Bravo fans slammed the Giudice women after they collaborated with SHEIN for their latest collection

The 17-year-old boy charged with stabbing O’Shae Sibley to death at a gas station in Brooklyn has pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. Dmitriy Popov was previously indicted by a grand jury on murder in the second degree as a hate crime, among other charges. Mr Popov’s next court date is set for October, ABC 7 reported, adding that the teen faces a minimum of 20 years in jail and a maximum of 25 years to life. The outlet reported that Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez underscored the importance of prosecuting this incident as a hate crime. “Many powerful people across this country have talked about this case and have been concerned that justice prevails,” said Mr Gonzalez. “I’m assuring the community that we are taking this case very seriously, that we’re going to make sure that justice prevails.” The 17-year-old is accused of killing Sibley, a gay 28-year-old professional dancer, who, reportedly just after 11pm on 29 July, was dancing to a Beyonce song with a friend at a Mobil gas station in Brooklyn. That’s when a separate group of young men allegedly began hurling homophobic insults saying that they didn’t like “gay dancing” in their neighbourhood, according to eyewitnesses. Sibley suffered “a stab wound to the torso. EMS responded and removed the victim to Maimonides Medical Center, where he was pronounced deceased,” a spokesperson for NYPD said. Mr Popov’s lawyer Mark Pollard previously told The Independent that his client was a “good Christian boy” who regularly attended church. “I have no idea where that came from. I just know he’s not Muslim. It’s very strange,” Mr Pollard told The Independent. The teenage suspect turned himself in to authorities after a week of trying to bring him in, although he was easily identified through video footage. “This is a city where you are free to express yourself, and that expression should never end with any form of violence,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference last week. Read More 17-year-old suspect in the New York stabbing of a dancer is indicted on a hate-crime murder charge O’Shae Sibley was stabbed to death for the crime of being ‘Black, gay and dancing’ Teen accused of stabbing O’Shae Sibley in homophobic attack is a ‘good Christian boy’, lawyer says

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel's military said on Friday it was examining the impact of a letter sent by air force reservists

South Korean stocks that had skyrocketed on perceived links to superconductors fell for a second day Wednesday after

Rickie Fowler showed off just about everything during the 123rd U.S. Open that once made him one of the most compelling figures in golf

Chick-fil-A has introduced its innovative new sandwich, the first in almost a decade which is available in all states except Hawaii

Walmart is reporting strong second-quarter sales results as the retailer’s low-price model continues to attract budget conscious consumers in a tough economic environment

A Trump-appointed judge in Indiana has blocked parts of a state law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth from going into effect next month.

Donald Trump's frustration over his ability to speak publicly about his federal election conspiracy case is fueling his plans to continue posting about it on social media, slamming the judge over the weekend after she warned him not to intimidate witnesses, obstruct justice or try to muddy his ability to have a fair trial, according to sources close to the former president.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing pressure to appoint a replacement for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein

