Politics
Chase Blount: My first election was a car crash – but I still gained from it
Chase Blount studies at the University of Bath. She is the Deputy Chair of Torfaen Conservatives and is Chair of Libertarian Conservatives UK.
While everyone was distracted as they eagerly awaited the Gorton and Denton by-election results, I was standing around a small counting table in a polling station for Two Locks, a Welsh Cwmbran Community Council ward. Of which I was a candidate.
I thought to myself that the Reform lot were slightly too confident as they rushed to the front with their clipboards, haul of Reform merchandise, and big smiles plastered from one ear to another. But it was evident from the moment the counters tipped the ballot papers out onto the table that they had every reason to count their chickens before they hatched. I struggled to see any ballots with a mark in the Conservative box; even more worrying, I saw many in the Labour and Plaid Cymru boxes.
No way that Reform would win this, I told myself, especially since the only reason this by-election was being held: the Reform councillor, David Thomas, failed to show up to a single meeting in six months, therefore triggering grounds for vacation by the council group. Not only did he take his voters for granted, but he also cost the taxpayers around £10,000! Imagine the potholes that could be filled with that sum! How wrong was I, though? Reform won by a landslide; the results were as follows:
- Plaid Cymru: 94 (16 per cent)
- Conservatives: 22 (4 per cent)
- Liberal Democrats: 76 (13 per cent)
- Labour: 102 (17 per cent)
- Reform: 290 (50 per cent)
It was humiliating! Not only were we all trounced by the party that caused this mess, but I received fewer votes than the Liberal Democrat candidate, who received 4.6% of the Torfaen parliamentary vote in 2024. Luckily, deposits aren’t a thing in these elections – otherwise I would not be getting it back!
Despite coming in last place, I left the count feeling happier than when I walked in. This is because it made me think about the benefits I gained from even being a candidate for the first time. To which there are many.
At the start, putting your name forward is a huge step, especially since I hadn’t done it before. Conversing with members of the party’s local association about my intentions and willingness to stand led to my selection as the party’s candidate. This is a huge accomplishment in itself, as it’s a statement to have the backing of a whole mainstream party and the backing of its local figures. You learn that you yourself can actually participate in one of the core pillars of Britain, its democracy, and as a younger member, it’s great to know that people of all ages can be considered, based on merit and capabilities.
Once I was the party’s nominee, it was time for bureaucracy! This in itself was such an educational process, learning what forms were necessary to fill in, even on such a local level, giving me the insight for a future run. I decided to fill these in as soon as I could to get it out of the way, allowing me to move on to more exciting parts of the campaign. After handing them in, I started work on probably my second favourite part of the campaign, designing my election graphics.
When working on my leaflet, it was great being able to base my policy priorities on what I’ve heard from residents themselves, knowing what was important to them even on a local level. I made a plain, straightforward plan: Fixing the Roads, Cleaning up the Streets, and Local Representation, things I believe above anything else are achievable, and will make a real, direct difference to the constituents day to day lives. Although there was a lot of messing around with fonts, colour schemes, and image placement, it was an invaluable opportunity for me to be able to learn more about what my neighbours and fellow residents thought in my local area. It’s also priceless to see your face for the first time on a leaflet, knowing that people across the ward will get to learn more about your goals and who you are, increasing your name recognition for future opportunities to give back to the community through public service.
There were 1,500 houses in this ward, and the aim was to get a leaflet through every single one of those doors. We achieved this swiftly thanks to the help of the local team, our friendly neighbouring team in Monmouthshire, and even a member who travelled all the way from Swansea to campaign! This dedication from all those helpers was not only warming, but it was also reassuring and telling that, whatever people like to say about the party: we’re still alive, we’re still kicking, and we’re not going anywhere.
Before, on the doorsteps, I was never able to talk to residents about myself, what I planned, and what I would do to address their concerns, instead I had to be incredibly precise with how I answered since I couldn’t talk for myself, rather I would have to talk for the candidate themself and what they would do. With this, there isn’t much freedom as there was being the candidate themself. Any questions asked about, you, you will naturally know and you can think for yourself rather than for others. This is why, no matter how much fun campaigning for others can be, campaigning for your own campaign is even more joyful.
