Category: News

An immigrant from Guatemala who was taken to a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, in July experienced a medical emergency and died after hospitalization, President Donald Trump’s administration said.

Jose Chajon-Raxon was detained by ICE at the Delaney Hall detention facility on July 18 and experienced a medical emergency the next day, the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.

A nurse responded to the medical emergency and "witnessed Chajon-Raxon experiencing seizure-like activity," the DHS said, adding that medical workers were called and Chajon-Raxon was taken to a hospital.

The DHS said Chajon-Raxon was "released from ICE custody on July 22" but did not provide more details on that. The DHS statement did not mention when Chajon-Raxon died.

Delaney Hall in Newark has previously come under scrutiny from human rights advocates and Democrats following the deaths in ICE detention of a man from El Salvador named Edwin ​Lopez-Cornejo and another from Haiti named Jean Wilson Brutus. The Salvadoran man died this month after a medical emergency, while the Haitian man died in December.

ICE was not notified of Chajon-Raxon's death as it was "not responsible when an individual passes away weeks after leaving their custody," the DHS said.

Democratic US Representative Rob Menendez said he had been given conflicting information on Chajon-Raxon's death, adding that he went to the ICE facility on August 3 in an oversight visit.

More than 50 people have died in ICE custody nationwide since President Donald Trump ‌took office ⁠in January last year. Rights groups have repeatedly raised concerns about medical care and living conditions at the facilities.

ICE says detainees are given appropriate medical care.

The agency has been the face of Trump’s immigration crackdown. The Republican president says the crackdown aims to improve domestic security.

Rights groups say the crackdown has ⁠violated ​free speech and due process rights and ​created an unsafe environment, particularly for ethnic minorities, who have raised concerns about racial profiling.

The US Justice Department on Wednesday charged 11 people in a decade-long scheme that arranged about 1,000 sham marriages to allow mostly Chinese nationals to achieve legal immigration status in the United States, according to court documents.

Foreign nationals paid a group of six “facilitators” as much as $100,000 each to be paired up with a US citizen and obtain legal residency, according to an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan. US citizens were paid as much as $30,000 to agree to the marriages, according to the indictment.

Participants in the scheme then helped the newlyweds submit paperwork to the US Department of Homeland Security to allow the Chinese national to become a lawful permanent resident.

Attorney General Todd Blanche described the scheme as "one of the largest marriage fraud prosecutions in US history" and said it showed "how far people will go to cheat our immigration system."

The announcement follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last week aimed at restricting “birth tourism,” after the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of broad citizenship rights for babies born in the United States.

The State Department said on Wednesday it started an effort to review the activities of visa holders with the aim of cracking down on women coming to the US solely to attain citizenship for their child.

Two US Army soldiers died when an Apache military helicopter attached to the service’s Fort Hood base crashed into a field in Texas on Wednesday, sparking a large grass fire, officials said.

The accident occurred in Bell County, about 60 miles (100 km) north of the state capital Austin, said Cliff Coleman, a spokesperson with the Bell County Sheriff’s Office.

The Bell County justice of the peace declared dead two people who had been on board, Coleman said.

“Today, an Apache helicopter crashed in Bell County during Fort Hood operations, killing two members of our military,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on X/Twitter.

Fort Hood confirmed in a statement that an AH-64 attack helicopter crashed and two soldiers died but withheld their identification pending notification to their families.

Images provided by Coleman showed firefighters examining burning debris amid a large patch of charred grass, with smoke billowing from the scene. Several local fire departments responded to the blaze, he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said an aid delegation would be immediately dispatched to Colombia in a statement from the Government Press Office on Wednesday evening.

Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella asked Netanyahu to send a delegation to the country following an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 on Monday, the statement explained. 

The earthquake, which occured in the heart of Colombia’s coffee region, killed at least 250 people and reduced multi-story buildings to rubble in cities such as Pereira and Cali.

It also caused one of the towers of a historic cathedral in the city of Manizales to crack apart.

Emergency teams aided by police, soldiers, and volunteers have been working with excavators and, at times, their bare hands, hunting for survivors beneath debris.

This request came amid efforts to improve relations between the two countries, part of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s broader initiative to improve relations with South American countries, with the Foreign Ministry designating 2026 as the “Year of Latin America.”

Colombia recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights in a statement released by the country’s Foreign Ministry on Monday.

In the statement, published on X/Twitter, the ministry recognized Israeli control over the area as “an essential component of its national defense and its ability to protect and safeguard its citizens."

