KURAVILANGAD, India: The nuns talk of Catholic priests who pushed into their bedrooms and of priests who pressured them to turn close friendships into sex. Across India, they talk about being groped and kissed, of hands pressed against them by men they were raised to believe were representatives of Jesus Christ.
At its most grim, nuns speak of repeated rapes, and of a Catholic hierarchy that did little to protect them.
The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by priests and bishops in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, but it has done very little to stop it, The Associated Press reported last year.
Now, the AP has investigated the situation in India and uncovered a decades-long history of nuns enduring sexual abuse from within the church. Nuns detailed the sexual pressure they endured from priests; nearly two dozen nuns, former nuns and priests, and others said they had direct knowledge of such incidents.
Still, the problem is cloaked by a powerful culture of silence. Many nuns believe abuse is commonplace, insisting most sisters can at least tell of fending off a priest’s sexual advances. Some believe it is rare. Almost none talk about it readily, and most speak only on the condition that they not be identified.
But this summer, one nun forced the issue into the open.
When repeated complaints to church officials brought no response, the 44-year-old nun filed a police complaint against the bishop who oversees her order, accusing him of raping her 13 times over two years. A group of nuns launched a public protest to demand the bishop’s arrest.
The protest divided India’s Catholic community. The accuser and the nuns who support her are now pariahs, isolated from the other sisters, many of whom defend the bishop.
“Some people are accusing us of working against the church,” said one supporter, Sister Josephine Villoonnickal. “They say, ‘You are worshipping Satan.’ But we need to stand up for the truth.”
Some nuns’ accounts date back decades.
Like the sister, barely out of her teens, teaching in a Catholic school in the early 1990s. It was exhausting work, and she was looking forward to time at a New Delhi retreat center.
The nun is a forceful woman who has spent years working with the poor. But when she talks about the retreat her voice grows quiet.
One night, a priest in his 60s who was supposed to be leading the nuns in reflection went to a neighborhood party. He came back late and knocked at her room. She could smell the alcohol.
“You’re not stable. I’m not ready to meet you,” she said.
But the priest forced his way in, tried to kiss her and grabbed at her body.
Weeping, she pushed him back enough to slam the door.
Afterward she quietly told her mother superior, who let her avoid meeting the priest again. She also wrote anonymously to church officials. The priest was re-assigned.
But there were no public reprimands, no warnings to other nuns.
She was too afraid to challenge him openly.
“For me it was risking my own vocation,” she said.
Caught at this intersection of sexual taboo, Catholic hierarchy and loneliness, sisters can be left at the mercy of predatory priests.
It can be particularly hard for sisters from deeply conservative Kerala.
“Once you grow up, once you get your first menstruation, you are not encouraged to speak normally to a boy,” said a nun from Kerala, a cheerful woman with sparkly glass earrings.
That naivety, she said, can be costly.
Like the time she was a novice nun, still in her teens, and an older priest came to the Catholic center where she worked. He was from Goa, another coastal state.
When she brought the priest his laundry, he grabbed her and began to kiss her.
“The kissing was all coming here,” she said, gesturing at her chest.
“He was from Goa. I am from Kerala. In my mind I was trying to figure out: ‘Is this the way that Goans kiss?’“
She soon understood what was happening but couldn’t escape his grip. Eventually, she slipped out the door.
She quietly told a senior nun to not send other novices to the priest’s room. But she made no official complaint.
In the church, even some of those who doubt there is widespread abuse of nuns say the silence can be enveloping.
Archbishop Kuriakose Bharanikulangara calls abuse “kind of sporadic. Once here, once there.”
But “many people don’t want to talk,” he continued.
The rapes, the nun says, happened in a small convent in rural Kerala, where the sisters at the St. Francis Mission Home spend their days in prayer or caring for the aged.
The rapist, she says, was the most powerful man in this world: Bishop Franco Mulakkal.
Mulakkal was the official patron of her community, the Missionaries of Jesus, wielding immense influence over its budgets and job assignments.
Every few months, the nun says, Mulakkal would visit the convent. Then, according to a letter she wrote church officials, he raped her.
Mulakkal angrily denies the accusations, accusing the sister of trying to blackmail him to get a better job.
