Virginia Dem Rep. Beyer admits redistricting aims to stop Trump, not voters

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A top Virginia Democrat appeared to admit that state Democratic lawmakers’ effort to redraw the commonwealth’s congressional map is more about stopping President Donald Trump and his agenda than about ensuring fairness for voters in the Old Dominion.

A referendum drafted by Richmond’s Democratic majority and set to go before voters in April would allow the assembly to redraw Virginia’s congressional map in a way that Richmond Democrats signaled would draw out four of five Republican congressmen and draw the populations of most new districts from dense, left-wing Fairfax County.

In comments to NBC News, Rep. Donald Beyer, an Alexandria-Fairfax Democrat, appeared to admit redistricting’s true purpose while commenting on early voting figures that appeared to lean in the GOP’s favor.

Beyer said the redistricting effort is “not a done deal by any means” and that Democrats need to “effectively make the case that even though this seems unfair in Virginia, it’s totally fair for America, for those of us who believe that taking back the House is the most significant thing we can do to stop Donald Trump.”

NEW DEM STAR’S QUICK HARD-LEFT TURN AFTER ‘MODERATE’ CAMPAIGN WON HER COVETED RESPONSE TO TRUMP: LAWMAKER

Rep. Donald Beyer Jr. standing at a protest in Washington

Rep. Donald Beyer Jr., D-Va., attends a protest in Washington. (Tom Williams/Getty Images)

“Don said the quiet part out loud,” Virginia House Minority Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Gate City, told Fox News Digital on Monday.

“This is manifestly unfair for the Commonwealth of Virginia. We’re a 51-49 state, not a 90-10 state. If they’re willing to silence nearly half the Commonwealth’s voters in the name of ‘fairness,’ what else are they willing to do?” Kilgore said. His legislative seat in the far southwest would sit in the sole Republican-favored congressional district under the new map.

“Last November, Democrats sold Virginians a fake ‘affordability’ agenda that is false, a total hoax, and a con job,” Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-Hanover, said.

“Now they are back at it, trying to shove another partisan power grab down our throats, this time wrapped in the phony label of ‘fairness,’” he told Fox News Digital.

Fox News Digital reached out to Beyer for further comment and to Gov. Abigail Spanberger for her take on his admission.

5 VIRGINIA CONGRESSMEN: DEMOCRATS ARE REJECTING VOTERS TO GERRYMANDER OUR STATE

Rep. Don Beyer speaking at a campaign event in Arlington, Virginia

Representative Don Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, speaks during a campaign event for Terry McAuliffe, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for Virginia, in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., on Friday, July 23, 2021. McAuliffe is bringing President Biden to the vote-rich suburbs as he works to keep a national focus in the race and tie his Republican opponent to former President Trump. Photographer: Oliver Contreras/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The text of the amendment facing voters next month asks whether the Constitution of Virginia should be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections.

The tagline “restore fairness” has become a clarion call for critics who claim exactly what Beyer appeared to admit: that the definition of “fairness” used is questionable at best.

“Representative Beyer said the quiet part out loud. This isn’t about fairness, transparency, or representing Virginians,” Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., said. His Shenandoah Valley district stands to be chopped into several Fairfax-connected pieces under the new map.

“It’s about political power and Democrats’ determination to rig the map to ‘take back the House.’ When Democrats admit they’re willing to defend an unfair process in Virginia for the sake of national political power, it exposes exactly what’s driving this effort, and it has nothing to do with the people they’re supposed to represent,” Cline told Fox News Digital.

Five of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts would originate in Arlington or Fairfax counties and encompass meticulously drawn swaths of the state’s conservative interior, including one district ridiculed for resembling a lobster or scorpion, as it begins at the Potomac River and winds southwest through Democratic suburbs before splitting into two halves. One half includes rural Greene, Rockingham, and Augusta counties closer to West Virginia, while the other stretches down the Zachary Taylor Highway into Goochland and Powhatan counties west of Richmond.

In turn, a likely Democrat-majority district would form, narrowly connecting the independent cities of Harrisonburg, Staunton, and Waynesboro within Rockingham and Augusta counties and linking them via conservative areas like Nelson County with Lynchburg and Roanoke far to the south.

