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A two-day summit in Romania has started in the country's capital bringing together 12 European Union member states situated between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas

Atlanta officials claim that "anarchists" conspired to illegally occupy a planned police training site.

WASHINGTON U.S. President Joe Biden tested negative for COVID-19 on Wednesday, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill has not yet responded to allegations of jury tampering in Alex Murdaugh’s double murder trial - but her co-author is staunchly defending the clerk he describes as someone of integrity and genuine character. Neil R Gordon appeared on Court TV Tuesday night just hours after Murdaugh’s defence attorneys filed a motion requesting a new trial for the convicted killer on the basis that Ms Hill tampered with the jury because she was driven by fame and a desire to secure a book deal. Mr Gordon and Ms Hill worked together for months after the trial on a tell-all book titled Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders, which was released on 1 August. Mr Gordon told Court TV’s Vinnie Politan on Tuesday that he was shocked when he heard about the allegations and what Murdaugh’s attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin believed to be Ms Hill’s alleged motivation. “I was pretty upset at what Harpootlian said was the motivation Becky had,” Mr Gordon said. “Last time I checked, Simon and Schuster did not send us a check for $200,000.” Mr Gordon explained that his family and Ms Hill’s family together forked over their own money, about $30,000, to self-publish the book. “We put up our own money because we thought it was an interesting story to tell,” he added. “We felt like it was a story that should be told,” adding that he doesn’t believe there would be another trial like this one in our lifetime. After six weeks of harrowing testimony back in March, the jury took just three hours to convict Murdaugh in the June 2021 murders of his wife Maggie and son Paul. It was Ms Hill who read the verdict. Now, months later, the defence team has accused the court clerk of telling jurors not to trust him when he testified in his own defence, having private conversations with the jury foreperson and pressuring jurors to come to a quick verdict. The request filed by Murdaugh’s lawyers on Tuesday also accuses Ms Hill of giving jury members business cards from reporters during the trial. After the verdict, she traveled to New York City with three of the jurors to do interviews. Ms Hill has not released an official statement, except for a brief comment to Court TV, in which she told the outlet the allegations are “untrue.” Mr Gordon said he has spoken with her, and said the “allegations are so deep” that the court clerk has hired legal counsel and they are planning to put out a statement in the “near future.” “What I do know is that she will answer each and every one of these allegations truthfully.” When asked about any possible conversations Ms Hill might have had with the jury, Mr Gordon said his friend, who he described as a “very spiritual person”, is known to pray with her staff. And knowing the jury to also be very prayerful, he said he asked her if she ever prayed with them. She responded to him, “Oh no no no. No legal entity is allowed to have prayer with the jury,” Mr Gordon said. “It was very clear that there was a line there,” he added. Mr Gordon and Ms Hill met through his wife, photographer Melissa Brinson Gordon, who, like many in the area, attended the jury proceedings of the trial that had gripped the nation. She had requested to take a selfie with Ms Hill which eventually led to friendship and talk of a mutual desire to capture the trial in Ms Hill’s words and Melissa’s photos. In the motion filed on Tuesday citing allegations against Ms Hill, Murdaugh’s attorney Mr Harpootlian, a state senator and lawyer for 50 years, said trial court clerks “aren’t someone who should even talk to them about the case. I’ve never heard of that.” The motion claims that when Murdaugh took the stand, Ms Hill instructed the jury to “watch him closely,” to “look at his actions,” and to “look at his movements” on the stand – something at least one juror said they understood to mean that Murdaugh was guilty. When the defence presented evidence, they were allegedly urged not “to be fooled”. The motion also claims that Ms Hill had frequent private conversations with the jury foreperson and repeatedly asked jurors for their opinions about Murdaugh’s guilt or innocence. South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson released a brief statement on the motion, saying only that “we are currently reviewing the defense’s latest motion and will respond through the legal process at the appropriate time”. Maggie and Paul were found shot dead on the family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate back on 7 June 2021. Alex Murdaugh had called 911 claiming to have found their bodies. During his high-profile murder trial, jurors heard how Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun while he stood in the feed room of the dog kennels on the affluent family’s 1,700-acre Moselle estate. The second shot to his head blew his brain almost entirely out of his skull. After killing Paul, prosecutors said Murdaugh then grabbed a .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle and opened fire on Maggie as she tried to flee from her husband. During the dramatic six-week trial, Murdaugh confessed to lying about his alibi on the night of the murders but continued to claim his innocence of the killings. The jury didn’t agree and the disgraced legal scion was convicted in March of the brutal murders. Read More Alex Murdaugh juror back in spotlight as killer accuses clerk of court of tampering in trial – latest Alex Murdaugh accuses ‘fame seeking’ court clerk of jury tampering at his murder trial Alex Murdaugh has a new victim story. We should be paying attention

By Nandita Bose and David Shepardson WASHINGTON U.S. President Joe Biden's strategy of backing politically crucial unions while

A serving member of the British Army awaiting trial on terror charges escaped from prison in London on Wednesday, the city's Metropolitan Police said.

One of President Bola Tinubu's opponents failed to prove allegations of rigging, the court rules.

