities to communities where jobs may have been lost due to a disaster,” FEMA spokesperson La-Tanga Hopes said in a statement.

The hiring pitch promised “many perks” of federal employment, including “excellent benefits, flexible work schedules, opportunities for professional growth, stability, and lateral movement across agencies.”

Nonprofit groups that support federal agencies have said that hiring may be hampered in the face of the massive reductions across many federal agencies ordered recently by the Trump administration. The advocates said federal employment appears less stable than at any time in recent memory.

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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

San Diego-based canned tuna giant Bumble Bee Seafoods has known for years that fishing vessels in its supply fleet used forced labor but failed to stop the practice, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in San Diego federal court that’s believed to be the first ever to allege human trafficking against a U.S. seafood company.

The plaintiffs, four men from rural Indonesian villages, allege they were promised good jobs on long-line tuna boats that are part of Bumble Bee’s “trusted fleet” but instead were subjected to physical abuse, deprived of adequate food and denied medical care. They allege they were ensnared in debt bondage and subjected to fees and paycheck deductions that left them destitute after months of excruciating labor and isolation at sea.

One of the men alleged he was denied medical attention after hot oil from the ship’s kitchen splashed down his body, causing burns so severe that “he felt like his genitals exploded.” Another alleged he was ordered to keep working after a load of fish landed on him, gashing his leg to the bone and overflowing his boot with blood. Two others alleged they were routinely beaten and stabbed with needles by their captains.

The lawsuit alleges Bumble Bee, one of the top U.S. companies in the canned tuna market, violated the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act and was negligent in ensuring that its fleet of suppliers did not use forced labor. The novel lawsuit comes after decades of reports by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations and other organizations that have identified forced labor as a particularly significant problem in the deep-sea fishing industry.

Bumble Bee has “had years and years and years to address this, but they haven’t,” said Agnieszka Fryszman, a prominent human rights attorney from the firm Cohen Milstein who is representing the plaintiffs in a joint effort with Greenpeace and San Diego-based attorneys from the firm Schonbrun Seplow. “There is almost literally no chance that they didn’t know that forced labor was pervasive in their supply chain, given the level and volume of reporting over the last 20 years about this exact problem.”

An attorney speaking on behalf of Bumble Bee said in a statement that the company “will not be commenting on pending litigation.” In its most recent “sustainability impact and progress report” published in 2024, Bumble Bee said it is working with multiple outside organizations to improve its recruitment practices and supply chain oversight.

The lawsuit, citing dozens of studies by government agencies and other organizations, alleged that forced labor is a longstanding problem in the fishing and seafood industry but that Bumble Bee lags even further behind other seafood brands in combatting such practices. Bumble Bee agreed in a legal settlement with a labor rights group two years ago to remove claims from its products and advertising that mentioned a “fair and safe supply chain” and “fair and responsible working conditions.”

Bumble Bee, which had a 41% U.S. market share for canned albacore when it filed for bankruptcy in 2019, is incorporated in Delaware and in 2020 was sold for nearly $1 billion to the Taiwanese tuna-trading giant FCF Co. Ltd. But as a subsidiary of FCF, it remains headquartered in downtown San Diego inside the gates of Petco Park and prominently touts its connections to the San Diego community. In the 2024 company report, every charity and non-profit organization that Bumble Bee said it supported was based in San Diego. That included the San Diego Food Bank, on whose board sits Bumble Bee senior vice president and general counsel Jill Irvin.

Controversy has swirled around Bumble Bee in recent years. Both Bumble Bee and Starkist, another major player in the canned tuna industry, pleaded guilty in 2018 to a price-fixing conspiracy. Bumble Bee agreed to pay a $25 million criminal fine, and its former CEO Christopher Lischewski was found guilty at trial and sentenced to 40 months in custody for his leadership role in the price fixing. Chicken of the Sea, which moved its headquarters from San Diego to El Segundo in 2018, cooperated with the Department of Justice antitrust investigation and was not charged.

The same year FCF purchased Bumble Bee, U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued an order halting all imports from a Taiwanese-based vessel that supplied tuna to FCF. The order cited a suspicion of forced labor on the ship. In a joint statement from FCF and Bumble Bee, the companies did not dispute that the ship in question had supplied FCF and acknowledged that “significant progress must be made to ensure responsible labor practices are followed on all tuna vessels.”

Fryszman said Bumble Bee has not taken the same steps to combat forced labor as have much of the rest of the seafood industry. That includes Bumble Bee and FCF’s continued use of transshipments, a practice by which fishing boats stay in open waters in the Pacific Ocean for months or years at a time by transferring their catch to refrigerated cargo boats.

The practice allows vessels to keep their crew at sea indefinitely where “they are isolated far from land and with little to no means of escaping or obtaining help for — or even reporting — their conditions,” the lawsuit alleged.

