Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s tryout comes as Bari Weiss has moved to shake up what she perceived as bias at CBS News and boost ratings
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Liz Kendall said on Thursday that parents were ‘crying out for help’ over childrens’ online safety
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Frederic Priestley, 34, falsely advertised property he did not own for rent on Facebook, obtaining payments and deposits
A man has been jailed after defrauding more than 30 people out of more than £77,000 in a rental scam, police said.
Frederic Priestley, 34, from Southwark, London, falsely advertised a property for rent on Facebook between April and September last year.
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© Photograph: Met Police
© Photograph: Met Police
© Photograph: Met Police
European missile systems manufacturer MBDA and Ukrainian defense company Ukrainian Armor have signed a memorandum of understanding to explore joint development of deep-strike systems and counter-unmanned aerial systems (C-UAS), marking a new phase of industrial cooperation linked to the war in Ukraine, MBDA announced on 10 June.
MBDA is one of Europe’s leading defense firms specializing in guided missile systems across air, land, and naval domains. It is also the maker of the Storm Shadow / SCALP-EG cruise missile, which has been supplied to Ukraine by European partners for long-range strike missions.
Ukrainian Armor is a domestic Ukrainian defense manufacturer involved in producing armored vehicles, artillery systems, ammunition, and unmanned platforms, and has expanded significantly since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The agreement sets out a framework for long-term cooperation, including joint development projects, technology exchange, and potential co-production initiatives, with the possibility of establishing a future joint venture.
The focus is on two priority areas: “deep strike” capabilities for long-range precision attacks, and counter-unmanned aerial systems designed to detect and neutralize drones, which have become central to battlefield dynamics in Ukraine.
MBDA said the partnership is intended to help strengthen Ukraine’s independent industrial capacity, while leveraging European experience in advanced missile and air defense systems. Ukrainian Armor will contribute production capability and operational experience across armored vehicles, munitions, and unmanned systems developed under wartime conditions.
Both sides said the cooperation aims to combine European technological expertise with Ukrainian battlefield-driven innovation, creating a framework for deeper defense-industrial integration.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Friday pledged to move forward with negotiations on a controversial luxury coastal resort linked to Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, that is set for construction on the country’s only island.
The deal has sparked protests in Albania, with some calling for Rama’s resignation. But in an interview Friday with MS NOW, the prime minister waved off such criticism as “ideological bulls—.”
He told MS NOW that “negotiations” for the property were still ongoing and dismissed concerns of any conflict of interest, insisting talks began before President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and that Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government.
“When Jared Kushner and Ivanka came here and we started work together, it was not clear if Trump would go to jail or go to the White House,” he said, appearing to refer to Donald Trump’s legal battles ahead of the 2024 election.
The project, backed by Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, will cost an estimated $1.6 billion. It involves the construction of dozens of hotels, apartments and villas along the country’s western coast. A larger development is planned for the Narta Lagoon area, home to a wildlife reserve, and a smaller resort is set to be built on the uninhabited island of Sazan, a former communist-era military base.
Ivanka Trump said she and her husband first came across the location by accident while on a trip in 2021. “We were on a friend’s boat, and we stopped for a swim,” she told podcaster David Senra last month. “Effectively, that’s how we found it. We swam to the island. We went on a hike, barefoot all the way up to the top, and we were just captivated.”
In response to the construction, protests have broken out in the country’s capital, Tirana, where tens of thousands of residents have marched through the streets proclaiming, “Albania is not for sale.” Many demonstrators have carried cut-outs of flamingos, a species whose habitats they say will be destroyed if the project goes through.
Rama stressed that the deal included other parties besides Kushner’s firm. He said the “incredible team of investors” was “not coming to Albania to destroy” but “coming to build” and suggested his country was being used as a pawn to attack the Trump administration.
“Don’t come here to fight with Trump. It’s not your fight,” he said. “You want me to believe that suddenly the American media, the American influencers, the American world is caring about some flamingos in Albania?”