At the end of the campaign, after seeing how pushed aside local issues were in this race, and the earthquake of a swing that Reform caused, even when every main party in Wales was standing, the main thing I’ve learnt is that unfortunately in most scenarios, national politics always seems to trump local politics as the deciding factors in British elections. It’s not impossible to win a campaign solely on a local basis, but it’s incredibly difficult, and takes a lot of time, something that I didn’t have fighting a by-election. My advice to any Conservatives who are considering standing but are worried that they may not receive the best results… just do it. Because even if in the worst case scenario, you come last, you will still gain an invaluable experience, and you will still ensure that the people of Britain have a choice in their elections.
Politics
The House | The painful death inflicted on the assisted dying bill shows the House of Lords is not fit for purpose
Pro-assisted dying campaigners outside the Houses of Parliament, September 2025 (PA Images / Alamy Live News)
4 min read
Few issues could be as emotive as assisted dying.
Views are often shaped by personal experience, such as the death of a loved one, or by religious belief. It was the former which led me to confess in the Lords Chamber that, if the proposals in the assisted dying bill amounted to the ‘loaded gun’ with which it was equated by Baroness Finlay of Llandaff, I would have been prepared to fire it at my mother, so great was her agony as she begged for help in the final hours of her protracted death.
I was a strong supporter of the bill but my speech was followed by one from Baroness Grey-Thompson, who opined that “the bill that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, is proposing is simply not fit for purpose”.
This could have been one of several recent Fridays in Westminster – but it was actually July 2014, and that bill was stymied by the general election the following year. Since then, many other countries have embraced the concept of assisted dying, yet the UK is about to flunk another attempt to change the law on this subject. This time, with some of the same peers participating and deploying the same arguments, the ultimate victim could be the House of Lords itself.
Respect for politics and politicians, already meagre, has been further eroded by the continuing fallout from the Epstein saga. An Upper Chamber stuffed with people born into a tiny sub-stratum of society, chosen by the Church of England or anointed by the leaders of political parties, was never easy to justify in a modern democracy. Finally ditching the hereditary element might once have been enough to temporarily appease those demanding change but the controversy over its handling of the assisted dying bill has put the institution in real jeopardy.
Since 2014, public opinion has moved steadily in favour of offering dying people a chance to end their lives in the way they choose. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill improves on previous efforts in this area and has been passed by the elected House of Commons. The role of the Lords, as its members keep saying, is to scrutinise and improve legislation, employing the extensive and hugely varied expertise its members can bring to bear. But it stretches the bounds of credibility to argue that this is all that has happened when a short bill has been subject to 1,253 amendments.
The protracted and repetitive speeches these have produced, rendering it impossible for the bill to come close to meeting a workable timetable, have raised doubts as to whether self-regulation is any longer workable. If it looks like a filibuster, sounds like a filibuster and has the same effect as an intentional filibuster, then people will conclude that it is just that. And a House that cannot prevent such behaviour killing a bill that has the support of the elected members and the public is simply not fit for purpose. Rather than be an effective scrutineer, the Lords has allowed the personal prejudices of a few to thwart the wishes of the many.
The bill is not perfect: such legislation could never cater for all eventualities, and some opponents have proved hugely imaginative in positing extraordinary situations with which any new ‘assisted dying regime’ might have to contend. Others have sought to impose such conditions and demands that it would be impossible for any really sick person to comply, let alone the terminally ill. Cries for yet more ‘safeguards’ ignore that, currently, there are no real protections to stop grasping relations from encouraging a trip to Dignitas or suggesting that the patient should forgo further life-preserving treatment.
Meanwhile, people who are close to death and desperate to have some control over the manner and the timing of their exit continue to be deprived of even that option.
Baroness Wheatcroft is a crossbench peer
Jack Osbourne has announced that he and his wife Aree Gearhart have welcomed a baby girl.
The former I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here! campmate shared the news in an emotional joint Instagram post with Aree on Wednesday night.
In their post, the couple announced their daughter had been born on 5 March, and they’d named her Ozzy Matilda Osbourne.
The joyful news comes nearly eight months after rock icon Ozzy Osbourne died at his family home last year, at the age of 76.
“Introducing Ozzy Matilda Osbourne,” the caption read, alongside a short video of the newborn.
Next to the newborn in the video is a stuffed bat plushie, in a reference to one of the Black Sabbath frontman’s most iconic emblems.
