Pretty much everyone on stage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York must audition — even the snake who will briefly take center stage in an upcoming adaptation of a Mozart classic.

In charge of deciding who gets the s-s-s-s-starring reptilian role is Zoe Ziegfeld, a carnival performer-turned-opera actor cast as the snake handler in the Met’s version of “Così fan tutte,” inspired by Coney Island in the 1950s.

Ziegfeld takes each snake, lets it slither and wrap around, then hoists the animal over their head, rehearsing what they will do under the bright lights at center stage for each performance. Ziegfeld looks each one in the eye, almost face-to-face as they evaluate the snake’s demeanor.

“I need to know that the animal is comfortable with people and with what we are doing,” Ziegfeld said.

Princess slithers into her big role

In the cold-blooded competition, a boa constrictor named Princess won. She is a larger snake with a better visual presence on stage.

“We will be moving forward with Princess (the big sun-glow boa constrictor who is yellow-peach) in rehearsals on a trial basis! She is a wonderful snake, and the trial is not about her, but rather about me and my strength,” Ziegfeld wrote in an email after the auditions were over.

A slightly smaller brown boa constrictor named Nala from a second audition will be Princess’ understudy.

A Mozart opera set at a 1950s Coney Island carnival

This is the third time Ziegfeld has played the role of the snake charmer in the Met’s adaptation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1790 opera.

In Mozart’s original, two Italian soldiers decide to test their lovers’ fidelity by pretending to head off to war. They then disguise themselves and try to seduce each other’s girlfriends. In this version, the plot remains mostly the same, but the setting is a 1950s Coney Island carnival complete with vibrant scenery and sideshow performers.

Carnaval snake charmer turned opera performer

Ziegfeld came to the role honestly. They spent a couple of seasons on Coney Island doing eight snake-charming shows a day.

When they tried out several years ago, live snakes weren’t allowed in the audition space. So instead, Ziegfeld brought video of their snake-charming act, then hammered home their carnival sideshow bona fides by knocking a nail into their own nasal cavity in what was called the Human Blockhead act.

“The music’s different. The money is different. It’s a pleasure to entertain. And with snakes, it’s a delight to know that there are people watching who are in awe and people who are terrified. And those things happen at the Met and at Coney — so I would say they are more alike than different, to be honest,” Ziegfeld said.

Animals are important characters at some Met operas

The snakes came to their audition thanks to Nancy Novograd and her company All Tame Animals.

She got into the business when her horse appeared onstage at the Met in a production of “Carmen,” and now she provides the opera house with everything from elephants to insects.

The first two snakes to audition were a bit small. One might have clashed with Ziegfeld’s top. But the key is personality, Novograd said.

“Animals have to perform as do human talent. Sometimes they have a set type of behaviors that they have to demonstrate. And sometimes they just have to get along with the talent,” Novograd said. “So in this case, they have to be the right color, size, and Zoe has to like them.”

___

Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina.

At least two people have been killed after an explosion at a military barracks in Bolivia but authorities fear the toll could be higher.

Bolivian Defence Minister Ernesto Justiniano said at least 58 people had been injured when “pyrotechnic material” detonated at the barracks, where an artillery regiment is stationed, about 14:30 (18:30 GMT) on Friday.

Health official Rita Nebraska told local television between 10 and 15 people were believed to have died in the incident in Viacha, about 30km (19 miles) from La Paz, according to Reuters.

Police said dozens of homes had been damaged – largely windows shattered in the blast – and emergency workers are searching the rubble.

Nebraska said there was a risk of further explosion and urged people to stay at least 150m away from the military base.

Police spokesman Roger Roca told AFP news agency that fireworks had been stored at the barracks, and the cause of the blast remained under investigation.

Viacha’s authorities have declared three days of mourning.

The closely watched case of the Massachusetts mother who killed her three young children was on the verge of being declared a mistrial Friday — but there was still one more dramatic moment to come.

After weeks of grueling testimony, the jury could not get beyond an impasse on the seventh day of deliberations on murder charges against Lindsay Clancy. An audible gasp was heard in the courtroom as Judge William F. Sullivan said he was going to to end their deliberations without reaching a verdict.

But just as the jurors were about to come back to the courtroom, Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer asked to make a last-minute request for a higher court to stave off the mistrial. That kicked off a tense wait while a judge on the state’s top court considered the ask.

The whiplash moment was one last piece of courtroom drama in a livestreamed trial that captivated and divided many across the nation. And now prosecutors must decide whether to do it all over again with a second trial.

Ultimately on Friday, the high court denied the defense attorney’s appeal and the judge formally declared a mistrial later in the afternoon. Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, blamed a lone juror for the impasse. Defense attorneys argued in their written petition that the person had revealed a possible bias against those dealing with mental illness.

Clancy, a 36-year-old former labor and delivery nurse, never disputed that she killed her children, but her attorney said she was experiencing a rare condition called postpartum psychosis when she strangled her kids, the youngest just 8 months old, and then tried to take her own life in 2023. Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing and should be held criminally responsible.

The jury foreperson had previously told Sullivan that a single juror wouldn’t follow the court’s instruction about reasonable doubt, according to Reddington.

