Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and longtime progressive activist, was removed from a Senate hearing Wednesday after confronting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and lawmakers over US support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.Kennedy had been reading prepared remarks about his department’s 2026 budget when activists interrupted the session, chanting “RFK kills people with AIDS.”Kennedy jumped from his seat in reaction to the outburst.Cohen then shouted: “Congress pays for bombs to kill children in Gaza,” accusing lawmakers of funding arms by cutting Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income families that Republicans are seeking to slash.Video posted by anti-war group Codepink showed the 74-year-old in handcuffs as Capitol Police escorted him from the chamber.”They need to let food into Gaza, they need to let food to starving kids!” Cohen yelled as he was taken away.A vocal critic of Israeli policy, Cohen last year co-signed an open letter titled A Statement From Jewish Americans Opposing AIPAC, denouncing the pro-Israel lobby’s influence in US politics.

A US judge ordered the release from custody on Wednesday of an Indian researcher at a top American university who is facing possible deportation for alleged Hamas ties.Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University in the US capital, was arrested by federal agents two months ago at his home in Virginia and has been held in Texas.District Judge Patricia Giles ordered Suri’s immediate release on Wednesday and that he be allowed to return from Texas to his wife and three children in Virginia on his personal recognizance.”Hearing the judge’s words brought tears to my eyes,” Suri’s wife, Mapheze Saleh, said in a statement released by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which is among the groups representing her husband in court.”Speaking out about what’s happening in Palestine is not a crime,” Saleh said. “Let’s show the world that this country is still a place where people can and do express their beliefs without fear.”Giles, in ordering Suri’s release, said his detention violated his First Amendment rights to free speech.”The court’s order today should send a clear message to the Trump administration that it cannot arrest someone, rip them away from their family, and incarcerate them just for standing in solidarity with Palestinians and against the genocide in Gaza,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, an attorney at the CCR.Nader Hashemi, an associate professor at Georgetown, told AFP the decision was “a victory” not only for Suri and his family but also “for the struggle for democracy in the United States.”Suri’s release comes several days after another judge ordered the release from custody of Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish Ph.D student at Tufts University in Massachusetts, who was detained in another high-profile case.The arrests of Suri, Ozturk and others have sparked fears in the academic world that freedom of research and speech is being challenged under Republican President Donald Trump.Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said on X at the time of Suri’s arrest that he was “actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting anti-Semitism on social media.”McLaughlin also accused him of having “close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.”According to The New York Times, Saleh, Suri’s wife, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, a former adviser to assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.McLaughlin said Suri was subject to deportation under a provision of immigration law that allows for expulsion if the visa holder’s presence in the United States is determined to threaten US foreign policy.Hamas is a US-designated terror organization.

US authorities have charged a couple who allegedly forced a teenager to live in a dog cage and abused her for years, they said on Wednesday following her escape from apparent captivity last week.The prosecutor in Camden County, New Jersey, said the pair were arrested and charged for confining and abusing the child who lived in their home for over seven years.”The victim advised detectives that Brenda Spencer, 38, and Branndon Mosley, 41, had been abusing her since approximately 2018,” the prosecutor and local police said in a joint statement. “Around that time, she was removed from school in the sixth grade at Spencer’s discretion and confined to her home. She stated that shortly after this, she was forced to live in a dog crate for approximately one year and was let out periodically.”Following her escape on May 8, the girl, who has not been named and is now 18 years old, sought help from a neighbor and subsequently disclosed the years of alleged abuse.Spencer and Mosley were charged with a host of crimes including kidnapping and aggravated assault.The girl was forced to live in “squalid conditions alongside numerous dogs, chinchillas, and other animals,” according to the statement.  “Detectives learned that a 13-year-old who also lived in the home was removed from school years earlier at Spencer’s discretion as well. Both girls were allegedly homeschooled.”After the year in a dog crate, the older victim was allegedly made to reside in a padlocked bathroom where she was chained up.  She told investigators she would only be let out of the bathroom when family visited. “At other times, she was forced to live in a bare room with just a bucket to use instead of a toilet,” the statement read. “She explained the bare room had an alarm system that would alert Spencer and Mosley if she tried to leave.”The victim also reported being beaten with a belt, as well as being sexually abused by Mosley.

