NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bank of America agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a civil lawsuit brought by women who accused the bank of facilitating their sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein, court records showed on Friday. Lawyers for the bank and the women had told Manhattan-based U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff this month they had reached a “settlement in principle,” but terms of the deal were not disclosed at the time. “While we stand by our prior statements made in the filings in this case, including that Bank of America did not facilitate sex trafficking crimes, this resolution allows us to put this matter behind us and provides further closure for the plaintiffs,” a spokesperson for Bank of America said in a statement. In a joint court filing, David Boies and Bradley Edwards, attorneys for the plaintiffs, said the settlement represented the best option for their clients “given that many Class Members suffered harm many years ago and are in need of financial relief now.” The plaintiffs’ lawyers may seek up to 30% of the settlement, or about $21.8 million, for legal fees, according to court records. The settlement requires Rakoff’s approval. The judge scheduled a court hearing for Thursday to consider approving the deal. The proposed class action, filed in October by a woman using the pseudonym Jane Doe, accused the second-largest U.S. bank of ignoring suspicious financial transactions related to Epstein despite a “plethora” of information about his crimes because it valued profit over protecting victims. Bank of America has said Doe alleged merely that it provided routine services to people who at the time had no known links to Epstein, and that any suggestion that it was more deeply involved was “threadbare and meritless.” Rakoff ruled in January that Bank of America must face Doe’s claims that it knowingly benefited from Epstein’s sex trafficking and obstructed enforcement of the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Among the transactions Doe flagged were payments to Epstein by Apollo Global Management’s billionaire co-founder, Leon Black. Black stepped down as Apollo’s chief executive in 2021 after a review by an outside law firm found he had paid Epstein $158 million for tax and estate planning. Black has denied wrongdoing and said he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal conduct. Doe’s lawyers have also sued other alleged enablers of Epstein’s sex trafficking, and in 2023 reached settlements of $290 million with JPMorgan Chase and $75 million with Deutsche Bank on behalf of his accusers. The lawyers are also appealing Rakoff’s dismissal in January of a similar lawsuit they brought against Bank of New York Mellon. Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His death was ruled a suicide by New York City’s medical examiner. (Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Rod Nickel)

More details have emerged about the aftermath of reality star Taylor Frankie Paul throwing metal barstools as she raged against her boyfriend and accidentally hit her young daughter with one of the stools in 2023. Video footage of the incident went viral earlier this month, and fans were so outraged that it led to Paul’s season of “The Bachelorette” getting yanked from ABC just days before it was scheduled to air.  Paul’s ex-husband Tate Paul, the father of the child allegedly struck by a flying stool, called the police several times after the domestic violence incident. Those recordings were released by TMZ on Friday. One recording includes audio of Tate expressing concern for his daughter. He also told law enforcement that Taylor’s mother, Liann, had been coaching her daughter on what to say. 