Earlier this month, Albania’s anti-corruption agency opened a probe into how the investment firm was granted the right to the land, which was previously designated a protected area.
Redi Muçi, a member of parliament from the left-wing party Lëvizja Bashkë (Movement Together), said the agreement between the Kushner-backed firm and the Albanian government “looks like political and financial corruption” because “there is no competition.”
“It’s very fashionable to use all these words,” Rama said when he was asked about accusations of widespread corruption in his country.
While the protests were sparked by the Kushner-backed project, they have expanded into broader anti-government demonstrations, with many calling for Rama’s resignation.
During his interview with MS NOW, the prime minister said he would not resign and suggested, without evidence, that a “majority” of the population “wants the project.” He also said an “investment of such magnitude in tourism” would bring “a lot of income for everyone” in the country.
Construction of the development could also complicate Albania’s effort to join the European Union. On Tuesday, EU spokesperson Guillaume Mercier reminded the country, which is one of the poorest in Europe, that its entry into the coalition depends on adherence to its laws, including those on the environment.
“Albania should refrain from action that could undermine the fulfillment of the closing benchmark, and we expect the Albanian authorities to act without delay,” spokesman Guillaume Mercier said.
Rama told MS NOW he was not concerned that the construction would impact his country’s chances of joining the EU.
In the U.S., news of the resort reignited ethical concerns around Kushner’s business dealings and possible conflicts of interest. While he holds no formal government role — and is frequently referred to as simply a “volunteer” by the Trump White House — Kushner has been a key figure in the administration’s foreign policy efforts, participating in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, and more recently, in the Iran war.
He’s done so while attempting to raise billions of dollars from governments in the region for his private equity fund. After the first Trump administration ended, Kushner secured $2 billion in investment from the Saudi government, along with hundreds of millions more from other Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Critics have suggested foreign leaders may be using the president’s son-in-law to curry favor with Trump. Kushner and the White House have previously claimed he is abiding by all applicable ethics laws.
The post Albanian PM dismisses concerns over Kushner-linked resort: ‘It’s not your fight’ appeared first on MS NOW.
Eljay Crisp-Carr was arrested on Thursday, and police are still searching for another suspect in Toledo shooting
Police in Ohio have arrested a suspect in a recent shooting that wounded 12 people at a crowded weekend neighborhood street festival.
Eljay Crisp-Carr, 20, was taken into custody on Thursday and charged with 11 counts of felonious assault. Court documents do not list an attorney for him, and no one answered a call to a phone number associated with him on Friday morning.
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© Photograph: Rebecca Benson/The Blade/AP
© Photograph: Rebecca Benson/The Blade/AP
© Photograph: Rebecca Benson/The Blade/AP
Mixed martial arts fighters parading through the chamber of the Lincoln Memorial before descending its steps for a face-off and press conference. Weigh-ins on the Ellipse. A star-spangled 90-foot “Claw” towering over the White House South Lawn. An octagon-shaped ring turned prime ad space — sponsors including Bud Light, Crypto.com and Polymarket paid substantial sums to have their names displayed — with the “People’s House” as the backdrop. Thousands of seats surround the ring where fighters will square off on Sunday for “UFC Freedom 250,” which CEO Dana White has predicted will draw “Super Bowl-type numbers.”
But behind the public spectacle are concerns about personal profit — and that President Donald Trump and his allies are positioned to benefit financially from the power of the presidency.
Trump purchased tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in UFC’s parent company shortly before announcing the event last year, according to a May financial disclosure. He’s holding a $1 million-per-plate fundraiser for his top super PAC the night before the cage match. And Trump “officially designed” a line of “Trump x UFC Freedom 250” medallions, which are selling for $250 to $12,000.
Those are just three of the ways the president stands to benefit from Sunday’s UFC event at the White House, which marks the president’s 80th birthday.