Beyer’s current district would likely become the new 8th and stretch down the west bank of the Potomac River through current Rep. Rob Wittman’s, R-Va., rural 1st District in the Northern Neck, collecting nearly a dozen small red counties in the state’s oyster country anchored by the deep-blue city.

The only Republican deemed safe under the map would be Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., in the far southwest, which would become an overwhelmingly Republican seat.

Rep. Jennifer Kiggans’ evenly split Eastern Shore and Hampton Roads district would draw in just enough urban and suburban population to potentially turn blue.

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Since early voting began this month, yard signs emblazoned with “VOTE NO” have begun popping up in several red counties threatened by the new map, including Culpeper, Shenandoah, Highland, Orange, and Page, home to Luray Caverns.

“VOTE YES” signs were, in turn, observed in rural Clarke and suburban Prince William counties over the weekend.



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Mazda discloses security breach exposing employee and partner data

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Mazda discloses security breach exposing employee and partner data

Mazda Motor Corporation (Mazda) announced that information belonging to its employees and business partners had been exposed in a security incident detected last December.

Mazda is one of Japan’s largest automotive manufacturers, with an annual production of 1.2 million vehicles and revenue of nearly $24 billion.

The company said the attackers exploited a vulnerability in a system related to warehouse management for parts procured from Thailand. The system did not contain any customer data. Also, the breach is limited to 692 records.

“Mazda Motor Corporation has identified traces of unauthorized external access to a management system used for warehouse operations related to parts procured from Thailand,” reads Mazda’s announcement.

“Following this discovery, the Company promptly reported the matter to the Personal Information Protection Commission – an external bureau of the Japanese Cabinet Office – and implemented appropriate security measures and conducted an investigation in cooperation with an external specialist organization.”

The investigation revealed that the potentially exposed information includes the following data types:

  • User IDs
  • Full names
  • Email addresses
  • Company names
  • Business partner IDs

Although Mazda says it has detected no misuse of that information, the company recommends that impacted individuals remain vigilant because the risk of phishing attacks and scams targeting them is significant.

Apart from notifying the authorities, Mazda also implemented additional security measures on its IT systems, including reducing internet exposure, applying security patches, increasing monitoring for suspicious activity, and introducing stricter access policies.

At the time of writing, no ransomware group has publicly claimed the attack on the Japanese company.

BleepingComputer has contacted Mazda to learn more about the incident, and we will update this post with an official response as soon as it reaches us.

Although a data breach was never officially confirmed by Mazda, the Clop ransomware group in November 2025 posted Mazda.com and MazdaUSA.com on its data leaks site, claiming it compromised both the Japanese automaker and its U.S. subsidiary.

Malware is getting smarter. The Red Report 2026 reveals how new threats use math to detect sandboxes and hide in plain sight.

Download our analysis of 1.1 million malicious samples to uncover the top 10 techniques and see if your security stack is blinded.



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‘The View’ hosts clash over ICE agents replacing TSA amid shutdown

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“The View” co-host Sara Haines said on Monday she is not against the idea of ICE agents filling in as the government shutdown impacts TSA.

President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents would be deployed to airports across the country to help ease travel chaos brought on by the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown.

Tens of thousands of TSA agents have been forced to work without pay for weeks as the shutdown draws on with no end in sight. It’s led to hours-long delays at airports across the country, with images of massive security lines dominating the news.

“I don’t actually hate the idea of this right now,” Haines said of ICE agents filling in to help airports. “ICE has gotten billions of dollars, they have almost doubled their budget. We’re talking about TSA workers who aren’t getting paid and the ones that are making it there are having to pay for gas prices and riding buses.”

TRUMP DEMANDS ‘SAVE AMERICA ACT’ BE TIED TO DHS FUNDING AMID AIRPORT CHAOS

Sara Haines hosts "the View"

Sara Haines is one of the longtime co-hosts of “The View.” (Jenny Anderson/ABC via Getty Images)

“And so if you want to fill in bodies here,” she continued, “because their success rate at finding criminals has been 5%. These are 100% guaranteed travelers coming through there, so I just feel like putting more people on the job, I don’t see that as a bad thing.”