Bill Maher put Senator Elissa Slotkin on the spot Friday, challenging the Michigan Democrat to defend her party’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s military actions against the Iranian regime. Speaking to Slotkin on the latest episode of his show “Real Time,” Maher marveled that Slotkin and the majority of Democrats “miraculously” reached the exact conclusion on Operation Epic Fury. The one exception to that, Maher pointed out, was Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. WATCH: Bill Maher: “There’s one guy [Sen.] John Fetterman (D-PA)… who has dissented from the Democratic Party line. Is that really the case? Really, there’s only one person in the whole party who thinks differently? You all miraculously came to the same conclusion on Iran? Sen.… pic.twitter.com/1VkGBVHDfE — RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) March 28, 2026 “There’s one guy, John Fetterman, who I can think of who has dissented from the Democratic Party line,” Maher explained. “Is that really the case? Really, there’s only one person in the whole party who thinks differently? You all miraculously came to the exact same conclusion about Iran?” Slotkin attempted to push back, citing her own experience with the CIA and saying that she agreed that the Iranian regime was comprised of bad actors. Adding that there was “no love lost” between her and the Iranian regime, she said, “The Iranian regime killed friends of mine with rockets and mortars and IEDs. But that’s different from just running headlong into a war without being able to articulate your goals and how you’re going to get out of it.” “See, that’s the Democrat talking point I hear all the time and I don’t know if it’s true,” Maher objected. “I think they were planning to say that whether he did it or not, and then he did it, and they just kept saying it even though they did say many times, ‘Okay, we found out that they were very close to the bomb.’ I mean, that’s what came out in the negotiations.” Slotkin immediately pivoted, abandoning her claim that the Trump administration had not properly articulated its goals and objecting instead that the war was ongoing despite the fact that the goals had been met. WOW: Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) ADMITS the Trump administration has completely degraded Iran’s nuclear capabilities, ballistic missiles, and other important things in the Iranian government. “I can say very openly… we have for sure degraded their nuclear capabilities. For sure… pic.twitter.com/oKtx8eKb56 — RedWave Press (@RedWavePress) March 28, 2026 “I can say very openly as a national security person, we have for sure degraded their nuclear capabilities. For sure degraded their ballistic missile capabilities,” Slotkin said, adding that those were certainly “important things in terms of the Iranian government.”

For years, Britain has prided itself on avoiding America’s bitter abortion wars. That pride came from a “settled” law that the public took as a “pragmatic compromise.” But a recent vote in Parliament has shattered that illusion, generating the first national debate in the United Kingdom on the issue in almost 60 years. Since 1967, abortion has been permitted in Britain for any reason up to 24 weeks (almost 6 months) — already far later than in most of Europe — with complete allowance up to birth in cases involving serious risk to the mother’s life or health, or fetal disability. But last week, Britain’s House of Lords backed a change that decriminalizes abortion outside the existing legal framework. In plain terms, while abortions carried out through the NHS will still operate within a regulated general 24-week limit, no laws will exist to deter women from ending their pregnancies outside that system — including at full term, for any reason whatsoever. This isn’t hypothetical. It has already happened. In 2010, Sarah Catt, 35, from North Yorkshire, aborted her baby at 39 weeks — days before her due date. She didn’t carry out this abortion because of any medical crisis. She and her baby were perfectly healthy. Rather, she had the abortion because she was having an affair, and didn’t want her partner to find out. Sarah was prosecuted under the law for killing her viable, late-term baby, but the changes pushed through by politicians means she will be fully pardoned — as if her actions were never immoral. These cases are rare. But they matter, because they expose the very boundary the law once enforced — and what can happen when that boundary disappears. The activism in support of the recent vote to change the law gained momentum in the past few years due to a small increase in the number of women investigated for potentially illegal abortions, following the introduction of pills-by-mail or “pills-by-post.” This Covid-era scheme enabled women under ten weeks pregnant to order abortion pills by phone, and take them with no in-person examination or medical supervision. Following the pandemic, the government made the scheme permanent — despite evidence that it opened women’s health up to far greater risk. Around 20 women per day in 2020 had to be admitted to the hospital after taking the pills alone at home. Ambulance dispatches and emergency calls responding to abortion pill concerns rose by 64% following the scheme’s introduction. Without scans or examinations, ectopic pregnancies requiring urgent medical care are missed; and crucially, gestational ages are not confirmed. Relying on women to self-report how far along their pregnancy carries a minefield of risks. The court case of Carla Foster exposed the danger of this approach. Carla, 44, obtained abortion pills after telling a provider she was less than ten weeks pregnant. In reality, she was around 34 weeks along. She took the pills at home to end the life of her fully-developed baby in utero, went into labour, and delivered a stillborn daughter, whom she later named “Lily.” Lily was viable, healthy and pain-capable. She could have survived if simply allowed to be delivered alive. Foster later described being “haunted” by the experience. Nobody wants to see women go through this trauma; nobody wants to see developed babies, capable of survival, being killed at this late stage. The pills-by-post scheme should have been scrapped to prevent this happening again. Instead, parliamentarians removed the legal deterrents that prevent more women from following in Carla’s footsteps. Across most of the continent, abortion on general grounds is limited to the first trimester — typically between 12 and 15 weeks. Britain’s 24-week limit is already by far one of the most permissive. Stripping away the legal enforcement of that limit is not a minor adjustment, but a radical departure. Perhaps most striking is how out of step this is with public opinion. While most Britons support legal abortion in some circumstances, less than 1% support abortion up to birth for any reason.  In other words, this is not the result of overwhelming democratic demand. It is a top-down redefinition of moral boundaries — one that the public has barely begun to grapple with. Even in Britain’s typically muted political landscape, alarm bells are starting to ring. Senior figures, from Reform MP Suella Braverman to Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, have broken the long-standing bipartisan reluctance to engage on this issue, warning that removing legal guardrails up to birth goes too far. In a country that has spent decades avoiding this debate, that shift alone is telling. The British parliament has sent a signal that no abortion, no matter the reason, can ever be judged as immoral. The British public will now have to decide if they agree — or if it’s time to finally reopen the conversation, and look into how our laws can be better structured to support both mothers and their babies to thrive. * * * Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain.