“This is a real distillation of this administration, which is to take public property and use it for private benefit,” said Brendan Ballou, a former Justice Department prosecutor who represented the plaintiffs who lost a court battle to stop the fight. “The danger in having corruption normalized is it will fundamentally tell the very rich and powerful that they are beyond reach of the law — and that message will extend beyond this administration.”
Sponsorship packages including ringside seats are being sold for $1 million or more. Asked if any of the money from those ticket sales would go to the president or his political or private business interests, a White House official said the administration has not been involved in any cost negotiations or sponsorship discussions.
“The federal government is not making any money on this event. UFC is funding and paying for this entire event,” the official said, adding that no taxpayer dollars would be used “outside of what would be applied towards employees’ normal duties and responsibilities.”
Whatever the financial arrangements, historians say there’s no real precedent for any of it.
“I can’t think of any previous president doing anything like it,” said Marc Selverstone, a historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. “Of course, presidents have long hosted sporting engagements at the White House, from tennis to golf to bowling to even T-ball for kids. But I can’t think of anything that’s been so commercialized as the UFC event, nor anything as publicly martial or gladiatorial.”
“Past presidents typically took extreme care to keep their private finances and business interests separate from the presidency,” said Nicole Anslover, a historian at Florida Atlantic University. “President Trump is breaking that precedent.”
The UFC fight isn’t the only construction project remaking the White House grounds this year — and it isn’t the only one where the administration has tried to control what the public sees.
On Thursday, officials opened the UFC arena on the South Lawn for a press preview, allowing reporters to take photos and video. But they were barred from photographing or filming the demolished East Wing and the ongoing construction of Trump’s massive new ballroom nearby. One Secret Service officer even ordered a reporter to delete an iPhone photo he had taken of the construction site.
The Claw itself is also a break from precedent, Anslover said. Trump’s predecessors altered the White House grounds to accommodate personal sports hobbies — Harry Truman added a bowling alley, privately funded by friends from Missouri, and Barack Obama had part of a tennis court converted to double as a basketball court — but those were for private use, not “a massive structure to be used for public profit-making events,” Anslover told MS NOW.
The White House would not answer basic questions about how much access UFC fighters will have to the White House grounds, including whether they will emerge from the Oval Office — as Time magazine has reported — or the Executive Mansion’s Red and Green rooms for their walkouts to the caged octagon.
The White House referred MS NOW to the UFC; the UFC did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official told MS NOW that fighters will have dressing rooms in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and make their way from that building on what’s known as the “tradesman route,” historically used by contractors and service workers. They’ll enter the venue through the Palm Room doors, the official said, which open to the Rose Garden.
As for who will tend to the fighters, the White House said the UFC is using its own medical corps to manage the contestants’ medical needs, while the White House Medical Unit will be responsible for all patrons on the Ellipse and South Lawn.
A court filing on June 10 offered a glimpse of how choreographed the spectacle will be. According to the filing, on Friday each fighter will enter the Lincoln Memorial chamber by elevator from a lower level — accompanied by a child — before being filmed walking through the chamber and descending the steps to the press conference area. National Park Service staff, the filing notes, are also weighing a request to mount a camera on the memorial’s lighting equipment.
Jacqueline Alemany contributed reporting.
The post How Trump and his allies could profit from the UFC fight at the White House appeared first on MS NOW.
Unidentified officer removed from frontline duties in the first known case of its kind in the UK
A police officer is under criminal investigation over the alleged use of artificial intelligence and has been removed from frontline duties in the first known case of its kind in the UK.
The officer, who has not been named, is being investigated over allegations of using the technology to “create evidential material in a number of cases” and perverting the course of justice.
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© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz said Gulf allies are backing President Donald Trump’s blockade and economic pressure campaign against Iran, telling Fox News Digital after a trip to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom that regional leaders believe Tehran is feeling the pain.