“You mean, you want to feel safe when you take your kids to the airport?” guest host Abby Huntsman quipped. “It’s crazy we’re spending billions of dollars on a war right now, what’s going on in Iran, and we can’t even feel safe in our airports, and Congress is still getting paid!”

Co-host Sunny Hostin, however, argued that she is not comfortable having ICE agents working in airports, arguing they not only have less training, but undergo completely different kinds of training that differentiate from TSA agents. 

“I don’t feel comfortable at all having ICE agents there, because ICE agents, instead of getting 72 days of training, they only get 42 days of training, and they are not trained the way TSA agents — let’s remember TSA agents require four to six months of training, including two to three weeks at a TSA academy,” she said. 

HOUSE GOP TARGETING VULNERABLE DEMS OVER DHS SHUTDOWN, TSA CHAOS

ICE-agents-garage

The co-hosts of “The View” debated the idea of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents shoring up airport security as the government shutdown hinders many TSA agents. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

She argued further that such training “includes x-ray simulation, passenger screening, bag inspection, emergency protocols, and then they have to get recertified every couple of months. An ICE agent with 42 days of experience wearing a mask and no body camera has no business in our airports. I’m sorry.”

Haines disagreed, however, arguing that ICE agents will not only be better behaved in airports than in immigration raids, but have also made major concessions regarding Democrats’ concerns.

“Sunny, I disagree. First of all, I will say they are more dangerous undertrained on the streets than they are in the airports I would say, but also, I definitely see the politics on both sides, but Democrats need to realize that perfect — don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” she said.

She then followed by arguing, “They have compromised. They’re doing expansion of body cameras. Markwayne Mullin agreed during his hearing to do the warrants when they’re searching unless it’s an emergency.”

Ultimately, Haines argued, TSA workers need to get paid. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE

Sunny Hostin appears at event

Sunny Hostin argued that ICE agents’ training is incomparable to that of TSA agents. (Gary Gershoff/Getty Images)

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Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report.



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US Ambassador Sergio Gor Announces Visit Of Top Defense Official Elbridge Colby To India Amid West Asia Crisis

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Amidst the war raging in West Asia, India and America have increased their strategic activity. In this sequence, US War Policy Deputy Secretary Elbridge Colby will visit India on Tuesday. The purpose of his visit is to discuss regional instability, energy security and its adverse effects on maritime trade routes.



Along with this, the objective of the visit will be to advance the goals set in the joint statement issued by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February 2025 and to implement the framework of the US-India major defense partnership. US Ambassador to India Sergio Gore confirmed the visit on social media platforms and said that we look forward to welcoming him.

What is the reason for Colby’s seizures?
Colby is considered one of the key figures in the formulation of US defense policy in Trump’s second term. This is his first visit to India. Just before this, senior US military officials, including Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo and US Space Command chief General Stephen Whiting, had visited India.

The timing of the visit is particularly significant as it coincides with the ongoing conflict in West Asia. The regional war has “disrupted supply chains of key products such as crude oil, gas and fertilizers” for India and other Asian countries.

Efforts to improve India-America relations
In this backdrop, this diplomatic initiative comes at a time when New Delhi and Washington have intensified efforts to improve bilateral relations after the recent tense period. These differences were previously fueled by trade disputes, the India-Pakistan conflict in May and India’s purchase of Russian energy.

There is also a possibility of renegotiation of the framework of the trade agreement in February during this visit. It is noteworthy that the US Supreme Court had declared Trump’s tariffs illegal. Due to this, there is a need to finalize the trade agreement. Additionally, the visit builds on the security foundation established in October, when Defense Minister Rajnath Singh and US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a “10-year defense framework” aimed at strengthening security cooperation within the Indo-Pacific region.

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Woman awarded $19.25m after Bill Cosby found liable for 1972 rape | World News

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A woman who claims Bill Cosby drugged and raped her more than 50 years ago has been awarded $19.25m.

Jurors found the disgraced comedian liable for the sexual assault and sexual battery of Donna Motsinger after meeting her in a restaurant in Sausalito, California, in 1972.