“I am going through painful agony,” said Mulakkal, who was jailed for three weeks and released on bail in October.
Many in Kerala see Mulakkal as a martyr, and a string of supporters visited him in jail.
The sisters who now cluster around the nun who leveled the accusations see things very differently.
“Many times she was telling him to stop. But each time he was forcing himself on her,” said Villoonnickal, the nun, who moved back to Kerala to support “our survivor sister.”
Catholic authorities have said little about the case, with India’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference saying in a statement that it has no jurisdiction over individual bishops, and the investigation and court case must run their course.
“Silence,” the conference said, “should in no way be construed as siding with either of the two parties.”
Long history of nuns abused by priests revealed in India
Long history of nuns abused by priests revealed in India

- The Vatican has long been aware of nuns sexually abused by priests and bishops in Asia, Europe, South America and Africa, but it has done very little to stop it
- In the church, even some of those who doubt there is widespread abuse of nuns say the silence can be enveloping
FBI launches probes into former FBI director, ex-CIA director, Fox News reports

- A CIA review released last week found flaws in the production of a US intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to sway the 2016 US presidential vote to Trump, but it did not contest that conclusion
WASHINGTON: The FBI launched criminal probes into former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI director James Comey, Fox News Digital reported on Tuesday, citing sources.
These probes are over alleged wrongdoing related to past government investigations about claims of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections in which President Donald Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the news report said.
The FBI, the CIA and the Justice Department had no immediate comment. Reuters has not independently verified the probes.
The scope of the criminal investigations into Brennan and Comey was unclear, the report added.
A criminal investigation does not necessarily result in charges.
Fox said its sources were from the Justice Department but did not specify the number of sources.
A CIA review released last week found flaws in the production of a US intelligence assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to sway the 2016 US presidential vote to Trump, but it did not contest that conclusion.
Macron says France and Britain will ‘save Europe’ as he starts a state visit to the UK

- Macron’s three-day trip, at the invitation of King Charles III, is the first state visit to the UK by a European Union head of state since Brexit
LONDON: French President Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday urged Britain to stick close to its neighbors despite its exit from the European Union, saying France and the UK will “save Europe” by standing for democracy, law and international order in a dangerous world.
On a state visit that mixed royal pageantry with tough political talks on Ukraine and migration, Macron said Europe must strengthen its economy and defenses and reduce its dependence “on both the US and China.”
Macron’s three-day trip, at the invitation of King Charles III, is the first state visit to the UK by a European Union head of state since Brexit, and a symbol of the UK government’s desire to reset relations with the bloc after Britain acrimoniously left the EU in 2020.
Macron addressed members of both houses of Britain’s Parliament packed into the building’s ornate Royal Gallery. He said the two countries represent “a world order based on law, justice and respect for territorial integrity, an order that is today being attacked on a daily basis.”
“The United Kingdom and France must once again show the world that our alliance can make all the difference,” Macron said, adding that “we will save Europe by our example and our solidarity.”
He said that even though Britain has left the EU, “the United Kingdom cannot stay on the sidelines. Because defense and security, competitiveness, democracy — the very core of our identity — are connected across Europe as a continent.”
Pomp and politics
The French president and his wife, Brigitte Macron, were treated to the full force of British ceremonial charm, a far cry from the chilly relations of 2022, when then-Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said that the “jury is out” on whether Macron was a friend or a foe.
The Macrons were greeted at London’s RAF Northolt air base by Prince William and his wife Catherine — wearing a dress by French design house Christian Dior — before being met by King Charles and Queen Camilla in Windsor, west of London. They were driven to the almost 1,000-year-old royal residence of Windsor Castle in horse-drawn carriages, through streets bedecked in Union Jacks and French tricolor flags.
The king and queen hosted a banquet for the Macrons at Windsor Castle on Tuesday evening, with 160 guests including politicians, diplomats and celebrities such as Mick Jagger and Elton John. They were served summer vegetables, chicken with asparagus and iced blackcurrant parfait, along with Champagne and a gin-infused cocktail called L’entente, after the “entente cordiale” struck between Britain and France in 1904.
