Christian Ziegler mentioned in heavily redacted police documents that includes the word ‘raped’, reports say

The chairman of Florida’s Republican party, Christian Ziegler, is reported to be under investigation for sexual battery – a potential political bombshell in a state that Donald Trump and Governor Ron DeSantis call home.

According to heavily redacted police department documents, Ziegler is mentioned in the context of an “active criminal investigation” after an individual reported being “sexually battered” at home in Sarasota on 2 October.

The detective’s report mentions a “sexual assault allegation” and “sexual assault complaint” but almost no other information. Only five words survive the redactions: “stated … raped … stated that … raped”, according to Sarasota’s Herald-Tribune and other outlets.

Former President Donald Trump isn’t immune from being held accountable in civil lawsuits related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol riot in a long-awaited, consequential decision from the federal appeals court in Washington, DC.

The decision, making new law around the presidency, will have significant implications for several cases against Trump in the Washington, DC, federal court related to the 2020 election. The decision arises out of lawsuits brought by Capitol Police officers and Democrats in Congress.

The opinion, written by Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan, states that not everything a president does while in office is protected from liability.

Consumers shouldn’t eat pre-cut cantaloupe if they don’t know the source, U.S. health officials said Thursday, as the number of illnesses and recalls tied to a deadly salmonella outbreak grows.

At least 117 people in 34 U.S. states have been sickened by contaminated cantaloupe, including 61 who were hospitalized and two who died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Another 63 illnesses, 17 hospitalizations and one death tied to the same outbreak have been reported in Canada.

The illnesses are severe, with more than half of infected people hospitalized, including residents of long-term care centers and children in day care, the CDC said.

Previous recalls of whole and pre-cut cantaloupes have been expanded to include Kwik Trip markets, Bix Produce and distributor GHGA, which sent recalled products to Kroger, Sprouts Farmer’s Markets and Trader Joe’s stores in several states, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson wrote the foreword and publicly promoted a 2022 book that spread baseless and discredited conspiracy theories and used derogatory homophobic insults.

Written by Scott McKay, a local Louisiana politics blogger, the book, “The Revivalist Manifesto,” gives credence to unfounded conspiracy theories often embraced by the far-right – including the “Pizzagate” hoax, which falsely claimed top Democratic officials were involved in a pedophile ring, among other conspiracies.

The book also propagates baseless and inaccurate claims, implying that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was subjected to blackmail and connected to the disgraced underage sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Other sections of the book defend podcaster Joe Rogan from racism charges after it was revealed he used the N-word, which Rogan later apologized for. The book also disparages poor voters as “unsophisticated and susceptible to government dependency” and easy to manipulate with “Black Lives Matter ‘defund the police’ pandering.”

“Scott McKay presents a valuable and timely contribution with The Revivalist Manifesto because he has managed here to articulate well what millions of conscientious, freedom-loving Americans are sensing,” Johnson writes in his 300-word foreword.

Joint project with EU involves more than 500 scientists and engineers and more than 70 companies

The world’s biggest operational experimental nuclear fusion reactor – a technology in its infancy but billed by some as the answer to humanity’s future energy needs – has been inaugurated in Naka, Japan.

Fusion differs from fission, the technique used in nuclear power plants, by fusing two atomic nuclei instead of splitting one.

The goal of the JT-60SA reactor is to investigate the feasibility of fusion as a safe, large-scale and carbon-free source of net energy – with more energy generated than is put into producing it.

The six-storey-high machine, in a hangar in Naka, north of Tokyo, comprises a doughnut-shaped “tokamak” vessel set to contain swirling plasma heated up to 200mC (360mF).

It is a joint project between the European Union and Japan, and is the forerunner for its big brother in France, the under-construction International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER).

The City Council in Portland, Oregon, approved $2.6 million for permanent police body cameras in a unanimous vote, a crucial step toward the city no longer being among the last major U.S. police agencies without the technology.

All of the city’s roughly 800 uniformed officers who interact with the public will have body-worn cameras by the summer, after training and further negotiations with the police union, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported Wednesday.

But only around 300 patrol officers will be required to wear them routinely on their shifts, the news outlet reported.

Roughly 500 other sworn members, including detectives and sergeants, will put on their cameras when they interact with the public, said police spokesperson Mike Benner.