She said Cosby later invited her to the recording of his stand-up act Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby at the Circle Star Theatre in nearby San Carlos.

Ms Motsinger alleged Cosby gave her wine and round white pills she thought were aspirin.

Bill Cosby, pictured in 2018, has receded from public life. Pic: AP/Matt Slocum
Image: Bill Cosby, pictured in 2018, has receded from public life. Pic: AP/Matt Slocum

“Next thing she knew, she was going in and out of consciousness,” Ms Motsinger’s lawsuit said.

“The last thing Ms Motsinger recalls were flashes of light.

“She woke up in her house with all her clothes off, except her underwear on – no top, no bra, and no pants.

“She knew she had been drugged and raped by Bill Cosby.”

On Monday, Ms Motsinger was awarded $17.5m (£13m) for past mental suffering and $1.75m (£1.3m) for future suffering after an almost two-week trial at the courthouse in Santa Monica, California.

Her lawyer, Spencer Lucas, said: “To fulfil his sexual deviancy, he surreptitiously drugged women with sedatives, often combined with alcohol, with the intent of rendering them unconscious so he could have his way with them.”

Bill Cosby was convicted of sexual assault in 2018, but was released in 2021 after the decision was overturned.. File pic: Montgomery County Correctional Facility handout via Reuters
Image: Bill Cosby was convicted of sexual assault in 2018, but was released in 2021 after the decision was overturned.. File pic: Montgomery County Correctional Facility handout via Reuters

Mr Lucas also played excerpts from a videotaped deposition in which Cosby said he had got a prescription for Quaaludes over a game of poker with a doctor.

Asked whether the prescription was written “at the poker table”, Cosby responded “yes.”

The lawyer asked: “When you got the prescription for Quaaludes, you had it in your mind to offer them to young women you wanted to have sex with?”

Cosby replied: “Yes.”

The lawyer asked in the video: “How did you know that a woman who you gave a Quaalude to was capable of consent?”

“I didn’t,” Cosby responded.

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Evidence showed Cosby filled the prescription seven times, obtaining a total of 210 Quaalude pills, the court heard.

“He didn’t worry about consent, because that was his common plan and scheme,” Mr Lucas added.

Cosby’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said in an email to Associated Press that they were disappointed with the verdict, and intended to appeal.

Cosby spent three years in prison after being convicted of a sexual assault in 2018, but was released in 2021 after the decision was overturned.



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Delhi Budget 2026: Emphasis on women empowerment seen in the budget, e-auto permit for the first time; You will get Rs 2500 every month – Delhi Budget 2026 Know What Is Special For Women In Budget

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A budget of Rs 1,03,700 crore for the year 2026-27 was presented in the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday, which is Rs 3,700 crore more than the budget of Rs 1,00,000 crore for 2025-26. This is an increase of 3.7 percent. Emphasis on women empowerment was also seen in the budget. In this sequence, a bridge will be created to connect women’s skills with the market by setting up Mahila Haat outlets. An allocation of Rs 10 crore has been made for this. “Model Anganwadi Centres” will be established in each district. With modern infrastructure and community participation, this initiative will strengthen the future of Delhi. A budgetary allocation of Rs 33 crore is proposed for this. Know big things-

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Retired Yale hockey coach calls AD ‘worst leader’ in letter to president

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EXCLUSIVE: A letter signed by former longtime Yale ice hockey coach Keith Allain, addressed to Yale President Maurine McInnis, alleged that current Yale Athletic Director Victoria Chun has created a “toxic environment” for the university’s sports teams. 

In the letter, Allain claimed other Yale coaches urged him to speak out against Chun to McInnis after his retirement. 

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Keith Allain

Yale Coach Keith Allain on bench during game vs Cornell at Boardwalk Hall. Atlantic City, NJ 3/19/2011 (Lou Capozzola /Sports Illustrated/Getty Images)

“My name is Keith Allain, I have just retired after 19 years as Mens Hockey Coach and I am writing to you at the urging of several head coaches in our Athletic Department. They told me that you were soliciting feedback from a few coaches regarding extending the contract of our athletic director, and are concerned, that with the culture of fear that permeates the athletic department, you will not receive candid feedback,” the letter began. 