Manchester United have had a turbulent few years, but the last week has been perhaps the most chaotic in recent times. The club’s press office might have hoped that offloading controversial striker Mason Greenwood onto Spanish club Getafe would end the slew of negative headlines. But it has only given way to yet more explosive allegations about another player, a social media spat over team selection and even inviting a convicted paedophile to be the special guest at a match. Working backwards from the fresh drama surrounding Brazilian winger Antony to Jadon Sancho’s X/Twitter outburst, here are the worst bits of a bad week at Old Trafford. Friday 8 September: Fresh allegations surface against Antony Antony is facing further assault allegations, the second claim this week against the 23-year-old winger. Ingrid Lana, a 33-year-old banker, said in an interview with a Brazilian TV channel that she was “pushed against a wall” by Antony in October 2022. She said she hit her head as a result of the alleged incident, which she said happened at his house in Manchester in October 2022. It comes after Brazilian police opened an investigation into claims of domestic abuse against his former girlfriend, Gabriela Cavallin, which hit the headlines on Monday 4 September. Antony was accused of attacking Cavallin “with a headbutt” in a Manchester hotel room on 15 January, leaving her needing medical attention. She has also alleged that he punched her in the chest, causing damage to her breast implant which required corrective surgery. Antony previously addressed the claims on social media: “I can calmly state that the accusations are false and that the evidence already produced and the other evidence that will be produced demonstrate that I am innocent of the accusations made.” Manchester United signed Antony last year in an £82m deal from Dutch club Ajax. Thursday 7 September: Convicted paedophile special guest at match The club admitted on 7 September that they invited a convicted paedophile to be a special guest at the biggest women’s football match in the history of the club. Geoff Konopka was sentenced to four years in prison in 2011 and put on the sex offenders register for a decade after being convicted of offences of indecent assault and gross indecency against girls aged under 16. Before that, he was manager of Manchester United Ladies from 1983 to 2001. He was invited to attend the women’s team’s fixture against Everton in March 2022, the first Women’s Soccer League match ever held at Old Trafford. United said they would have “no further contact” with Konopka on Thursday, as a result of information they had obtained “recently”. “Manchester United has recently received information around these convictions, and as a matter of urgency has been in contact with the relevant legal and football authorities to substantiate the facts,” the club said in a statement. “The club has taken appropriate action after receiving this information and will have no further connection with the individual. Manchester United expresses its heartfelt sympathy to the victims and all those affected by these abhorrent crimes.” Tuesday 5 September: Mason Greenwood welcomed at Getafe Mason Greenwood was unveiled by Spanish club Getafe after United agreed to loan him out. In a social media post, Getafe said: “We love you Mason Greenwood.” The accompanying video shows Greenwood walking out to applause and training with his new teammates. Greenwood has not trained with United since he was arrested in January 2022, as a result of material that was published online. He was later charged with attempted rape, controlling and coercive behaviour and assault occasioning actual bodily harm in October 2022. The charges were dropped in February 2023, and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said key witnesses had withdrawn and new material had come to light. There was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction”, the CPS said. United then started their own internal investigation into the player. The club was reportedly planning to reintroduce him into the squad, a move which provoked heavy criticism. Later, it was agreed he would leave the club by mutual agreement. In a statement last month, Greenwood said he had “made mistakes” and took his “share of responsibility”, but added: “I did not do the things I was accused of.” Sunday 3 September: Sancho’s outburst Jadon Sancho, United’s £73m signing in 2021, faces an uncertain future at the club after he posted his frustrations about not being picked for Sunday’s game against Arsenal on X/Twitter. Manager Erik Ten Hag said the player had been dropped because of “his performances in training,” but Sancho appeared to accuse Ten Hag of misrepresenting the facts. He wrote: “Please don’t believe everything you read! I will not allow people saying things that [are] completely untrue. I have conducted myself in training very well this week. I believe there are other reasons for this matter that I won’t go into, I have been a scapegoat for a long time which isn’t fair!” After his team’s defeat, Ten Hag said: “You have to reach a level every day at Manchester United and we can make choices in the front line,” he said. “So for this game he was not selected.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