Waltz spoke to Fox News Digital on Thursday evening shortly after landing back in the United States, as reports of a possible deal with Iran began to emerge. He said the situation was still shifting by the hour, noting that Iran had launched another strike on Bahrain shortly after he left the region.
Waltz, the highest-level U.S. official to visit the region since the war began, said Gulf partners strongly support the administration’s efforts to keep pressure on Iran through both the blockade and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s "Operation Economic Fury."
SCOTT BESSENT SAYS IRAN UNDERSTANDS 'BRUTE FORCE' AS TRUMP WEIGHS OPTIONS AMID NUCLEAR STANDOFF
"They very much support the blockade," Waltz said, adding that allies shared with him "in a number of ways" how Bessent’s economic campaign is affecting the regime. The pressure campaign, Waltz said, is designed to squeeze Tehran while Trump continues negotiations aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
On Friday, an unnamed U.S. official told reporters in a briefing: "We do expect to be signing this agreement with Iran over the next few days. We assess it at 85%, but not 100%. We feel very good about the deal. We are not quite at the finish line, but we are very close"
Waltz said, "The UAE, in particular, believes that you have to keep that pressure and a very credible pressure," he told Fox News Digital. "That’s what the Iranians understand and respond to."
Waltz said leaders in the region validated U.S. assessments that Iran’s economy is deteriorating under the combined weight of sanctions, military pressure and isolation. He said Iran’s currency is "tanking," foreign currency reserves are running out, inflation is continuing to rise and the regime is struggling to pay the military, government employees and police.
TRUMP’S 'ECONOMIC FURY' SQUEEZES IRAN — BUT CAN TEHRAN OUTLAST THE PRESSURE?
"I think the regime is going to be increasingly desperate," Waltz said, adding that Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner would use that pressure "to their advantage."
In the UAE, Waltz met with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and the foreign minister, describing the Emiratis as among the most active regional partners against Iran. "There is zero daylight," Waltz said.
Waltz added the UAE has "both the capability and the will" to act, and said the Emiratis are prepared to take "short-term pain" to achieve the longer-term goal of blocking Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The UAE has been hit hard during the war. Waltz said the country had taken "by far the most missiles, the most drones, the most hits," but had moved quickly to repair damage and restore operations.
Waltz also pointed to the Abraham Accords as a major factor in the UAE’s posture, saying the country’s growing partnership with Israel has become an "important shift" in the regional alignment against Iran.
Bahrain was another central stop on Waltz’s trip. The country hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and has been directly exposed to Iran’s attacks and threats around the Strait of Hormuz.
MIKE WALTZ PUSHES UN RESOLUTION TO STOP IRAN MINING KEY GLOBAL SHIPPING ROUTE
"Until you go and really sit with them, you can’t appreciate what a strong ally they are," Waltz said.
He said U.S. and allied teams in Bahrain are working with global shipping companies, local shipping officials, insurance companies and other maritime actors as the U.S. seeks to keep vessels moving through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints.
Waltz accused Iran of making a "phenomenally bad decision" by attacking its neighbors, including hotels, port facilities and energy infrastructure. During one visit to a petroleum site, he said he saw evidence that Iran had targeted fire suppression systems and first responders before striking storage tanks, in an apparent effort to maximize damage.
"The Iranians were deliberately targeting fire suppression systems," Waltz said. "They were deliberately targeting first responders first."
Despite the strikes, Waltz said allied air defenses have had "over a 90% success rate" in shooting down Iranian missiles and drones, with U.S. forces working "hand in glove" with Gulf partners.
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Waltz ended his trip in the United Kingdom, where he said officials have been strong partners at the U.N. Security Council on Iran. He acknowledged "hiccups" and "speed bumps" over basing and access issues, but said many of those concerns had been "smoothed over."
"When we’re working to keep the Iranians isolated diplomatically," Waltz said, "they’ve been very good to work with."
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