Allain went on to call Chun the “worst leader” he has ever been around and alleges she has prioritized “silencing any dissent.”

“As a Yale alum and someone who has a great affection for our University and the role of athletics within the greater Yale community I felt compelled write you as my former colleagues asked. Vicky Chun is the absolute worst leader I have ever been around in my life. She is dishonest, self centered and inaccessible. Vicky’s singular talent is self promotion and has created a toxic environment within the department where she is insulated by a cadre of administrators whose main task seems to be silencing any dissent,” the letter continued. 

UNIVERSITY LEADER ADMITS SCHOOLS ARE ‘NOT A POLITICAL PARTY’ IN WARNING TO ELITE CAMPUSES

Keith Allain

Coach Keith Allain of the Yale Bulldogs stands behind the bench during a game against the Boston University Terriers during NCAA hockey at Agganis Arena on December 13, 2016, in Boston, Massachusetts. The Terriers won 5-2.  (Richard T Gagnon/Getty Images)

“I know this assessment seems harsh and I am willing to provide detail if you were interested in learning more about my experience and how Vicky’s lack of leadership affect my program. As a point of reference, our teams record before Vicky was 220 wins-144 losses-39 ties, with Vicky 62 wins-110 losses-15 ties. Responsibility for that record is mine, but we all know organizational leadership or lack of it has an impact.”

A source provided the letter to Fox News Digital. Allain later confirmed to Fox News Digital that he wrote the letter and sent it to McInnis in October, shortly after he retired after 19 years leading Yale hockey. Allain declined further comment. 

Fox News Digital reached out to the Yale president’s office and athletic department for a response.

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Keith Allain

Head coach Keith Allain of USA during practice before the 2011 IIHF World U20 Championship Group A game between USA and Finland on December 26, 2010 at HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York.  (Tom Szczerbowski/Getty Images)

Allain, who played ice hockey at Yale from 1976-80, took over as head coach in 2006, leading the program to the NCAA championship in 2013 and seven Ivy League championships during his tenure. He finished his tenure with a record of 282–254–54. 

Chun, a former volleyball player and later head coach for Colgate University, took over as Yale Athletic Director in 2018 after serving in the same position at Colgate from 2012-18.

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bring AI to data, not vice versa • The Register

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Snowflake is putting cash and kinetic energy behind the idea that AI works best in its platform.

Whether it’s the $200 million deal signed with OpenAI, its impdending acquisition of Observe, or its new Project SnowWork, Snowflake partner Gary McConnell said that the platform is constantly coming up in conversations, because of this effort.

“What’s compelling about Snowflake’s recent moves isn’t just the dollar amounts — it’s the consistency,” he told The Register. “Snowflake has been aggressive on the feature roadmap. They’re also making investments in observability which should play to enterprise support as complexity scales.”

McConnell, who’s the CEO of solution provider VirtuIT, said Snowflake’s recent moves have put a focus on helping customers achieve an actual return on investment for AI, an important topic among his enterprise customers.

“The OpenAI partnership, the Observe acquisition intent, and Project SnowWork all point to the same thesis: your data platform should be the place where AI work actually happens, not just a source you export from,” he told The Register. “For our customers, that’s a meaningful shift. Historically, organizations had to stitch together a data warehouse, a feature store, and a separate AI/ML environment. Snowflake is collapsing that stack, and we’re seeing real interest in that consolidation story.”

Snowflake has been aggressive with its feature roadmap and making investments in observability a critical component as the complexity of AI data scales, McConnell said.

“Customers are excited about being able to bring AI workloads to the data rather than moving the data to the AI,” he said. “The governance story of knowing where your data is and who touched it also resonates strongly in regulated industries such as pharma, legal, and finance to name a few.”

Snowflake is adding thousands of customers annually, growing from 7,800 in January 2023 to 13,330 this January, a 70 percent increase in its customer base in three years.

In that same timeframe, it has also added more enterprise customers, growing those from 573 of the Forbes Global 2000 in 2023 to 790 as of January 2026. Those enterprises contributed 43 percent of the company’s $4.7 billion in revenue during the most recent fiscal year.

