International
Jury finds Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation
• A jury of six men and three women awarded the writer E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages.
• Donald J. Trump called the verdict a “disgrace.”
A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found former President Donald J. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll and awarded her $5 million in damages.
More than a dozen women have accused Mr. Trump of sexual misconduct over the years, but this is the only allegation to be affirmed by a jury.
In the civil case, the federal jury of six men and three women found that Ms. Carroll, 79, a former magazine writer, had sufficiently proved that Mr. Trump sexually abused her nearly 30 years ago in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan. The jury did not, however, find he had raped her, as she had long claimed.
The jury, in returning the verdict shortly before 3 p.m., also found that Mr. Trump, who is running to regain the presidency, defamed Ms. Carroll in October when he posted a statement on his Truth Social platform calling her case “a complete con job” and “a Hoax and a lie.” His lawyer said he intended to appeal.
Mr. Trump’s lawyers called no witnesses, and he never appeared at the trial to hear Ms. Carroll, who had sued him last year, deliver visceral testimony about the attack she said had ended her romantic life forever.
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Donald Trump at a lectern
Donald Trump, who avoided the trial, continued to say he did not know Ms. Carroll.
On Tuesday, Ms. Carroll nodded along as a court clerk read the verdict aloud, her nod growing more pronounced as the clerk said Mr. Trump was liable for defamation. She walked out of the courthouse grinning from ear to ear, holding hands with her lawyer, Roberta A. Kaplan. A woman yelled to Ms. Carroll, “You’re so brave and beautiful.” Ms. Carroll replied, “Thank you, thank you so much.”
In a later statement, she said: “I filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and to get my life back. Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”
For decades, Mr. Trump had reveled in projecting the image of a man irresistible to women, engineering tabloid headlines like “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,” appearing in the introduction of a 1999 Playboy magazine centerfold video and bragging in an exchange caught on video about how, as a celebrity, he could grab women’s genitals with impunity. Now the jury has labeled him not a Lothario but an abuser.
Its unanimous verdict came after just under three hours of deliberation. The findings are civil, not criminal, meaning Mr. Trump has not been convicted of any crime and faces no prison time.
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E. Jean Carroll leaves court in her sunglasses.
“Today, the world finally knows the truth,” Ms. Carroll said after court. “This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”Credit…Brittainy Newman for The New York Times
In a Truth Social post after the verdict, Mr. Trump continued to insist that he did not know Ms. Carroll: “I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. This verdict is a disgrace — a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time!”
His lawyer Joseph Tacopina said outside the courthouse that the case would be appealed. He also defended Mr. Trump’s absence from the courtroom and his decision not to testify in his own defense.
“This was a circus atmosphere, and having him be here would be more of a circus,” Mr. Tacopina said.
He noted that Mr. Trump had denied Ms. Carroll’s allegation in a video deposition that her lawyers played for the jury. He also said Ms. Carroll’s lawyers should never have been allowed to play the “Access Hollywood” recording for the jury, in which Mr. Trump was captured boasting in vulgar terms about grabbing women by the genitals.
And he complained about the decision by the judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, to have an anonymous jury hear the case, with their names kept even from the lawyers.
“There were things that happened in this case that were beyond the pale,” said Mr. Tacopina, who also complained about what he said was “bias displayed by the court.”
Mr. Tacopina clashed with Judge Kaplan at times and even filed a motion seeking a mistrial based on “pervasive, unfair and prejudicial rulings” based in part on what he described as the judge’s improperly sustaining objections by Ms. Carroll’s lawyers, who argued that his questions were argumentative.
At one point, Judge Kaplan quoted the definition of “an argumentative question” from Black’s Law Dictionary, reading it aloud to Mr. Tacopina.
During his instructions to the jury on Tuesday, the judge explained their three options for finding Mr. Trump liable for battery, meaning an assault on Ms. Carroll: that he had raped her, sexually abused her or forcibly touched her. A unanimous vote would affirm that Ms. Carroll had proven that it was more likely than not to be true that he had committed an offense, the judge explained.
In a criminal case, when jurors are asked to assess guilt, they must meet the much higher standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.
New York Times
There are grave fears for the passengers of a private plane that suddenly vanished mid-flight, sparking a major search off the coast of the US.
US authorities say the Gulfstream G100 lost contact with air traffic control about 2am local time on Saturday (4pm Saturday AET) while flying from L.F. Wade International Airport in Bermuda to Boston Logan International Airport.
The US Coast Guard said the Federal Aviation Administration alerted it after contact was lost with the aircraft – which plummeted from 23,500 feet to 11,000 feet in just three minutes, according to FlightAware data.
“We are praying for a safe outcome,” a spokesperson for Latitude Air Ambulance, which operates the missing plane, told City News.