Jack and Aree are already parents to a three-year-old daughter, Maple. He also has three more daughters, Pearl, Andy and Minnie, with his first wife, Lisa Stelly.
Back in December, Jack told The Sun On Sunday that his late father had learned he would be a grandfather once more before he died last July, and admitted the pregnancy had been a welcome distraction for the grieving family.
“It’s been partly a healthy distraction, partly healing – probably in that kind of ‘full cycle’ category, in a weird way,” Jack explained. “It’s very much taken energy out of the grieving side of things and parked in a bit more hopefulness.”
“We’re super-excited. It was sort of planned, I should say,” he added, before sharing that he and his new arrival was coming a little earlier than they had previously expected.
“It’s definitely something that we were wanting to pursue and somehow it happened, miraculously,” Jack said.
Earlier this month, Jack’s mum and sister, Sharon and Kelly Osbourne appeared at the Brit Awards to accept a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award on Ozzy’s behalf. a
BBC presenter Emma Barnett tore into the government’s “boys’ club” culture in a tense interview with a Labour minister over the Peter Mandelson files.
The government has just released the first tranche of documents related to the vetting of the former Labour peer before he was appointed as the UK’s ambassador to Washington.
The files show Keir Starmer’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell warned about the reputational risk of hiring Mandelson over his close friendship with the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Powell also noted the appointment was “weirdly rushed”, while officials told The Times that the security adviser privately said that “Peter is always a disaster and we always end up firing him”.
Former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office Sir Philip Barton raised concerns about the appointment, too.
Formal advice to the prime minister pointed out that Mandelson remained friends with Epstein until at least 2014, long after his conviction of soliciting a minor for prostitution in 2009.
Starmer still hired Mandelson in December 2024 though he has since claimed the peer lied to him.
On BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Barnett asked cabinet minister Nick Thomas-Symonds why Powell thought this appointment “weirdly rushed” and “unusual”.
The paymaster general said: “Obviously this was, by its nature, an unusual appointment.
“It was a political appointment, they’re not unheard of, they do happen.”
He added “there are questions that need to be asked” about the speed of the appointment and the security vetting.
But Barnett said the UK has a right to understand how sound Starmer’s judgement is, considering he still hired Mandelson despite warnings of “reputational risk”.
“He ignored not only Jonathan Powell, but Sir Philip Barton,” she said.
“Why did he ignore top individuals and rush through a weirdly unusual process to put Lord Mandelson as our man in Washington?”
The minister said Starmer had asked the ex-ambassador his own questions but that document is not yet in the public domain.
That item will be released at a later date, when the police probe into Mandelson concludes.
Barnett pressed: “Do you accept the reputational damage this has done to Sir Keir Starmer?”
She continued: “The suffering of women was ignored. The abuse of underage girls was not as a barrier to friendship to Lord Mandelson.
“And nor was that seen as a problem by all the men advising the prime minister. You want to talk about boys’ clubs, you want to talk about women?”
Barnett pointed out that chief secretary to the prime minister, Darren Jones, had extended his sympathies to Epstein’s victims during his statement to the Commons – but she added: “It’s too little, too late isn’t it?”
Thomas-Symonds said: “I acknowledge entirely, not just in politics, in society, in business, issues – you’re right, men in power abusing their position.
“I’m not running away from that, that’s something we need to tackle.”
But he claimed Starmer has given an “absolute priority” across his career to halve violence against women and girls.
“Two things can be true,” she insisted, noting that the minister had still avoided questions over what this means for Starmer’s reputation.
The presenter said: “He’s a man of legal training, why wasn’t the sceptical, analytical part of his brain switched on enough, as prime minister, to say, ‘no, there must be someone better’?”
Thomas-Symonds insisted Starmer has asked questions to Mandelson in private and regrets that appointment.
Mandelson denies all allegations of wrongdoing, including alleged misconduct in public office.
The worst-kept secret in pop has finally been confirmed – the Pussycat Dolls are heading back on tour later this year.
On Thursday morning, the chart-topping girl group unveiled their first new single in almost seven years, Club Song, to coincide with the news that they would be touring North America and Europe later this year.
While the band were known as a six-piece at the height of their fame, Nicole Scherzinger is joined by just Ashley Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt in the group’s latest incarnation.