Snowflake kicked off the year by announcing a partnership with Google that brought the Chocolate Factory’s Gemini model into Snowflake’s Cortex AI, its application-to-inference service. It also announced plans to buy Observe AI which engineers can use to detect anomalies, identify root causes faster, and improve operational resilience.

In February it announced a $200 million partnership with OpenAI to develop custom AI solutions for enterprise customers. It added Semantic View Autopilot, a service that gives AI agents a shared set of business metrics for more consistent and reliable data outcomes. Then came Snowflake Postgres which is powered by pg_lake, a set of open source PostgreSQL extensions that allow Postgres to work within an organization’s data lakehouse.

Last week the company announced that it was beta testing Project SnowWork, which uses role-based AI personas that understand common business workflows, terminology, and KPIs. The idea is to give business tasks to the business persona that it matches, with Snowflake providing pre-configured capabilities for finance, sales, marketing, operations.

“We’re not assuming every sales or marketing team works the same way, but there are clear patterns in how these functions operate—how pipeline is tracked, how campaigns are measured, how forecasts are built,” Snowflake’s Bala Kasiviswanathan, VP of Developer and AI Experiences, told The Register. “Those patterns, observed across thousands of customers, give us a strong starting point.”

He said that Snowflake is using Project SnowWork internally with its sales teams, which can now generate data-backed QBRs, pitch decks, and customer emails all from one place. Executives get a personalized intelligence feed with the metrics that matter to them, tailored to their role. And Snowflake said it has begun to automate its earnings prep using SnowWork to ease the burden of a weeks-long, cross-team effort.

“The system is grounded in each customer’s own data, definitions, and workflows, and teams can layer in their own logic,” Kasiviswanathan said. “Over time, it also improves through usage and feedback. So it’s less a fixed “persona” and more a starting point that quickly becomes specific to how each company actually runs. This is also a key part of what we are trying to learn and codify during our research preview.”

In terms of security, he said that every action Project SnowWork takes inherits role-based access controls, data policies, and audit logging automatically. That means it can only act on data the user is allowed to see, and every step is fully traceable, he said.

“Enterprises can inspect the steps, validate outputs, and maintain control over how and when actions are executed,” he said. ®



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Iranian officials dismiss claims of US talks | Benjamin Netanyahu News

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Senior Iranian officials have denied that Iran held talks with the US, just hours after President Donald Trump claimed “very good and productive conversations” had taken place towards ending the war. Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem explains.



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Officer Fitzsimmons trial opens as prosecution cites unchambered round

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This story discusses suicide. If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, please contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

Prosecutors argue a fellow officer is only alive today because of tactical training and a stroke of luck: there was no bullet in the chamber of Kelsey Fitzsimmons’ gun.

Fitzsimmons, a North Andover police officer at the time, was shot by a fellow officer after she allegedly pointed a gun at him and attempted to fire it on June 25, 2025. The 28-year-old was arrested and arraigned on one count of armed assault with intent to murder and two counts of assault with a dangerous weapon.

She was indicted in Essex Superior Court later that month, and the charges were presented to a grand jury. The grand jury chose to charge her with just one count of assault with a dangerous weapon. Fitzsimmons is now facing a bench trial.

Kelsey Fitzsimmons split image

Kelsey Fitzsimmons, 28, was shot during a confrontation with her fellow officers.  (North Andover Police Department)

FAMILY OF SLAIN CHICAGO OFFICER SUES CITY, SAYS DEPARTMENT IGNORED WARNINGS ABOUT DANGEROUS PARTNER

Prosecutors allege that she tried to shoot Patrick Noonan as he was serving her a restraining order from her fiancé. Fitzsimmons disputes this version of events, maintaining that she was pointing the gun at herself in a suicide attempt.

Assistant Essex District Attorney James Gubitose told Judge Jeffrey Karp Monday in opening statements that the former North Andover police officer pointed her service weapon at Noonan and pulled the trigger during a confrontation at her home, framing the encounter as a near-fatal assault rather than a mental health crisis.