As monarch, Charles is expected to be above politics, but he spoke about the support Britain and France give Ukraine “in defense of our shared values,” noted the challenge of “irregular migration across the English Channel” and said the two countries face “complex threats, emanating from multiple directions.
“As friends and as allies, we face them together,” Charles said.
New tactics to stop boats
Politics will take center stage on Wednesday, when Macron sits down for talks with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on migration, defense and investment — including a 12.5 percent stake by French energy firm EDF in a new nuclear power plant planned for eastern England.
Macron also came bearing a tantalizing cultural gift: an agreement to send the Bayeux Tapestry to Britain for the first time in more than 900 years. The 70-meter (230-foot) tapestry showing the Norman conquest of England in 1066 will go on display at the British Museum from September 2026 to July 2027.
At talks Wednesday and a UK-France summit on Thursday, Macron and Starmer will discuss ways to stop migrants from crossing the English Channel in small boats and try to advance plans for a post-ceasefire security force for Ukraine, despite apparent US indifference to the idea and Russia’s refusal to halt the onslaught on its neighbor.
Britain receives fewer asylum-seekers than Mediterranean European countries, but thousands of migrants each year use northern France as a launching point to reach the UK, either by stowing away in trucks or — after a clampdown on that route — in small boats across one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
The UK has struck a series of deals with France over the years to increase patrols of beaches and share intelligence in an attempt to disrupt the smuggling gangs.
It has all had only a limited impact. About 37,000 people were detected crossing the English Channel in small boats in 2024, and more than 20,000 people made the crossing in the first six months of 2025, up by about 50 percent from the same period last year. Dozens of people have died trying to cross.
British officials have been pushing for French police to intervene more forcefully to stop the boats, and welcomed the sight of officers slashing rubber dinghies with knives in recent days.
France is also considering a UK proposal for a “one-in, one-out” deal that would see France take back some migrants who reached Britain, in return for the UK accepting some of those in France.
Macron said the leaders would try “to fix today what is a burden for our two countries.”
“France and the UK have a shared responsibility to address irregular migration with humanity, solidarity and fairness,” he said.
Keeping Ukraine in focus
Starmer and Macron have worked closely together to rally support for Ukraine, though they have taken contrasting approaches to US President Donald Trump, with Macron more willing to challenge the American president than the emollient Starmer.
Britain and France have led efforts to form an international peacekeeping force for Ukraine to reinforce a future ceasefire with European troops and equipment and US security guarantees.
Trump has shown little enthusiasm for the idea, however, and a ceasefire remains elusive. British officials say the “coalition of the willing” idea is alive and well, with Macron and Starmer due to join an international videoconference on Thursday to discuss planning for the force.
Macron said the coalition was a sign that “Europeans will never abandon Ukraine – never.”
Trump considers taking over D.C. government, chides New York

- Trump said his administration had a good relationship with Bowser, he had less complimentary words for Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who won the race to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in New York’s November mayoral election
WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday his administration was considering taking over governance of Washington, D.C., and suggested he could take similar action in New York because of his distaste for the leading candidate for mayor there.
Trump has made a similar threat regarding Washington before, but has not followed through even as he criticized crime rates and bashed other institutions there.
The president, speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House, said his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was in close touch with Mayor Muriel Bowser, who favors making the city a US state.
“We have tremendous power at the White House to run places when we have to. We could run D.C. I mean, we’re ... looking at D.C.,” Trump said. “Susie Wiles is working very closely with the mayor.”
Bowser’s office declined to comment.
The District of Columbia was established in 1790 with land from neighboring Virginia and Maryland. Congress has control of its budget, but voters elect a mayor and city council, thanks to a law known as the Home Rule Act. For Trump to take over the city, Congress likely would have to pass a law revoking that act, which Trump would have to sign.
Becoming the 51st state would give Washington’s roughly 700,000 residents voting representation in Congress. Democrats support that plan, while Republicans, who are reluctant to hand Democrats any politically safe seats in the House of Representatives and Senate, oppose it.
Trump suggested his administration would run the city better with an appointed leader than the democratically elected government.
“We would run it so good, it would be run so proper. We’d get the best person to run it,” he said. “The crime would be down to a minimum, would be much less. And you know we’re thinking about doing it, to be honest with you.”