Excitingly, though, the Don’t Cha singers will also receive support from rap icon Lil Kim as their opening act for their UK shows.
What are the Pussycat Dolls’ upcoming arena tour dates?
The PCD Forever tour will begin in North America this June, with the UK and Ireland leg finally kicking off in September in Birmingham.
Here’s the full list of UK and Ireland arena dates:
- 29 September – Birmingham, Utilita Arena
- 30 September – Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
- 2 October – Leeds, First Direct Bank Arena
- 3 October – Liverpool, M&S Bank Arena
- 5 October – Dublin, 3Arena
- 7 October – Glasgow, OVO Hydro Arena
- 9 October – Newcastle, Utilita Arena
- 10 October – Manchester, Co-Op Live
- 13 October – London, The O2 Arena
For O2 and Virgin Media customers, there’s a priority pre-sale on Wednesday 18 March at 9am, with general release tickets available from Friday 20 March at 10am.
Hang on a second, weren’t the Pussycat Dolls supposed to tour back in 2020?
Yes, the Pussycat Dolls announced in 2019 that they had plans to tour as a five-piece, with only Melody Thornton from the original line-up choosing to sit the reunion out.
However, these dates were postponed due to the Covid pandemic, before being cancelled entirely, with reports of a legal dispute between Nicole and PCD founder Robin Antin relating to the tour.
In the years since this scuppered PCD reunion – which saw them returning to the UK singles chart with their comeback single React – Nicole made her Broadway debut, winning both an Olivier and Tony for her work in a revival of Sunset Blvd.
Back in 2020, three of the Pussycat Dolls also teamed up to release a festive cover of the Christmas hit Santa Baby.
Where can I listen to the Pussycat Dolls’ new single Club Song?
Wouldn’t you just know it – right here!:
Nicole Kidman has spoken for the first time about her split from her husband of 20 years, Keith Urban.
The Oscar winner and Australian country star were reported to have split late last year, with their divorce being finalised in January.
During a new interview with Variety, the Moulin Rouge! star was asked if she was doing well since the split, to which she responded: “I am, because I’m always going to be moving toward what’s good.
“What I’m grateful for is my family and keeping them as is and moving forward. That’s that.”
She continued: “Everything else I don’t discuss out of respect. I’m staying in a place of, ‘We are a family’, and that’s what we’ll continue to be. My beautiful girls, my darlings, who are suddenly women.”
The former couple tied the knot in 2006, and during their marriage, they welcomed two daughters, 17-year-old Sunday Rose and 15-year-old Faith Margaret.
Nicole had previously been married to fellow actor Tom Cruise, with whom she adopted a son and daughter over the course of their time together.
Earlier in her Variety, Nicole admitted she’d been “in my shell” for much of 2025, which proved to be a tough year for her, having lost her mum months before it began as well as dealing with the end of her marriage.
“Now I’m in a place of saying, ‘2026. Here we go’,” she enthused, referring to the upcoming Practical Magic sequel with Sandra Bullock as one thing she’s especially excited about.
She also discussed losing her mum, claiming that she believes her late mother pays her visits in the form of ladybirds.
“I said that to my daughter the other day,” she explained. “We saw one and I said, ‘Grandmama’s here!’. My daughter looked at me like I was crazy and said, ‘No, Mum. That’s a ladybug’. I said, ‘Absolutely not. It’s your grandmother’.
“Whether it’s true or not, it’s soothing. I’ll accept that.”
Read Nicole Kidman’s full interview with Variety here.
Miriam Margolyes proved she wasn’t going to let anything stand in the way of being as unfiltered as ever during a recent public appearance with Queen Camilla.
On Tuesday, the Bafta winner attended an International Women’s Day event at St James’s Palace, where fellow guests included Dame Helen Mirren and Hannah Waddingham.
During the event, Miriam was greeted by the Queen, kissing her on the cheek and telling her: “Hello darling, how are you?”
“Will you tell His Majesty that we love him and we want him to get better?” Miriam then asked, before insisting the monarch should “take no notice of anyone who criticises him, because he’s just wonderful”.
“I will bear that in mind,” Queen Camilla responded, before thanking her and moving further down the line of guests.
While Miriam primarily identifies as a socialist, she has expressed her admiration for King Charles on numerous occasions in the past.