Grace Jin Drexel hopes Donald Trump can get her father out of a Chinese prison. Mingri “Ezra” Jin is the pastor of Beijing’s Zion Church, one of China’s largest underground Christian churches. In October, he and 22 other church leaders were arrested and imprisoned as part of the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on independent churches. Drexel, an American citizen, told The Daily Wire that Trump has an opportunity to build on his “impressive” record of freeing hostages to advocate for her father’s freedom. “This Eastertide season, President Trump has the unique opportunity and ability to secure the release of my father — building on his already impressive track record of freeing hostages — and show that he has not forgotten persecuted Christians,” Drexel told The Daily Wire. “My father, as a pastor, only wanted what Christians all over the world want: to worship our one and only God freely. We are so proud to have such a role model as a father and grandfather.” Her comments come after a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Wednesday urged Trump to press Chinese President Xi Jinping on the treatment of Chinese Christians during his upcoming visit to China. “We encourage you to advocate for their release and request the PRC to allow Mr. Jin to leave China, in addition to raising concerns regarding the ongoing unjust imprisonment and persecution of Christians, Tibetans, and Uyghurs, among other religious and ethnic minority groups across China,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter led by Senators Ted Budd (R-NC) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Reps. Riley Moore (R-WV) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY).  The lawmakers also asked for the Trump administration to use visa restrictions and sanctions to target individuals responsible for locking up Christians and other religious minorities in China.  “President Trump cares deeply about our great Christians around the world,” White House principal deputy press secretary Anna Kelly told The Daily Wire. “We do not comment on the president’s private conversations.” Drexel, who testified about her father’s plight during a hearing by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in January, thanked the lawmakers for their advocacy.  “I am so grateful for the letter by so many members of Congress from across the country that highlights that me and my father’s story resonates with so many,” she told The Daily Wire. “As a daughter, I want my father back with us in the U.S. and I hope that the leaders of both countries, both having daughters, will understand my family’s plight.” Drexel previously told The Daily Wire that her father became a Christian after the brutal Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989.  “When the country betrayed them in such a brutal way, it really was shocking, and they lost a sense of direction for my dad,” she told The Daily Wire. “He then found the sense of purpose and direction in Christianity, and he turned to Christ, and he realized that was the firm foundation that he needed in order to build his life upon.” The initial wave of arrests targeting Christians occurred in October 2025, but another wave began in January 2026 when police arrested at least seven people linked to Early Rain Covenant Church, a prominent evangelical Presbyterian church located in southwestern China. The Trump administration previously condemned the arrest of Jin and other Christians.  “This crackdown further demonstrates how the CCP exercises hostility towards Christians who reject Party interference in their faith and choose to worship at unregistered house churches,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in October 2025. “We call on the CCP to immediately release the detained church leaders and to allow all people of faith, including members of house churches, to engage in religious activities without fear of retribution.”