While Trump said his administration had a good relationship with Bowser, he had less complimentary words for Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who won the race to be the Democratic Party’s nominee in New York’s November mayoral election.
Trump described Mamdani as a “disaster.” A representative for Mamdani did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
“We’re going to straighten out New York... Maybe we’re going to have to straighten it out from Washington,” Trump said. “We’re going to do something for New York. I can’t tell you what yet, but we’re going to make New York great again also.”
Travelers no longer have to remove their shoes during security screenings at US airports

- All passengers between the ages of 12 and 75 were required to remove their shoes, which were scanned along with carry-on luggage
WASHINGTON: Travelers racing to catch a flight at US airports no longer are required to remove their shoes during security screenings, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday.
Noem said the end of the ritual put in place almost 20 years ago was effective nationwide effective immediately. She said a pilot program showed the Transportation Security Administration had the equipment needed to keep airports and aircraft safe while allowing people to keep their shoes on.
“TSA will no longer require travelers to remove their shoes when they go through security checkpoints,” Noem said.
While shoe removal no longer is standard procedure, some travelers still may be asked to take off their footwear “if we think additional layers of screening are necessary,” she added.
Security screening sans shoes became a requirement in 2006, several years after “shoe bomber” Richard Reid’s failed attempt to take down a flight from Paris to Miami in late 2001.
All passengers between the ages of 12 and 75 were required to remove their shoes, which were scanned along with carry-on luggage.
The travel newsletter Gate Access was first to report that the security screening change would happen soon.
Travelers previously were able to skirt the requirement if they participated in the TSA PreCheck program, which costs around $80 for five years. The program allows airline passengers to get through the screening process without removing shoes, belts or light jackets, and without having to take their laptops and bagged toiletries out.
The TSA began in 2001 when President George W. Bush signed legislation for its creation two months after the 9/11 attacks. The agency included federal airport screeners that replaced the private companies airlines had used to handle security.
Over the years the TSA has continued to look for ways to enhance its security measures, including testing facial recognition technology and implementing Real ID requirements.
One of the most prominent friction points for travelers is the TSA at screening checkpoints. President Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy asked the public in an April social media post what would make travel more seamless.
The following day, Duffy posted on X that, “It’s clear that TSA is the #1 travel complaint. That falls under the Department of Homeland Security. I’ll discuss this with @Sec_Noem.”
Trump fired TSA Administrator David Pekoske in January in the middle of a second five-year term, though he was appointed by Trump during his first term in the White House. Pekoske was reappointed by President Joe Biden.
No reason was given for Pekoske’s departure. The administrator position remains vacant, according to the TSA website.
Trump’s previous tariff push terrified the world economy. He’s betting this time is different

- With Trump’s 90-day tariff negotiation period ending, he has so far sent letters to 14 countries that place taxes on imported goods ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent
WASHINGTON: When President Donald Trump last rolled out tariffs this high, financial markets quaked, consumer confidence crashed and his popularity plunged.
Only three months later, he’s betting this time is different.
In his new round of tariffs being announced this week, Trump is essentially tethering the entire world economy to his instinctual belief that import taxes will deliver factory jobs and stronger growth in the US, rather than the inflation and slowdown predicted by many economists.
On Tuesday, he told his Cabinet that past presidents who hadn’t aggressively deployed tariffs were “stupid.” Ever the salesman, Trump added that it was “too time-consuming” to try to negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world, so it was just easier to send them letters, as he’s doing this week, that list the tariff rates on their goods.
The letters marked a change from his self-proclaimed April 2 “Liberation Day” event at the White House, where he had posterboards with the rates displayed, a choice that led to a brief market meltdown and the 90-day negotiating period with baseline 10 percent tariffs that will end Wednesday. Trump, instead, chose to send form letters with random capitalizations and punctuation and other formatting issues.
“It’s a better way,” Trump said of his letters. “It’s a more powerful way. And we send them a letter. You read the letter. I think it was well crafted. And, mostly it’s just a little number in there: You’ll pay 25 percent, 35 percent. We have some of at 60, 70.”
