Politics
Man arrested over alleged plot to kill Jewish people in NYC around Oct. 7
A Pakistani man who resides in Canada was arrested this week for planning to carry out a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York City around Oct. 7, the first anniversary of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel, the Justice Department said on Friday.
Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, 20, had allegedly planned to attack a Jewish center in Brooklyn in support of the Islamic State groupor ISIS. He also considered carrying out a shooting on Oct. 11, which is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, federal officials said.
Khan, also known as Shahzeb Jadoon, was arrested on Wednesday in or around Ormstown, Canada, which is about 12 miles from the U.S. border, the Justice Department said. The U.S. government said it will seek to extradite him from Canada.
Khan has been charged with one count of attempting to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, which carries up to 20 years in prison. It’s unclear if he has obtained legal representation. The Federal Defenders of New York did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment on Friday.
According to the criminal complaintKhan began expressing his support for ISIS and his desire to carry out terrorist attacks in support of the group as early as November 2023 by way of social media and in communications with an FBI informant.
From late July 2024 on, Khan started communicating with two undercover law enforcement officers, telling them through encrypted messages that he was planning an attack on Jewish Chabads in a U.S. city with AR-style rifles and claiming that he had found a smuggler to take him across the border from Canada into the U.S., the complaint states. He then allegedly changed his location target to New York City, citing its large Jewish population.
“The defendant is alleged to have planned a terrorist attack in New York City around October 7th of this year with the stated goal of slaughtering, in the name of ISIS, as many Jewish people as possible,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “Jewish communities — like all communities in this country — should not have to fear that they will be targeted by a hate-fueled terrorist attack,” he added.
There has been a sharp increase in reports of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in the U.S. since Oct. 7, when Hamas launched its attacks on Israel, killing over 1,200 people. Israel responded with a mass assault on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people to date, Palestinian health officials say. The war has also sparked multiple violent — even deadly — incidents against Jewish and Muslim people in the U.S.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
The U.S. delegation in Seattle includes HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Energy Secretary Chris Wright, according to a FIFA official, along with White House FIFA World Cup Task Force czar Andrew Giuliani. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy were among those who attended the U.S.’ first match, against Paraguay.
Britain wouldn’t have its latest likely next prime minister if not for soccer.
Andy Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor elected to the U.K. Parliament in a closely-watched by-election on Thursday, is expected to oust Prime Minister Keir Starmer as Labour Party leader in a matter of weeks. The sport propelled his political rise.
The pivotal moment of Burnham’s long political career came in 2009, when he was the Cabinet minister for culture, media and sport under then-PM Gordon Brown. Burnham was asked to return to his native Liverpool for a memorial commemorating the Hillsborough Disaster.
The 1989 event remains Britain’s worst-ever sporting catastrophe. Almost 100 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at a cup game in South Yorkshire, following a series of disastrous crowd control errors by police chiefs and stadium staff.
The horror of the day was compounded in the immediate aftermath, when police sought to cover up their mistakes by falsely blaming drunken Liverpool fans for the crush. The lies were amplified by a willing national media and allowed to linger for years; the city grieved and demanded justice. Bereaved families campaigned for years. But no one listened, and no one was held accountable.
Born in Liverpool and steeped in soccer culture, Burnham knew all this as he headed to the memorial at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium 20 years later. He was well aware how a young government envoy would be greeted by the crowd, still raging at the injustice two decades on. But to his credit, he went anyway — and was met with a wall of heckles, chants and protest songs from the part of Anfield, known as the Kop, where the team’s loudest supporters congregate. (The video of his halting, shattered-looking appearance is well worth watching.)
Burnham — until then a typical career politician in Westminster — has described the day as a seminal moment. He returned to Cabinet and demanded a new inquiry into Hillsborough. Three years later its report revealed every claim made by the justice campaigners — of police failures and a scandalous cover-up — had been true. The government was forced to apologize.
Burnham was widely praised for his role in exposing the truth about Hillsborough. But more significant in his ultimate rise to power would be the shift in his own psyche. “I always say that I took my first steps out of Westminster on 15 April 2009 when I walked out to face the Kop,” he wrote in his memoir, “Head North,” penned with close friend (and Hillsborough survivor) Steve Rotheram. “Things were never the same after that day.”
Burnham says his experiences dealing with the Hillsborough justice campaign shaped his view of the Westminster political machine, as an arrogant and failing institution which ignores English regions outside of London. Eight years later he would quit Westminster altogether to become a mayor in his native northwest.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Burnham finds himself in an enviable position — an experienced politician able to cast himself as a political outsider ready to take on the Westminster elites. (While Starmer supports the North London-based champions Arsenal, Burnham is a season ticket holder at his beloved Everton F.C., and is regularly photographed jogging in a vintage Everton jersey.) It’s a familiar narrative which chimes with disgruntled voters everywhere.
Read Jack’s Blue Light News Magazine profile of Andy Burnham here and Blue Light News’s full coverage of the Makerfield by-election and its unfolding fallout here.
Who’s not here at Seattle’s Lumen Field for the Pacific Rim face-off between the United States and Australia?
If they’re following the match, the two countries’ elected heads — President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — are doing so from afar.
- Kennedy and Wright cheer on US
- The politician who kicked his way to power
- The US-Australia face-off that isn’t happening
- The soccer boss in Mark Carney’s ear
- Vance says US allows more than dozen ships through to Iranian ports
- Regulators back Trump plan to speed power to energy-hungry AI data centers
- The accidental American
- The Americans who want to see Australia do well
- Steil pushes bill to ban lawmakers from political prediction markets
- Australian media are launching a MAGA counterpress
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship9 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words