A search is now under way off Nantucket in the air and on water as crews work to locate the missing jet, the Coast Guard said. Data from FlightRadar24 showed a number of aircraft searching south of the island.
Six people are missing after a private jet vanished, sparking a major search off the coast of Nantucket in the US.
The plane was en route from Bermuda to Boston when it vanished.
“Air & surface crews have launched in search of the aircraft. Updates will be provided here as info becomes available,” the Coast Guard Northeast District said on X.
The plane was carrying out a medical evacuation in Bermuda – a British overseas territory in the north Atlantic Ocean, according to Clarence Togeretz, Director of Flight Operations at Latitude Air Ambulance.
“We always get rather concerned when our crew doesn’t report to us in a timely manner,” he told NBC News.
“But I will say that again, optimistically and positively, that doesn’t mean that the worst has happened.”
Seventeen people were killed when eight gunmen stormed a bar close to Johannesburg on Saturday evening, with 15 more injured.
In a separate shooting in the early hours of Sunday morning, 10 people were killed outside an entertainment venue in a township near Cape Town and a further 11 were injured.
South Africa has one of the highest murder rates in the world and has struggled to contain gang-related gun violence in recent years. Police have not indicated a motive for either of the latest attacks.
In Johannesburg, gunmen opened fire on customers outside the bar before continuing the attack inside and torching two vehicles before fleeing.
Police said thirteen men and four women were killed.
Deputy provincial police commissioner Maj Gen Fred Kekana said the attack may have been a retaliation for an incident last month, in which one person was killed and another wounded, according to AFP news agency.
Speaking at the scene, he said police had clear pictures and in some cases names for the suspects.
In Cape Town, five victims died at the scene and a further five people died in hospital.
No arrests had been made in either case on Sunday morning.
The two mass shootings came days after 11 people were killed in the city of Duban when gunmen stormed a house in the KwaMakhutha township.
Illegal weapons are prevalent in South Africa and gun violence has been a persistent problem for decades, with about 60 murders recorded every day in the country of 62 million.
But a recent spate of mass shootings has raised fears that the problem is deepening, with violence often linked to turf wars between gangs engaged in drug trafficking and illegal mining.
In February, President Cyril Ramaphosa called organised crime “the most immediate threat to our democracy, our society and our economic development”.
Earlier this year the military was deployed alongside police in areas with the highest murder rates in an effort to reduce armed violence.
On Saturday a tenth woman’s body was found in Ekurhuleni, to the east of Johannesburg, with local police saying they were unable to rule out a serial killer operating in the area with similarities between the deaths. (BBC)
The United States has deported more than 25,000 people under secretive agreements with 35 countries to take migrants with no ties to those nations, according to an investigation published Monday.
Since US President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, Washington has been signing deals with developing countries to take migrants who cannot legally be sent home.
The investigation by Forbidden Stories found the administration has earmarked $410 million to be paid directly to the receiving countries, or to UN agencies to facilitate the returns.
At least 25,447 people had already been deported to third countries by August 31, 2026, according to data compiled by Forbidden Stories with a consortium of international journalists.
The vast majority — around 20,000 — were sent to Mexico, but the rest were dispersed to 27 other countries across Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific, and agreements have been finalised with seven more.
The deals vary, including over which nationalities can be deported and whether people with criminal records can be accepted.
An AFP investigation earlier this year found Washington is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into accepting deportees.
Lawyers told AFP that deportees were being thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.
Forbidden Stories said 49 of Africa’s 54 countries had been approached about accepting third-country deportees.
A little-known State Department division called the Office of Remigration, created in May 2025, has handled most of the negotiations and payments, according to Forbidden Stories.
The office is headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, a 41-year-old diplomat who previously worked as a security officer.
The report details his visits to Cameroon, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December on accepting deportees. A week later, it also signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million.
The following month, the State Department said it would provide a further $30 million to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Cameroon to “facilitate the voluntary return of refugees and combat illegal immigration.”
The first plane carrying deportees arrived in Cameroon on January 14.
– Payments –
Other agreements have involved direct payments to governments.
Palau, a small Pacific island nation with a population of under 18,000, signed an agreement in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in return for $7.5 million.
However, only three people have so far been sent under the agreement.
In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 out of a possible 160 under an agreement worth more than $5 million. It has accepted deportees with criminal records, the investigation found.
Of the $410 million planned for the agreements, internal State Department records showed that $81 million was earmarked for signatory governments.
The rest was intended for aid organisations, including more than $178 million for the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
The agencies have faced criticism over their involvement, although UNHCR told Forbidden Stories that it was not party to the bilateral agreements and that US funding was being used in line with its mandate to strengthen asylum systems.
An IOM spokesperson told Forbidden Stories that the agency’s decisions to accept funding rested “on a single question: whether our engagement will improve the lives of the migrants affected. In these instances, we believe strongly it does.”
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