In 2023, the former Harry Potter star appeared on Waitrose’s Dish podcast, where she revealed that she once told Queen Camilla (with whom she was swimming at the time, apparently): “I hate it when the newspapers say horrible things about Prince Charles because he’s so sweet and so good and he worries about the country.”
Last year, she also wrote in her Little Book Of Miriam: “I like and respect him, although I am politically a socialist. He cares about the planet, the country, all the people of the United Kingdom.
“He is human and honest, fundamentally serious but with a glorious sense of humour.”
“I am not his friend,” she then insisted. “To claim that would be an impertinence. But I know enough to believe in his decency and kindness, and when I read some of the ghastly stuff newspapers write, I rush to defend him wherever I can.
“I value his worth. We are lucky to have such a king. I wish him health and strength and a long and happy life with his beloved queen, who is totally delicious.”
The recent Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 7 has put wind in the sails of
offshore renewables. The Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult is now working
to shore up the supply chain by bolstering the circular economy for offshore wind
With the excellent news of Allocation Round 7’s bumper budget allocation, delivering 8.4GW of contracts for new offshore wind turbines in Britain’s waters, attention is now turning to how the supply chain can be turbocharged to get them built.
Meeting the government’s ambitious 2030 offshore wind deployment targets of 43-50GW will require up to 12 million tonnes of steel, 9-12 million tonnes of concrete, and vast amounts of copper, aluminium and rare earth elements.1 The government is already pulling levers to help the supply chain scale up to meet this demand; Great British Energy has announced £300m in capital grant funding to build UK manufacturing capacity for key constrained components in offshore wind and enabling electricity networks sectors.
But delivering these targets sustainably demands more than just new turbines – it requires a coherent strategy for the end-of-life management, reuse and recycling of wind turbine components. Effective circularity in wind supply chains can unlock economic, environmental and strategic benefits that support the government’s broader industrial and net-zero objectives.
The UK’s earliest commercial wind turbines are now approaching the end of their expected operational lifespans, creating an urgent need to prepare for the decommissioning challenge, which will only increase over the coming years.
Embedding circular economy principles – reducing, reusing and recycling – across the wind sector preserves finite resources, reduces carbon emissions, and strengthens supply-chain resilience. It also aligns with UK industrial growth priorities by stimulating new manufacturing and recycling businesses. For example, emerging partnerships like the ‘Re-Rewind’ initiative are exploring how to create the UK’s first circular supply chain for rare earth magnets, a critical material in turbine generators, reducing dependence on imports and supporting future turbine manufacturing.
A series of collaborative initiatives highlights the sector’s commitment to these goals. The ‘Regulations to Ensure Sustainable Circular Use at End-of-Life for Wind’ (RESCUE) project, led by ORE Catapult alongside the University of Leeds, University of the West of England, University of Birmingham, EMR and Ionic Technologies, aims to identify regulatory barriers and opportunities to establish a robust end-of-life materials network.
The early discovery phase of RESCUE revealed that current waste and resource regulations risk stifling innovation needed for reuse, repair and recycling. The implementation phase seeks to address these barriers through collaborative governance, capacity building and regulatory sandboxes that pilot circular solutions.
Complementing this work, the University of Leeds policy briefing on enhancing resilience and circular economy in wind supply chains highlights that the existing policy landscape – spanning over 170 regulations, standards and planning frameworks – remains fragmented.
For Parliament, supporting circular wind strategies is not merely environmental stewardship. It is strategic industrial policy – strengthening UK supply chains, mitigating material risks, and ensuring that as turbines are built, they are also responsibly retired and recycled, contributing directly to the Clean Power 2030 agenda.
On Monday 16th March, ORE Catapult will be hosting a Parliamentary Reception in the Terrace Pavilion to launch its latest RESCUE report. Please join us to hear more about how circularity in offshore wind will not only benefit our energy security and clean power targets, but also boost regional growth in key coastal constituencies.
For more information about our reception, please email [email protected].
Reference
On Monday, though, the Journal reported that multiple other figures in Trump’s orbit are now walking around in presidentially purchased Florsheims — which retail for about $145.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair and speechwriter Ross Worthington have all been on the receiving end of Trump’s shoe giving, the Journal reported.
Outside of the White House, Fox News’ Sean Hannity and Sen. Lindsey Graham (Republican, South Carolina) are also walking the walk in Trump-approved shoes, it added.