The recognition resulted from a commitment made by both Israel and Colombia on Saturday, the ministry said.

Goldie Katz and Reuters contributed to this report.

A British serial sex attacker will spend the rest of his life in jail, a judge said on Wednesday, after he was convicted of two murders and rape following an escalating spree of sexual offenses that police and prosecutors failed to stop.

Simon Levy, 40, was found guilty last week of the murder of Carmenza Valencia-Trujillo in March 2025 and of Sheryl Wilkins in August 2025, and of the rape and serious assault of a third woman in January that year.

A life sentence is the most severe punishment in the UK and is extremely rare – with only just over 70 people currently serving the term in England and Wales, according to data from the London Metropolitan Police.

Police had arrested Levy several times for sexual assaults against women on rush-hour trains before he was arrested on suspicion of murdering Valencia-Trujillo, 53, in April 2025.

But Levy was released and sexually assaulted five women before he killed Wilkins, 39, in a brutal attack.

London's Metropolitan Police said Levy was released because they were then unable to confirm any third-party involvement in Valencia-Trujillo's death.

Its chief, Mark Rowley, told reporters the force "could have done better, definitely," but added that "the justice system needs to do its job better."

Levy's crimes and the failures by police and prosecutors that allowed him to continue offending have prompted criticism, coming after a report in December said British police must ensure early intervention in cases of predatory behavior.

Harriet Wistrich, CEO of the Centre for Women's Justice, said: "The catalog of combined failures in this case provides terrifying evidence … that our criminal justice system is in a state of collapse."

Judge Mark Lucraft said Levy was "clearly someone who ruthlessly exploits others for your own personal, sexual satisfaction" as he sentenced him to a whole-life order for the murders of Valencia-Trujillo and Wilkins.

He was also sentenced for two counts of rape, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and intentional strangulation in relation to a third woman.

Levy was separately convicted in February of sexually assaulting 10 women on London trains between October 2023 and May 2025, with six of the attacks in early 2025, and an 11th charge of sexually assaulting a prison officer in April 2022.

He was arrested in 2024 and early 2025 by British Transport Police, including after he was a suspect for rape and Valencia-Trujillo's murder, but was granted bail.

The Met has referred itself to the police watchdog for downgrading him to a medium-risk offender in 2024, while BTP and the Crown Prosecution Service have also admitted some failures.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said in a statement that he was “appalled by his crimes and the failures across multiple agencies,” calling for a multi-agency review to try and stop it from happening again.

Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.

Ukrainian forces have liberated 745 square km (288 square miles) of Russian-occupied land this year across a swathe of the southeastern front, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday, hailing an operation he said went “exactly as planned.”

Ukraine’s military has sought to heap pressure on Moscow’s war effort in recent months, counterattacking on parts of the 1,200-km front and striking logistics and energy infrastructure.

Zelensky said 26 settlements in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions had been brought back under Kyiv's control. They are located along an approximately 60 km stretch of the front where the borders of the three regions meet.

"This offensive operation of ours was carried out with precision – exactly as planned," he said on X, crediting Kyiv's air-assault forces and other units.

According to a battlefield map by Ukrainian open-source group DeepState, much of the area remains in a grey zone that is not fully controlled by either side. Some is marked as still Russian-controlled.

A video posted by Ukraine’s General Staff on Wednesday featured mostly drone-shot footage of its troops holding up the Ukrainian flag in the freed settlements. Reuters could not independently verify it.

Russia’s battlefield advances have slowed this year across much of the front, analysts say, though its forces are still closing in on key cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

Moscow has demanded Kyiv give up the rest of the industrialized Donetsk region, which it refuses to do.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky halted Ukraine’s drone campaign against oil tankers in the Black Sea after a request from US Vice President JD Vance, The Financial Times reported, citing Ukrainian officials. 

According to the report, Washington was upset that Kyiv was harming US companies by targeting tankers hauling crude oil from Kazakhstan to a Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal in Russia’s Novorossiysk port.

Ukrainian officials and other people familiar with the matter said that Vance asked Zelensky to stop the attacks during a call on July 31. Since that call, Ukraine has not struck tankers in the CPC terminal, officials told the FT. 

Ukraine agreed to not target non-Russian ships, so long as they were not sanctioned by Ukraine or carrying any Russian cargo.

“We very carefully listen to our American partners,” one senior Ukrainian official told the FT. The official added that Ukraine established “mechanisms” in response to Vance’s request.