According to the lawsuit, Bumble Bee and FCF acknowledged in a self-evaluation as part of a sustainability project that it used transshipments, vessels with a significant migrant workforce and ships where crews were not allowed on shore at least once every 90 days — all key indicators of potential forced labor.

The suit also alleges that Greenpeace USA in 2016 emailed a link to one of its investigations about forced labor on Taiwanese fishing vessels to Lischewski, Bumble Bee’s CEO at the time. The suit alleges that Lischewski replied: “As for the report on Taiwan, I have printed it but have not yet taken the time to read it. It is not high on my priority list.”

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Wednesday each alleged they were subjected to forced labor after being recruited to Bumble Bees’ fleet in 2020 and 2021. They allege they secured the jobs through recruiting agencies that then deducted huge percentages of their salaries to repay recruitment fees. The men say that oftentimes, the recruiting agencies would confiscate their personal documents, making it impossible for them to escape their predicament or find other work, and that they were rushed through the process to sign contracts moments before being taken to sea to work. Once at sea, they worked seven days a week, usually for 18 hours a day or longer, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit’s lead plaintiff, identified only as Akhmad, is a married father of two who claimed his ship’s captain and senior crew beat him too many times to count, sometimes using a metal hook, according to the complaint. Akhmad alleged that the captain also forced him to keep working after his leg was gashed to the bone.

“Akhmad was left to clean and bandage his leg himself, without sterile medical supplies,” the lawsuit alleged. “His leg bled for two weeks and he is still in pain, years later.”

Akhmad alleged that he was promised a salary of $300 per month, but his employer deducted $250 per month for living costs and “to repay recruitment and administrative costs.”

Another plaintiff, identified only as Angga, was originally promised $700 per month but later was rushed through a contract signing process where he learned the pay would be $300 a month, with only $50 left over after deductions, according to the complaint. He also alleged the contract included stiff penalties for not fulfilling the two-year commitment and language that the recruiting agency could go after his family for those penalties if he broke the contract or absconded.

Angga alleged that he and other workers on his ship were frequently beaten and stabbed with a needle, and were often given only rice to eat. Eventually, Angga and other fishermen banded together for a work stoppage, demanding to be allowed to leave the vessel. He alleged the physical abuse by the captain increased in frequency after the work stoppage, but the men were allowed to leave two months later. He alleged that he was never paid for his months of forced labor.

Muhammad Sahrudin was on the same ship as Angga and largely alleged the same deception about his salary and the deductions taken from it. Sahrudin alleged he was stabbed, beaten and whipped by the captain and the senior crew. Like Angga, he participated in the work stoppage and was eventually allowed to go home. “In the end, Sahrudin did not earn any money from his forced labor at sea,” the suit alleged.

Muhammad Syafi’i was recruited as a cook, but once on the ship was also put to work fishing. He alleged that he experienced similar paycheck deductions, fines and penalties as the other plaintiffs. In his job as a cook, he prepared two batches of food at each meal — the captain and senior crew members ate chicken or duck, while the Indonesian fishermen ate inferior food that was often expired, according to the complaint. “They were so hungry that they resorted to eating the bait fish, including bait fish that he could tell was old,” the lawsuit alleged.

Syafi’i alleged that if men on his boat wanted raincoats, boots, gloves or other protective equipment, the cost would be deducted from their salaries.

“Unfortunately, this is a representative sample” of what many deep-sea fishermen experience, Fryszman said.

In addition to seeking damages for the plaintiffs, the lawsuit seeks to impose on Bumble Bee a list of nine requirements for its supply fleet, such as minimum rest requirements, safety and first-aid training, and the end of using transshipments. The lawsuit seeks to bar Bumble Bee “from benefitting from tuna harvested without such protections in place.”

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© 2025 The San Diego Union-Tribune.

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Three people were injured early Monday morning in Akron, Ohio, in a shooting that brought a party hosted by rapper Boosie Badazz to a screeching halt.

The Akron Police Department said in a report that the incident occurred at a bar on Paul Williams Street where a large crowd was in attendance, according to NBC affiliate WKYC. Police said a fight broke out and an “unidentified male suspect fired multiple shots, striking the victims.” The suspect reportedly fled the venue after the shooting. Cleveland news station WOIO reported that police said the shooting occurred around 2 a.m. Monday and “off-duty, uniformed officers working security for the business heard the gunshots and called for assistance.”

The officers found two of the three victims: an 18-year-old man and a 36-year-old man, according to WOIO. The two men were in critical condition and taken to a local hospital. The third person, a 25-year-old, reportedly went to an emergency room with a graze-gunshot injury. The identities of the victims were not revealed.

A spokesperson for the Akron Police Department did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for an incident report on Wednesday.