He’s a ubiquitous presence in conservative media with a reputation as an anti-woke warrior who has used a compliant state legislature to make Florida a mecca for Trump-era Republicanism. But if Ron DeSantis wants to be president, he has to defeat Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and prominent Florida politicians aren’t so sure either of those things will ever happen. The second-term Florida governor, who for months has sojourned through the traditional primary battlegrounds of Iowa and New Hampshire while hawking his manifesto-cum-memoir The Courage to be Free, was once seen as a formidable obstacle to the twice-impeached ex-president’s dream of reclaiming his place in the White House. But in the weeks since Mr Trump found himself on the wrong end of an indictment from a New York grand jury, the Florida governor has seen his standing in the polls tumble while his fellow Floridian has surged to a commanding lead among GOP primary voters. Still, Mr DeSantis is poised to launch a presidential presidential campaign that has support from a decent chunk of his party and a formidable war chest transferred from his successful re-election run last year. He gained that support — and a national profile — by winning the hearts and minds of some former Trump boosters through his wholehearted rejection of any and all restrictions or mandates meant to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, and he has kept his core support among some GOP diehards by using a compliant state legislative majority to enact a laundry list of conservative priorities and use resulting culture war battles to raise his profile even further. A Republican media strategist who worked on Mr Trump’s 2020 campaign, Giancarlo Sopo, told The Independent he believes Mr DeSantis is “the obvious choice” to lead the GOP in next year’s election because of what he described as the Florida governor’s role in enacting “the boldest conservative agenda this country has seen since Ronald Reagan” and Mr DeSantis’ “unique ability to demoralize and defeat the left”. Yet Mr Sopo’s confidence in Mr DeSantis’ abilities wasn’t shared by many Florida GOP veterans contacted by The Independent. None of the Florida-based operatives would speak on the record for fear of alienating the governor, who has earned a reputation for vindictiveness during his five years in Tallahassee. But the consensus opinion among the GOP political strategists, many of whom have had a hand in national campaigns of years past, was that the governor’s reputation as a lib-triggering prizefighter is a carefully manufactured façade — a recent invention that is a fabrication formed by a coterie of combative press aides and sympathetic media outlets. Mr DeSantis’ reinvention as a woke-battling colossus standing astride the Sunshine State could not be a starker contrast to how he conducted himself during the five years he spent in Washington while representing Florida’s 6th Congressional District in the House of Representatives. The future governor won his first House election in 2012, just two years after the Tea Party movement that arose after Barack Obama’s inauguration helped the GOP retake control of the chamber from the Nancy Pelosi-led Democratic caucus. As he geared up to run in that election, Mr DeSantis found a way to capitalise on the anti-Obama sentiment within the GOP by calling his first book Dreams from Our Founding Fathers — a title that positioned it as a response of sorts to Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir, Dreams from My Father. After he was sworn in to Congress in January 2013, he quickly became one of the most conservative members of an avowedly conservative House Republican Conference. After he won a second term in the 2014 midterms, he became a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right Republicans that would become such a thorn in the side of then-House Speaker John Boehner that the Ohio Republican chose to resign rather than suffer the indignity of being forced out for forging one too many compromises with Mr Obama. The Florida Republican compiled as conservative a voting record as any member of the House GOP, but despite arriving on the scene at a time when his brand of hard-right conservatism was becoming more and more en-vogue in the House, he never became as well-known as some of his equally conservative colleagues, such as Reps Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Mark Meadows (R-NC) or Justin Amash (R-MI). One possible reason for that — his reputation as an awkward loner — appears to have already hampered his chances against Mr Trump. A former House GOP colleague, ex-Michigan Representative David Trott, told Politico earlier this month that Mr DeSantis never once attempted to so much as start a conversation with him during the two years they sat next to each other on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I was new to Congress, and he didn’t introduce himself or even say hello,” he recalled in an email to the outlet’s Playbook newsletter. In a subsequent phone interview, Mr Trott also called the Florida governor an “a*****e” and said he does not think Mr DeSantis “cares about people”. Another House colleague who spoke anonymously to NBC News said he “had no friends” in Congress and was “not a backslapping politician”. “He wasn’t a friendly guy. He was a personal-agenda-driven guy,” said one lawmaker. “I was with him in the gym every morning and could hardly get him to say hello. He didn’t seem like he liked being here.” Mr DeSantis’ alleged