Ukraine’s drone campaign on the port aimed to cut off revenue from the Kremlin and bring more of the war to Russia.

A US official confirmed the FT report and added that the administration views the CPC as a “vital conduit of Kazakhstan-origin energy for European markets that serves as an alternative to Russian energy supplies.”

Notably, US energy companies Chevron and ExxonMobil own stakes in CPC, which is Kazakhstan’s main oil route.

 The CPC terminal has reportedly been “a regular part of the conversation with the US and the Kazakh governments”, the Ukrainian official told the FT.

Notably, this is not the first time the US has requested that Ukraine refrain from hitting US industry interests in Russia.

In February, former Ukrainian ambassador to the US Olha Stefanishyna received a démarche from the US State Department noting its disapproval of Ukrainian strikes on Novorossiysk.

Ukrainian strikes on the CPC terminal caused turmoil for oil markets, leading Kazakhstan to stop piping oil to the port city and doubling shipping rates.

Notably, in a July 17 attack, a ship chartered by Exxon was hit in a Ukrainian strike as it was waiting to load.

The chaos in Novorossiysk came as the US has blockaded the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, which has affected oil markets worldwide and made Kazakh oil all the more vital.

Vance has notoriously been one of the most combative figures in the trump administration’s handling of the war. He repeatedly berated Zelensky in the Oval Office in 2025, implying that the Ukrainian president was not offering enough gratitude for “the president who is trying to save your country.”

Vance has gone so far as to say that stopping aid to Ukraine was one of his proudest achievements in his tenure as vice president.

"It's one of the things I'm proudest… we've told Europe that if you want to buy weapons, you can, but the US is not buying weapons and sending them to Ukraine anymore," Vance said in April.

People familiar with the call told the FT that Zelensky agreed to stopping the strikes on CPC because he is still seeking the license to produce Patriot missiles that US President Trump publicly pledged to give him earlier this summer. 

Zelensky reportedly stressed to Vance that Patriot missiles, along with other interceptors and air defense missiles, were “top priority” for Ukraine.

Elsewhere in Russia, Ukraine has stepped up its attacks on Moscow’s oil and shipping infrastructure.

In the month of August alone, Ukrainian drones have hit three Russian oil refineries, an airfield, and a warehouse for Russian shipping giant Wildberries.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday addressed the Iranian threat against him and the extraordinary security measures taken during his recent trip to Turkey.

Reporters at Joint Base Andrews pressed Trump about the security operation surrounding his departure from Turkey last month, when he was moved to a different military aircraft amid a threat against him.

The president said the decision had been made by the Secret Service and the military and that he simply followed their instructions.

“It’s only up to Secret Service. I just follow what they’d like to do,” Trump said. “They wanted me to go in a different flight, a different plane, equal safety, but they wanted me to do it, so I do it. I do what they say.”

Asked about the threat that prompted the unusual measures, Trump appeared to play down how much he knew about the details.

“I guess there was a threat out there. I didn’t really ask that much about it,” he said. “I get a lot of threats.”

Trump said the aircraft switch was made in England and maintained that the plane on which he ultimately traveled may actually have faced greater danger.

“I think actually the plane that I flew on was at greater risk,” he said. “I think it was at greater risk because that would be the plane… that they would be more likely to go for.”

Asked whether he was surprised by the threat, Trump replied that he was not.

“I have a lot of threats. I have a lot of threats that you don’t know about,” he said.

“Any consequential president has a lot of threats. Non-consequential presidents don’t get threatened, and I think that I’m maybe the most consequential president.”

Trump added that the threats did not worry him.

“I don’t worry about anything, to be honest,” he said. “Whatever it is, you know my attitude. Whatever.”

‘I’m the last person to trust Iran’

Trump then pushed back against a suggestion that he trusted Tehran, insisting that Iran had repeatedly deceived him.

“I don’t trust Iran. Why are you saying I trust Iran?” Trump said. “I’m the last person to trust Iran. They’ve lied to me constantly.”

He also repeated his assertion that the United States now has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz.

“We have total control over the Strait [of Hormuz] right now. They don’t have control. We have total control. We own it,” Trump said.

Earlier in the exchange, Trump said the situation with Iran was going “absolutely fine,” crediting the US Navy with establishing control over the strategic waterway.

“We totally control the Strait of Hormuz,” he said. “Nobody else, only us. Our Navy is unbelievable.”

Trump warned that any renewed Iranian action could be met with overwhelming force.