“The defendant raised her gun,” Gubitose said in opening statements. “There are two reasons that Patrick Noonan is alive today. The first being that Miss Fitzsimmons’ gun, while it had a full magazine, it did not have a round in the chamber. The second reason is that Patrick Noonan had years, decades of training, and experience, reacting in a calm, professional way when he protected both himself and everyone else in that house.”

Fitzsimmons has pleaded not guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the June 2025 incident, which occurred when officers arrived to serve a restraining order obtained by her fiancé, Justin Aylaian. The restraining order required Fitzsimmons to have no contact with her child and surrender her weapons.

North Andover Police Officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons

North Andover Police Officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons at her arraignment at the J. Michael Ruane Judicial Center on Aug. 28, 2025. (Ben Pennington/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

According to the prosecution, Fitzsimmons retrieved a firearm from another room and returned to confront officers. The gun did not fire, prosecutors said, because no round was chambered. Officers then attempted to defuse the situation.

“Kelsey, don’t do it. Drop it. Kelsey, don’t do it,” Gubitose said, describing officers pleading with Fitzsimmons. “She is stepping backwards now.”

EX-POLICE OFFICER GIVEN PRISON TIME IN CASE PROSECUTED UNDER SOROS DA SEES CONVICTION OVERTURNED A YEAR LATER

At that point, the officer opened fire, prosecutors said.

“He fires twice. She has now moved. He misses, and then strikes her,” Gubitose said.

Kelsey Fitzsimmons spilt image

Kelsey Fitzsimmons is seen in images from the North Andover Police Department.  (North Andover Police Department.)

Fitzsimmons’ defense attorney, Timothy Bradl, painted a different picture. He shared that the mom was struggling with postpartum depression and was suicidal.

“Kelsey, no. Kelsey, no. You don’t say that when you’re staring at the muzzle of a gun pointed at you. You say that to a person who has a gun to their head, and you don’t shoot someone in the chest when they are seeking clearly to only harm themselves,” he said.

“And when you do that, you quickly realize, Your Honor, that you need to adjust the narrative to save yourself. That’s what this case is about, Your Honor.”

Bradl said the events followed a sudden personal collapse for Fitzsimmons.

“On June 30, 2025, Miss Fitzsimmons’ entire world imploded. It was destroyed when her fiancé obtained a restraining order behind her back. The North Andover Police had to serve that order.”

Bradl described her as overwhelmed and humiliated as officers arrived.

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“And that day, Your Honor, Kelsey stood in her house, in humiliation, in front of her police colleagues and friends,” he said.

North Andover Police Officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons at her arraignment

North Andover Police Officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons at her arraignment at the J. Michael Ruane Judicial Center on Aug. 28, 2025.  (Ben Pennington/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

The defense said Fitzsimmons then made a decision to take her own life.

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“She made a decision for herself. It’s a decision that takes your breath away. She decides to end her life with her firearm in her bedroom,” Bradl said.

They rejected the prosecution’s theory that she posed a threat: “The idea of harming them, the evidence will show, is ludicrous.”

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Bradl also challenged the portrayal of the officer involved, arguing his response reflected panic rather than control.

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“The evidence will show that he is not some super cool James Bond type, law enforcement officer, that he has a look of panic on his face, and that he’s flustered.”

“And that’s when the words, Kelsey, no, Kelsey, no, are uttered. No law enforcement officer, judge, the evidence will show, in his right mind, would bargain with someone who has their hand on the trigger and the muzzle in your face.”

North Andover police officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons' mother and stepfather hold hands

North Andover police officer Kelsey Fitzsimmons’ mother and stepfather hold hands as their daughter’s attorney, Timothy Bradl, answers questions from reporters following her arraignment at the J. Michael Ruane Judicial Center on Aug. 28, 2025. (Ben Pennington/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

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Instead, the defense said, he was trying to stop a suicide.

“The evidence here, judge, will show that he was trying to tell her not to kill herself.”

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The defense said Fitzsimmons never pointed the gun at officers and that the shooting resulted from a misinterpretation.

Because she waived her right to a jury, Judge Karp will decide the verdict. Fox News Digital has reached out to Bradl for comment. 



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