By Andrew Goudsward WASHINGTON A key witness in the case accusing former U.S. President Donald Trump of mishandling

YouTube influencer Ruby Franke has been formally charged with six counts of felony child abuse after one of her sons escaped her home and requested help from local police. Ms Franke ran the "8 Passengers" YouTube channel, which focused on her and her now ex-husband's lives with their six children in Utah. She became notabe for the backlash her videos generated, with some viewers accusing her of being too strict and controlling of her children. Ms Franke was arrested last week along with her business partner Jodi Hildebrandt. Ms Hildebrandt, who invited Ms Franke to join her Connexions life counseling service, was also charged with six counts of felony child abuse, according to NBC News. Though neighbours had previously complained to police about Ms Franke, the situation at her home became critical last week after her 12-year-old son escaped and sought help. The boy was emaciated, had duct tape on his hands and ankles, and appeared to be suffering from open wounds. After police connected with the boy, they searched Ms Franke's house, where they found a 10-year-old girl also allegedly underfed and suffering from wounds. Four of Ms Franke's children were put into the care of Utah's Division of Child and Family Services. Her two oldest children are adults. Ms Franke's estranged 20-year-old daughter, Shari, celebrated her mother's arrest on social media, writing "finally" over a video of police removing her siblings. "Today has been a big day," she said in another post. "Me and my family are so glad justice is being served. We've been trying to tell the police and CPS for years about this, and so glad they finally decided to step up." Each of the child abuse counts facing Ms Franke and Ms Hildebrandt carries a prison sentence of up to 15 years and a fine of up to $10,000 if convicted, according to the Washington County Attorney's Office. “There are two juvenile victims in these cases, and each defendant is accused of causing or permitting serious physical injury to the victims in three different ways: (1) a combination of multiple physical injuries or torture, (2) starvation or malnutrition that jeopardizes life, and (3) causing severe emotional harm,” the county attorney said. Both women are expected to appear in court on Friday, according to a probable cause affidavit. YouTube has removed Ms Franke's channels. Read More Who is Ruby Franke? Everything we know about the family vlogger’s rise to fame before child abuse charges Mommy blogger Ruby Franke’s neighbors feared police would pull ‘body bags’ from her home Ruby Franke’s sisters speak out after influencer’s arrest for child abuse

Reza Baluchi tried to "run" from Florida to London in a homemade vessel during hurricane season.

A desperate rescue effort has been launched to save an American scientist trapped more than 4,000ft underground in Turkey’s third-deepest cave. Mark Dickey, 40, himself a cave rescuer, fell ill as he explored Morca Cave in the south of Turkey with a team of 14 fellow explorers. After the descent, he was treated for a serious gastrointestinal bleed on the cavern floor and now needs to be hoisted to safety. A GoFundMe has raised nearly £30,000 to fund his safe release from the extensive cave network aided by more than 100 firefighters, police, international cavers and medical staff. Have you been affected by this story? If so email barney.davis@independent.co.uk A statement on the fundraiser read: “He has gastrointestinal bleeding and when the report was received, he was clearly unable to leave the approximately 1,000-metre deep cave on his own. “The injured caver is a well-known figure in the international speleological community, a highly trained caver, and a cave rescuer himself. In addition to his activities as a speleologist, he is also the secretary of the ECRA medical committee and an instructor for cave rescue organizations in the USA. “An international rescue effort is on the way and this GoFundMe is to support the logistics of aiding in this rescue.” Morca Cave is located in the middle of the remote Taurus mountain belt with even deeper areas still to be explored and mapped. According to local reports, Mr Dickey’s health is “steadily improving”, and he will be safely evacuated in the coming days. Mr Dickey has been caving since the 1990s and is chief of New Jersey Initial Response Team - a team focusing on cave, cliff, and abandoned mine rescues in the United States. He had been planning to explore Morca’s chimneys that could go deeper in the cave and take fungus samples, according to his website. Click here to donate to the Gofundme appeal. Read More Wandsworth prison terror suspect escape: Hunt for former soldier Daniel Abed Khalife Sara Sharif: Stepmother of girl found dead at home ‘willing to co-operate with authorities’ Gabriela Kosilko missing: Friends beg missing beautician to come home as man arrested and police scour lakes Eric Nam's global pop defies expectations. On his latest album, 'House on a Hill,' he relishes in it One of the last surviving female codebreakers of Bletchley Park dies aged 99 Interpol at 100: A mixed legacy of hunting fugitives and merging police data from 195 countries

It feels like every time black holes are discussed and studied by the scientific community, there are new findings that blow our tiny minds. It’s been revealed that black holes actually regurgitate or “burp up” the stars that they eat years after the event. Experts made the discovery by studying tidal disruption events (TDEs). These events take place when stars are close enough to supermassive black holes, to be destroyed by the process of spaghettification. Studying these moments over a number of years after the black holes seemingly swallowing stars with no trace, the experts found that up to 50 per cent of them "burp up" the remains. Yvette Cendes is a research associate at the Havard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and head author on the study. Speaking to Live Science, she said: "If you look years later, a very, very large fraction of these black holes that don’t have radio emission at these early times will actually suddenly 'turn on' in radio waves. "I call it a 'burp' because we’re having some sort of delay where this material is not coming out of the accretion disk until much later than people were anticipating." The material was re-emitted between two and six years from 10 out of 24 black holes which were studied by Cendes and the team. It has the potential to change the way the scientific community thinks about black holes. "There was a second peak, the two black holes re-brightened, and that's completely new and unexpected," Cendes said. "People were thinking that you'd have one outflow, and then it's kind of done. So this observation means these black holes can 'turn on' and then 'turn on' again." Meanwhile, a low intergalactic grumbling is emanating from deep space, according to scientists – and again, it’s black holes that are providing us with new discoveries. Astronomers say they detected the first-of-their-kind low frequency ripples, described as a “cosmic bass note” of gravitational waves, which is thought to be caused by supermassive black holes merging across the universe. Sign up for 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