Light, tasty and simple to make, egg fried rice has long been a beloved dish in China and one of most recognizable icons of Chinese cuisine around the world.

But in recent years, the popular stir-fry has become a highly sensitive subject for China’s online nationalists, especially around the months of October and November.

Emotions are running so high this week that one of the country’s most famous chefs has been forced to apologize – for making a video on how to cook the dish.

“As a chef, I will never make egg fried rice again,” Wang Gang, a celebrity chef with more than 10 million online fans, pledged in a video message on Monday.

Wang’s “solemn apology” attempted to tame a frothing torrent of criticism about the video, which was posted on Chinese social media site Weibo on November 27.

Angry nationalists accused Wang of using the video to mock the death of Mao Zedong’s eldest son, Mao Anying, who was killed in an American air strike during the Korean War on November 25, 1950.

Two Chinese business executives at companies controlled by the embattled financial conglomerate Zhongzhi have gone missing, according to statements by their respective firms.

The development comes just days after Chinese authorities launched a criminal investigation into the troubled shadow bank, one of China’s largest. Last week, Zhongzhi told its investors that it is “severely insolvent.”

Dalian My Gym Education Technology, a listed education firm, said it is unable to get in touch with its chairwoman Ma Hongying.

“The company is not sure of the specific reason why it cannot get in touch with Ms. Ma Hongying,” the company said in a filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange on Thursday.

On the same day, Xinjiang Tianshan Animal Husbandry Bio-engineering, which breeds cattle and dairy cows in the Xinjiang region, said it had lost touch with its chairman Ma Changshui.

Both companies are controlled by Zhongzhi’s investment units, and the missing executives have been connected with the conglomerate for years.

From the early 1990s until her retirement in 2005, she was the indisputable swing justice

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court and the justice who held the court’s center for more than a generation, died Friday, the court said in a statement.

Her cause of death was complications related to advanced dementia and a respiratory illness. She was 93.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that O'Connor "blazed an historic trail as our nation's first female justice."

Ukraine’s security service blew up a railway connection linking Russia to China, in a clandestine strike carried out deep into enemy territory, with pro-Kremlin media reporting that investigators have opened a criminal case into a “terrorist attack.”

The SBU set off several explosions inside the Severomuysky tunnel of the Baikal-Amur highway in Buryatia, located some 6,000 kilometers east of Ukraine, a senior Ukrainian official with direct knowledge of the operation told POLITICO.

“This is the only serious railway connection between the Russian Federation and China. And currently, this route, which Russia uses, including for military supplies, is paralyzed,” the official said.

Four explosive devices went off while a cargo train was moving inside the tunnel. “Now the (Russian) Federal Security Service is working on the spot, the railway workers are unsuccessfully trying to minimize the consequences of the SBU special operation,” the Ukrainian official added.

Ukraine’s security service has not publicly confirmed the attack. Russia has also so far not confirmed the sabotage.

Social media posts that former President Donald Trump claimed were made by the wife of the judge in his New York fraud trial were not made by her, a court spokesperson said.

"Justice Engoron's wife has not sent social media posts regarding the former president. They are not hers. She does not have an X, formerly Twitter, account," Al Baker, spokesperson for the New York Office of Court Administration, told CBS News.

Trump shared images of the alleged posts Wednesday and Thursday on his social media platform Truth Social. The posts showed images created with artificial intelligence of Trump in an orange prison jumpsuit mopping floors, reading books and with a shaved head. In another Wednesday evening post on Truth Social, Trump accused Judge Arthur Engoron's wife of being "Trump Hating" and said she and Engoron's law clerk, Allison Greenfield, had "taken over control" of the trial against him.

The nation’s largest publisher and several bestselling authors, including novelists John Green and Jodi Picoult, are part of a lawsuit filed Thursday challenging Iowa’s new law that bans public school libraries and classrooms from having practically any book that depicts sexual activity.

The lawsuit is the second in the past week to challenge the law, which bans books with sexual content all the way through 12th grade. An exception is allowed for religious texts.

Penguin Random House and four authors joined several teachers, a student and the Iowa State Education Association — the state’s teachers union representing 50,000 current and former public school educators — in filing the federal lawsuit.