“At some point, maybe they’ll do something, and then they get blown away,” he said. “But we, right now, we’re in a very good position.”

The president concluded by arguing that decades of Iranian dominance in the region had come to an end.

“We have a country that has been the bully of the Middle East for 50 years,” Trump said. “They’re no longer the bully of the Middle East.”

He also praised Sen. Darline Graham Nordone on Tuesday night after she secured a place in the runoff for the Republican nomination for her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate seat.

Trump said Graham had called him shortly before to thank him for his endorsement.

“She just called me to thank me for the endorsement, and it’s great that she’s doing so well,” Trump said. “She’s a very good woman, and she’s got good genetics because she’s related to Lindsey, who is a real professional.”

Trump noted that he also likes Graham’s Republican rivals, describing them as supporters of his movement, but made clear that his endorsement remains with her.

“I like the other people in the race also. They’re all Trump. I mean, they’re all Trumpers, but, you know, I endorsed her. I think she’s great,” he said.

Trump also invoked his close relationship with the late South Carolina senator, saying Lindsey Graham frequently spoke to him about his sister.

“Lindsey loved his sister more than anything else,” Trump said. “He would tell me about his sister that she’s just outstanding. He actually said she’s better than him. That was hard for Lindsey to say.”

US military operations in 2025 killed 153 civilians and wounded 243, a US official said on Tuesday, citing Pentagon assessments.

This compares with a Pentagon assessment that two civilians were killed and two were injured by US military operations in 2024.

A Pentagon report submitted to the US Congress and published by US media said that all the death and injury tolls against civilians recorded in 2025 were due to three US strikes in Yemen.

The Pentagon report said the US Central Command (CENTCOM) had assessed that the three strikes in April 2025 in Yemen "more likely than not" resulted in civilian harm.

The Pentagon report also said that as of February 2026, there were 15 other incidents in Yemen that CENTCOM was currently assessing in response to reports received through non-governmental organizations.

The US military says it aims to degrade the capabilities of Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen.

The Pentagon report did not include any casualties from US strikes in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

The report said as of February 1, 2026, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) assessed that "there were no incidents in which civilian casualties more likely than not resulted from US military operations in the US SOUTHCOM area of responsibility in 2025."

President Donald Trump’s administration has struck vessels that it accuses of transporting narcotics in the Eastern Pacific, casting its targets as “narco-terrorists.”

The ​US military's strikes on such vessels have killed more than ‌200 ⁠people since September 2025, according to a tally of death tolls published after each strike.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International consider such strikes unlawful extrajudicial killings. The American Civil Liberties ⁠Union ​casts the assertions by the ​Trump administration against those it targets as "unsubstantiated, fear-mongering claims."

North Korea fired a ballistic missile on Wednesday toward the Sea of Japan off the Korean Peninsula’s east coast, South Korea’s military said.

The missile appeared to have landed outside Japan's exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the sea, NHK reported.

Following the launch, South Korea's presidential office held a meeting to call for a stop to provocations, local media reported.

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi instructed authorities to “take all possible measures for precaution,” in a statement in response to the missile launch.

The launch was the second in under a week, according to the South Korean military.

North Korea fired the missile from the Wonsan area, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

South Korea's military had stepped up surveillance and was maintaining readiness for possible additional launches, while closely sharing information with the US and Japan, it said.

The launch comes as South Korea and the US plan to conduct major joint military drills from August 17 to 27 to counter North Korea's evolving nuclear and weapons capabilities. Pyongyang has denounced the annual drills as a provocation in previous years.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media condemned Japan's latest defense white paper as a document aimed at reviving militarism, saying Tokyo was using what it called an unfounded portrayal of Pyongyang as a security threat to justify an arms buildup.

North Korea has conducted ⁠a series of tests this year, including short-range ballistic missiles, artillery rockets and other tactical weapons.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow used a North Korean ballistic missile during a Russian attack on Tuesday that killed seven workers at a Ukrainian steel plant in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

"For the first time in its history, Russia cannot wage war without reinforcements from North Korea. It is now preparing to deploy an additional North Korean contingent on its territory. It has also received additional ballistic missiles from North Korea," Zelensky said.

North Korea’s ballistic missiles and other weapons are being improved through its collaboration with Russia."

"The more North Korean strikes there are here in Ukraine, in Europe, the more their missiles and soldiers are used, the more they correct their shortcomings and blind spots, the greater the danger will later be for Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Philippines, and other countries in the region," he explained.