When Trump said those words, he had yet to issue a letter with a tariff rate higher than 40 percent, which he levied Monday on Laos and Myanmar. He plans to put 25 percent tariffs on Japan and South Korea, two major trading partners and allies deemed crucial for curbing China’s economic influence. Leaders of the 14 countries tariffed so far hope to negotiate over the next three weeks before the higher rates are charged on imports.
“I would say that every case I’m treating them better than they treated us over the years,” Trump said.
Three possible outcomes
His approach is at odds with how major trade agreements have been produced over the last half-century, detailed sessions that could sometimes take years to solve complex differences between nations.
There are three possible outcomes to this political and economic wager, each of which could drastically reshape international affairs and Trump’s legacy.
Trump could prove most economic experts wrong and the tariffs could deliver growth as promised. Or he could retreat again on tariffs before their Aug. 1 start in a repeat of the “Trump Always Chickens Out” phenomenon, also known as TACO. Or he could damage the economy in ways that could boomerang against the communities that helped return him to the White House last year, as well as hurt countries that are put at a financial disadvantage by the tariffs.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, said Trump’s letters had “extended his tariff purgatory for another month,” essentially freezing in place the US economy as CEOs, foreign leaders and consumers are unclear of Trump’s actual strategy on foreign trade.
“The TACO negotiating tactic pioneered by Trump is making his threats less and less credible and reducing our trading partners’ willingness to even meet us halfway,” Wyden said. “There’s no sign that he’s any closer to striking durable trade deals that would actually help American workers and businesses.”
So far, the stock and bond markets are relatively calm, with the S&P 500 stock index essentially flat Tuesday after a Monday decline. Trump is coming off a legislative win with his multitrillion-dollar income tax cuts. And he’s confidently levying tariffs at levels that previously rocked global markets, buoyed by the fact that inflation has eased so far instead of accelerating as many economists and Democratic rivals had warned.
“By floating tariffs as high as 40 percent to even 100 percent, the administration has ‘normalized’ the 25 percent tariff hikes — yet this is still one of the most aggressive and disruptive tariff moves in modern history,” said Wendong Zhang, an economist at Cornell University. “This gradual unveiling, paradoxically, risks normalizing what would otherwise be considered exceptionally large tariff hikes.”
Others simply see Trump as a source of nonstop chaos, with the letters and their somewhat random tariff rates showing the absence of a genuine policy process inside his administration.
“It’s really just a validation that this policy is all over the place, that they’re running this by the seat of their pants, that there is no real strategy,” said Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.
Questions about how much money tariffs will generate
With Trump’s 90-day tariff negotiation period ending, he has so far sent letters to 14 countries that place taxes on imported goods ranging from 25 percent to 40 percent. He said he would sign an order Tuesday to place 50 percent tariffs on copper and said at the Cabinet meeting that at some point pharmaceutical drugs could face tariffs of as much as 200 percent. All of that is on top of his existing 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum, 25 percent tariffs on autos and his separate import taxes on Canada, Mexico and China.
“The obvious inference is that markets for now are somewhat skeptical that Trump will go through with it, or alternatively they think compromises will be reached,” said Ben May, a director of global economic research at the consultancy Oxford Economics. “That’s probably the key element.”
May said the tariffs are likely to reduce the growth in US household incomes, but not cause those incomes to shrink outright.
Trump has said his tariffs would close US trade imbalances, though it’s unclear why he would target nations such as Tunisia that do relatively little trade with America. Administration officials say trillions of dollars in tariff revenues over the next decade would help offset the revenue losses from the continuation and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts that were signed into law Friday.
The federal government has collected $98.2 billion in tariff revenues so far this year, more than double what it collected last year, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
At Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the tariff revenues could be “well over $300 billion by the end of the year.” Bessent added that “we don’t agree” with the Congressional Budget Office estimate that tariffs would bring in $2.8 trillion over 10 years, “which we think is probably low.”
The governments of Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and South Africa have each said they hope for further negotiations on tariffs with Trump, though it’s unclear how that’s possible as Trump has said it would be too “complicated” to hold all those meetings.
Instead on Tuesday, Trump posted on social media that the tariffs would be charged as scheduled starting Aug. 1.
“There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change,” Trump said on Truth Social. “No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”