Sean “Diddy” Combs’s former partner Casandra Ventura testified Wednesday that the music mogul raped her near the end of their decade-plus relationship that included routine physical abuse and left her with post-traumatic stress and suicidal thoughts.Ventura, the singer widely known as “Cassie,” returned to the witness stand in the sex trafficking trial against her ex for another marathon day of questioning from prosecutors who accuse Combs of heading a criminal sex ring.The hours of questioning finished with Ventura, who is eight months pregnant with her third child, in tears as she recounted “horrible flashbacks” of her time with Combs — they stopped seeing each other in 2018 — that left her telling her husband years later that she was contemplating suicide.”I didn’t want to be alive anymore at that point,” she told the courtroom.”I couldn’t take the pain that I was in anymore,” the emotional Ventura said, adding that her husband, celebrity fitness trainer Alex Fine, stopped her from any action.The 2023 episode prompted her to seek professional rehabilitation help.Over two days of testimony Ventura described Combs as controlling and willing to wield his wealth and influence to fulfill his desires.Ventura, now 38, gave vivid accounts of coercive sex parties and violent beatings that will underpin much of the prosecution’s case against the music industry figure, who is alleged to have used violence and blackmail to manipulate women over many years.She said that in 2011 Combs looked through her phone and discovered she was seeing the rapper Kid Cudi, which sent him into a rage that saw him lunge at her with a corkscrew.”I knew his capabilities, his access to guns,” Ventura later testified.Combs subsequently threatened to release videos of her participating in his sex parties as retaliation, she said.Ventura recounted so-called “freak-off” sex parties saying she participated because she was “just in love and wanted to make (Combs) happy — to a point I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice.”Ventura, who is 17 years younger than Combs and first met him when she was 19, described how the mogul would sometimes urinate on her, or he would instruct one of the numerous sex workers he engaged to participate in the freak-offs to do so. – ‘It was disgusting’ -Ventura will return to the stand Thursday for what’s expected to be dramatic cross-examination from defense lawyers for Combs, who vehemently denies all charges.The artist’s lawyers indicated they would seek to emphasize that Ventura took drugs of her own free will, and behaved erratically.Ventura said during direct testimony that she developed an addiction to opioids during her time with Combs, and that during the encounters she took drugs including ecstasy, ketamine and cocaine to cope with the sometimes days-long sex parties.The drugs kept her awake but also had a “dissociative and numbing” effect, she said — “a way to not feel it for what it really was.”And the opioids “made me feel numb, which is why I relied on them so heavily,” she testified. “It was an escape.”In a graphic hotel surveillance clip from March 2016 shown to jurors Monday, Tuesday and again Wednesday, Combs is seen brutally beating and dragging Ventura down a hallway.The prosecution played portions of the footage while Ventura was on the stand.When asked why she didn’t fight back or get up, Ventura answered simply that staying curled up on the ground “felt like the safest place to be.”Following the hotel assault, Ventura was forced to attend the premiere of her movie “The Perfect Match” days later, covered in bruises to her body and face, the jury heard as they were shown photographs of the actress with Combs at the event.Ventura said she wore sunglasses to conceal a black eye.The images contrasted with red carpet shots of the pair seemingly enjoying each other’s company and projecting harmony.Combs’s defense team insists while some of his behavior was questionable, it did not constitute racketeering and sex trafficking. He denies all counts.In late 2023, Ventura filed a civil suit against Combs seeking damages, and the parties settled less than 24 hours later to the tune of $20 million, she testified.Asked by prosecutors Wednesday why she chose to participate in the criminal trial that meant she would spend days publicly reliving some of the most excruciating details of her life, Ventura took a long pause and began to cry.”I can’t carry this anymore,” she said. “I can’t carry the shame, the guilt… what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.””I’m here to do the right thing.”