Boosie Badazz (born Torence Ivy Hatch Jr.) brought his Millennium tour to Cleveland’s Rocket Arena (formerly Rocket Mortage Fieldhouse) the evening of March 9. The concert also featured Trey Songz, Omarion, Bow Wow and Rick Ross. Boosie advertised a postshow party celebrating the tour stop on social media.

“MY OFFICIAL AFTER PARTY TONIGHT IN #AKRON #OHIO AT FIELD HOUSE 370 PAUL WILLIAMS STREET,” he wrote on Instagram. “DOORS OPEN AT 9PM | GET THERE EARLY.”

Video shared by TMZ shows the “Wipe Me Down” and “Set It Off” musician ducking to the ground after gunshots rang out. Akron Police Deputy Chief Michael Miller told the website “at least one shot was fired” while the rapper was onstage.

The Fieldhouse Lounge and Status8 Elite Bar & Grille, located on the 300 block of Paul Williams Street, lamented the “tragic incident that took place at our establishment” in social media posts Monday. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone affected by this event,” the statement added.

The missive informed patrons that the eateries are committed to guests’ safety and will “fully cooperate with the City of Akron to ensure the safety of our community.” In another statement Wednesday morning, Status8 said it will remain closed until Friday, and the Fieldhouse Lounge is temporarily closed.

Shortly after noting in the second statement that “additional regulations will be put in place,” Status8 released a third post outlining a dress code and security measures. The restaurant said it will no longer permit certain clothing and styles of shoes, large bags and lighters, among other prohibited times.

The latest statement added: “Metal detectors will be on premises.”

Police say there is an ongoing investigation to “put the pieces together and identify the shooter,” according to WKYC.

Boosie has not addressed the incident on social media. It also seems, as of Wednesday morning, he will carry on with upcoming commitments. He is still set to host his Spring Fling event in Philadelphia on Friday and will perform at his hip-hop festival Boosie Bash in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, later this month.

A representative for Boosie Badazz did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Wednesday.

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© 2025 Los Angeles Times.

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President Donald Trump said the United States would respond to the European Union’s countermeasures against his new 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, raising the risk of further escalation in his global trade war.

“Of course I’m going to respond,” Trump said Wednesday when asked by reporters at the White House if he would retaliate. “The problem is our country didn’t respond. Look, the EU was set up in order to take advantage of the United States.”

Trump did not specify which measures he would take. The U.S. president’s metals duties that took effect Wednesday triggered immediate reprisals from the EU and Canada, and sparked other nations to intensify negotiations with the Trump administration over lifting the import taxes.

The European Commission offered the strongest reaction so far to Trump’s latest trade offensive. It launched “swift and proportionate countermeasures” on U.S. imports, reimposing balancing measures from 2018 and 2020 and adding a new list of industrial and agricultural goods. The EU’s countermeasures will apply to U.S. goods exports worth up to 26 billion euros ($28.4 billion) — matching the economic scope of the U.S. tariffs, it said.

“We deeply regret this measure,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “Tariffs are taxes. They are bad for business, and even worse for consumers.”

Canada on Wednesday also announced 25% tariffs on about C$30 billion ($20.8 billion) of U.S.-made products. The measures will target steel and aluminum as well as other consumer items such as computers and sporting goods. The duties match the new U.S. metals levies “dollar for dollar” and will take effect Thursday at 12:01 a.m. New York time, Canadian Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc said.

Yet Trump’s move drew mostly veiled threats against American exports as countries, for now, opted for negotiations to avoid tit-for-tat tariff wars. That lack of a fast and broad escalation presages complex talks in the months ahead over the United States’ desire for broadly defined “reciprocal” tariffs set with each country individually.

When the midnight deadline passed with no exemptions offered, major Asian producers including South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Australia held off on immediate retaliation. The United Kingdom said it would focus on “rapidly negotiating a wider economic agreement.” Brazil also said it would seek to broker an alternative with the Trump administration before considering retaliatory measures and Mexico said it will wait until further U.S. tariffs are announced after April 2 to respond.

China, which wasn’t explicitly targeted in the latest trade salvo, didn’t immediately respond — but it did summon Walmart Inc., following reports the U.S. retailer was urging Chinese suppliers to help absorb higher costs.

U.S. stocks rose after two days of heavy losses on the back of cooler-than-forecast February inflation data. Equities advanced after a selloff that put the S&P 500 Index on the verge of a technical correction. But anxiety around Trump’s policies continued influence sentiment, with the U.S. benchmark briefly falling as Canada unveiled its retaliatory measures.

Politically, Trump’s move to widen his trade offensive comes at a hazardous juncture seven weeks into his second term. His rapid effort to rewire the U.S. economy as a global manufacturing power has rattled financial markets, spooked consumers still haunted by pandemic-era inflation and fueled recession fears amid mounting uncertainty for corporate America.