“All the boys have them,” a female White House official told the Journal.
“It’s hysterical because everybody’s afraid not to wear them,” another told the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper.
At one point, “Vance lifted his leg in the air to show the president the pair he was wearing,” said Times reporter Katie Rogers.
Last year, Vance recalled Trump chastising him and Rubio for their “shitty shoes” and then making a crude gag about penis size.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (Republican, Louisiana) on Tuesday said the US should not be involved in nation-building in Iran, claiming “we are the good guys” one day after President Donald Trump called his deadly ongoing war there “the beginning of building a new country.”
Johnson was asked during a fireside chat in Doral, Florida, by NBC News reporter Scott Wong, less than two weeks after joint US-Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, if he thinks nation-building is something “we should be involved in.”
“I don’t think it’s our role,” Johnson said on Tuesday.
He also argued the US has “a very important role to play in the world,” citing support from his “colleagues at the G7, the G20” forums and members of parliament in Western nations as purported proof that “everyone around the world” agrees with America’s role.
Johnson said, “And we have held this position since World War II. [Former President] Ronald Reagan used to quote [Pope] Pius, I think the 12th, who said the leadership of the free world was placed upon the shoulders of the United States of America after World War II.”
“It is not a position that we sought or asked for, but that’s how it developed,” he continued. “And we emerged as a superpower, and we are the good guys. We are the defenders of freedom and liberty, and freedom-loving people all around the world benefit from a strong America.”
The Iran War has already cost at least seven US military service members and more than 1,200 Iranians their lives. Among them were 175 people who were killed in an airstrike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh school in Minab, most of them schoolgirls under the age of 12.
Critics were appalled that Johnson so leisurely deemed his administration “the good guys.”
“Why do I have the feeling that the mothers of the kids killed at the Minab school would strongly disagree with that,” wrote one user on X, with another person commenting: “No one in the history of history who has said ‘We are the good guys’ is actually the good guys.”
Others pointed to new polls showing many voters feel the war makes America “less safe.”
One Quinnipac survey conducted March 6-8 showed 55% of the 1,002 registered voters who were polled do not believe Iran posed the “imminent threat” that the White House has maintained, and that 74% opposed sending U.S. troops into Iran.
Trump has yet to rule out doing so, and while he initially claimed major combat operations would only take weeks, he later said, “Wars can be fought ‘forever.’” Johnson said Tuesday that regime change would be “great,” but that it’s up to the besieged Iranians to accomplish it.
“They need to rise up, as the president has tried to encourage, and they need to take that opportunity and secure that for themselves,” he added. “I am sure that there [are] friends and allies around the world who will help in some ways, but it is not America’s responsibility to do that.”
A suspect has been charged with attempted murder following an incident outside Rihanna’s house in California last week.
On Monday, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed that the Pon De Replay singer’s home had been targeted by a woman who fired numerous shots in the direction of the property from outside of it over the weekend.
Days later, 35-year-old Ivanna Lisette Ortiz was charged with attempted murder, as well as 10 felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and three felony counts of shooting at an inhabited dwelling or camper.
BBC News reported that her bail is set at $1.875 million (around £1.4 million), and that she is facing a potential life sentence.
“Opening fire in any populated neighbourhood is extremely dangerous, puts lives at risk and will be fully prosecuted,” the Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman was quoted as saying.
“This careless violence will not be tolerated in our community. Such shooters will find their next destination to be our jails and prisons.”
After allegedly fleeing the scene, Ortiz’s white Tesla was found around eight miles from Rihanna’s property, after which she was arrested and detained.
It’s also been reported that Ortiz had previously shared a number of social media posts referencing Rihanna.
Rihanna and her partner A$AP Rocky are both believed to have been at their home at the time of the shooting.
In September of last year, the couple welcomed their third child, a baby girl who they named Rocky Irish Mayers.
They were already parents to two sons, three-year-old RZA and two-year-old Riot.
Best known for her hits like Umbrella, We Found Love and Work, Rihanna has pivoted away from music in the last decade to focus on her hugely successful makeup and lingerie businesses.
She has continued to sporadically release music and perform in the last 10 years though, most notably headlining the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2023 and landing an Oscar nomination for her contribution to the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack.
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