dislike of the lower chamber became evident after just two terms when he briefly stood as a candidate for the Senate seat held by Senator Marco Rubio, who was then running for president in the 2016 primary. When Mr Rubio lost the Republican primary for president to Mr Trump, Mr DeSantis instead stayed on the ballot for his House seat and won a third term easily. But after a short period of working to gain Mr Trump’s favour by aggressively criticising the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the then-president rewarded Mr DeSantis’ loyalty with an endorsement when he ran in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary. After winning the GOP nomination, Mr DeSantis barely beat his Democratic opponent, former Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum, winning his place in the Florida Governor’s mansion by less than a percentage point. His ascent in Florida coincided with large levels of inward migration into Florida, a state with no income tax. At the same time, a steady drumbeat of GOP messaging which cast even the most moderate Democats as “socialist” helped push Latino voters — many of whom were immigrants from countries with actual socialist governments — to begin casting votes for Republicans. With those winds at his back — and a newfound prominence in right-wing media thanks to his rejection of Covid vaccines and public health measures such as masks — Mr DeSantis won re-election in 2022 by slightly less than 20 points, even flipping historically Democratic areas like Miami-Dade County. His win atop the midterm election ticket coincided with historic Democratic losses on the state level, leaving Florida Democrats in a weaker minority status in the state legislature and leaving the party without a single representative among statewide elected officials. But when Mr DeSantis departed Washington after winning the governor’s mansion in 2018, he did so with few friends other than Mr Trump, whose support among the Florida delegation remained strong enough that the Florida governor’s much-hyped visit to the Capitol earlier this year ended with multiple Florida congresspersons walking out of a meeting with him to declare that they were endorsing the former president once again. One of those members was Representative Byron Donalds, a second-term congressman who represents the Sunshine State’s 19th District. Mr Donalds, who in the past has been a close ally of the Florida governor, said in a statement that he was backing the twice-impeached ex-president over his own state’s governor. “There is only one leader at this time in our nation’s history who can seize this moment and deliver what we need — to get us back on track, provide strength and resolve, and Make America Great Again,” he said. He had previously praised Mr DeSantis as having done a “tremendous job” during a recent appearance on right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly’s satellite radio show, but he also said Mr Trump’s prior experience gives him “muscle memory” that will provide an advantage in next year’s battle with President Biden — and in a second term. “Donald Trump has been through these fights. He knows where these landmines are and so he can walk in and be effective,” he said. That visit and the subsequent loss of support among his own congressional delegation was an early sign that the factors that led Mr DeSantis to newfound celebrity on the right may not be enough to overcome his awkwardness and apparent aversion to social interactions. And those same factors — his rejection of anti-Covid measures, his support for culture war bellicosity, book bans, restrictions on gender-affirming care and opposition to the teaching of Black history — could make him toxic on a national stage. As a result, Democrats hope a White House run will show him to be little more than a delicate flower who will wither under the hot lights of a presidential campaign. Rep Maxwell Frost (D-FL), a vocal critic of Mr DeSantis who heckled him at an event years ago, told The Independent that he is relishing the idea of a Trump-DeSantis primary fight. He said he’d take pleasure in “arguably two of the worst people in politics going at each other” and acknowledged that the sniping between the two thus far has provided “some entertainment”. But he also noted that there’s a danger to giving either Mr DeSantis or Mr Trump a chance to get into the White House. “The unfortunate part is that, you know, the impact is real,” he said. “It’s important and I’m gonna be one of the people out there beating the drum for people to know how horrible both of them are, but specifically DeSantis.” Rep Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who briefly served with Mr DeSantis in the House of Representatives, said she took no enjoyment from watching Mr Trump and Mr DeSantis bicker. “There’s nothing pleasurable about Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump,” she told The Independent. “The hell that he’s wreaked on us in our state has been devastating to education, to health care, women’s reproductive decisions.” Ms Wasserman Schultz said she hoped Mr DeSantis’ run would be the beginning of the end of his political career. Read More Ron DeSantis news – live: Florida governor’s wife launches his 2024 presidential run Ron DeSantis 2024: Everything we know about the Florida governor’s presidential bid Who is Casey DeSantis? What we know about Florida governor Ron’s wife who could become America’s first lady Former Guantanamo prisoner: Ron DeSantis watched me being tortured