Trump pressed on with the metals tariffs despite a flurry of last-minute lobbying from U.S. stakeholders, including the country’s largest aluminum producer, Alcoa Corp. The company warned the tariffs would imperil tens of thousands of jobs while raising prices for Americans already feeling their household budgets squeezed.

The president acted with the backing of some domestic industry executives, who say the protectionist measures could raise profits for U.S. producers and bring steel and aluminum jobs back from overseas.

Steel and aluminum levies are part of Trump’s plan to build significant barriers around the U.S. economy, moves he has cast as necessary to rebalance a global trading system that is “ripping off” the nation. Yet his indecision on some duties has raised questions about his resolve.

Trump last week allowed 25% tariffs to take effect on Canada and Mexico tied to illegal drugs and migration, but within days announced a monthlong exemption for goods covered by the North American trade agreement. At the same time, he doubled a similar tariff on China to 20%.

Trump’s steel and aluminum orders revive and expand his 2018 levies on the metals and prohibit exemptions for products made from either of them. That means some $150 billion worth of imported consumer goods get hit with the new tariffs, according to research from Global Trade Alert, in addition to raw steel and aluminum.

Trump’s first administration granted exclusions for major suppliers, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil and the European Union, so that some months, fewer than half of imports were covered by the tariffs. Administration officials have warned not to expect future carve-outs.

He has also opened the door to tariffs on copper, a critical mineral for the global economy, by directing the Commerce Department to investigate trade restrictions.

Tariff Anxiety

Anxiety that tariffs and Trump’s government downsizing push will stifle U.S. growth has fueled a three-week stretch of volatility in global markets.

“Traders and investors do feel the heat from these tariffs rising,” said Kok Hoong Wong, head of institutional equities sales trading at Maybank Securities in Singapore. “We are increasingly pricing in an escalating trade conflict.”

Trump’s advisers are crafting so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on trading partners worldwide that could take effect as soon as April 2. He’s also promised duties on automobiles, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, lumber and agricultural products.

Many U.S. manufacturers have championed Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum, arguing subsidized foreign rivals — especially China, producing more than it can consume at home — have unfairly set out to dominate the industry, rob market share and jobs from U.S. suppliers. They argue the metal industry is critical to the U.S. industrial base and national security.

“Strengthening the steel and aluminum tariffs” will help incentivize “companies to boost output, make new investments and hire workers,” said Scott Paul, president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, whose members are U.S. steelmakers and workers. “Including derivative steel products makes a lot of sense to ensure that importers can’t game the system and American companies that make these products have a level playing field.”

The nation’s largest steelmakers, including Nucor Corp., United States Steel Corp., Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. and Steel Dynamics Inc, last week urged Trump to “resist” calls for carveouts, warning that previous exemptions prompted a surge of imports, causing prices to drop and their profits to shrink.

Before the exemptions, Trump’s 2018 tariffs helped boost prices — and reduce imports — of both steel and aluminum.

The U.S. steel industry is coming off its worst year since Trump’s first term, as lackluster construction demand, inflation on input materials and high borrowing costs crushed their earnings. While imports rose in 2024, they remained lower than 2022 and 2021. Steel inventories are near a multiyear high, sitting in warehouses awaiting an increase in demand.

The tariffs present a more complex challenge for the aluminum industry. Unlike American steelmakers, aluminum producers have a greater global footprint. More than half of the metal consumed in the U.S. is made in Canada, where the biggest producers are Rio Tinto Group and Pittsburgh-based Alcoa.

Alcoa Chief Executive Officer William Oplinger, Rio Tinto representatives, the president of the U.S. Aluminum Association and others have recently been directly involved in lobbying the Trump administration to avoid the added tariffs on Canadian imports, according to people familiar with the discussions who asked not to be named because they were private.

Oplinger predicts devastating consequences from a 25% tariff, including the loss of about 20,000 direct U.S. aluminum industry jobs and another 80,000 indirect jobs.

Economists predict the tariffs are likely to drive up costs for some domestic industries that are heavily reliant on foreign supplies of specialty steel. That includes the oil industry, which uses steel pipes and other materials at wells. Higher costs for steel and aluminum also could trickle down to consumers in the form of more expensive automobiles, appliances and even canned drinks.

Supporters of the president’s plan argue the tariffs ultimately will help drive more manufacturing to the U.S. And while even the president has acknowledged there may be some short-term economic pain from his broader tariff onslaught for U.S. consumers, administration officials say extended tax cuts and more domestic energy production should help offset those costs.

While many countries affected by the fresh tariffs didn’t retaliate, they also weren’t happy about the moves. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters that the Trump administration’s actions were “entirely unjustified” and an act of “economic self-harm.”

“This is against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship,” Albanese said. “And fundamentally at odds with the benefits that our economic partnership has delivered over more than 70 years.”

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© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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