In their last-minute appeal, Clancy’s lawyers had argued the juror should, at minimum, be questioned more thoroughly by the judge, or even dismissed outright before a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors responded that there was nothing in the jury’s notes indicating the juror in question had “a lack of impartiality, bias, extraneous influence, or inability to deliberate.”

Jurors had heard competing expert testimony about Clancy’s mental health.

Massachusetts defense attorney Joseph Perullo, who was not involved in the case, said it was “clear cut” for him, but he acknowledged that jurors could have difficulties.

“It’s clear that Lindsay had a psychotic break, and the psychotic break led her to kill her children,” he said. “But the prosecution can tell you that she sent her husband off for errands and therefore she is criminally responsible.”

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said after the mistrial was declared there would not be an immediate decision on whether to go forward with a second trial.

Perullo said he is hopeful prosecutors will speak to Patrick Clancy, the children’s father, and other family.

“It is a tremendous stress on them to do it again, and it’s going to be an even bigger circus,” he said.

But Crystal Lyons, a former prosecutor in Massachusetts, believes prosecutors don’t have the option not to retry Lindsay Clancy.

“At the end of the day, it was a tragedy where there were three young children who lost their lives,” she said.

Hosted at the Tower Festival Headland, the annual switch-on event saw comedian and TV presenter Paddy flick the switch on one of the resort’s biggest attractions, with a stunning fireworks display entertained a delighted audience.

Paddy described the experience of switching on the illuminations as a “proper full-circle moment”, recalling childhood trips to the resort with his father.

“Never in a million years did I think that one day I’d be the one turning them on.

“Thanks for having me, Blackers. You were bloody magnificent!”

Prior to his arrival, music performances entertained the crowds throughout the afternoon and evening.

Among those performing was singer-songwriter Lucy Spraggan, who described Blackpool as a place she had fond memories of visiting as a child.

Speaking before taking to the stage, she said: “We used to take a trip up to come and see the illuminations when I was younger, so I know what a big deal it is for the community and for people further afield.”

The performer, who was playing the final show of her summer tour, also praised the atmosphere in the town, adding: “Blackpool is one of those places that still has a really strong essence of community, and it’s stuff like this that bring people somewhere and make them feel involved.”

Crowds gathered for Blackpool Illuminations Switch On 2026 (Image: Martin Bostock Photography)

Lucy said seaside towns such as Blackpool remained a key part of British culture, adding: “I’ve always loved going to the arcade and just relaxing somewhere where it does feel like time hasn’t changed.”

Also appearing at the event were chart favourites The Feeling, who said they always enjoyed performing in the resort.

Reflecting on their long association with the town, the band said: “We’ve been playing here since about 2006. That’s a good 20 years we’ve been coming here on a regular basis, so yeah, we love it a lot.”

Discussing Blackpool audiences, the group added: “When you get to the north of England generally, you just get a kind of genuine, warm response from the audience. So they’re always really lovely to play to.”

The band also backed Blackpool’s bid to become UK City of Culture, with one member saying: “I think that would be great. I think that’s a really good idea. I’d love it to be Blackpool.”

The illuminations will now run nightly along six miles of Blackpool Promenade until January, with organisers expecting millions of visitors to travel to the resort during the season.

On the 6th floor of a gleaming office overlooking the Barbican, where square-jawed men wear gilets and bark into telephone headsets, the endless computer monitors are a sea of red.

It’s Thursday morning at the City of London HQ of IG Group, a FTSE 100 firm where 600 staff run one of the UK’s best-known financial trading and investment platforms. All week long, fear has stalked the market.

‘The more prices move, the noisier it gets,’ is how IG’s chief analyst Chris Beauchamp describes the office vibe. ‘Tuesday was relatively volatile. In fact, it was probably the noisiest day since Trump invaded Iran.’

At the bank of desks in front of me, IG’s staff are helping clients buy and sell everything from stocks and shares to bonds, funds, commodities and currency. Elsewhere in the building, they trade cryptocurrencies. A gargantuan volume of transactions, worth tens of billions of pounds, pass through the company’s platform daily.

IG’s revenues, derived largely from small commissions levied on each transaction, were more than £1.1billion last year. Put another way, this bustling, air-conditioned office represents one of the financial industry’s engine rooms. When markets move, phones start to ring.

All of which brings us back to that ‘relatively volatile’ Tuesday. It was the day Andy Burnham made his first Commons speech as Prime Minister, setting out what you might call an old-fashioned Left-wing vision for the country that will involve ‘stronger public control’ of the economy.

In Parliament, at least on the Labour benches, his talk of unwinding Margaret Thatcher’s legacy – while splurging cash on unreformed public services and protecting the benefits system from ‘crude cuts’ – was met with a predictably enthusiastic response.

Yet two miles down the Thames, in London’s turbocharged financial district, Burnham’s Mancunian brand of socialism immediately collided with cold, hard economic reality.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his Chancellor John Healey face an uphill battle with bonds

It revolves around a simple fact: Britain’s Government is already spending £1,368billion a year (the equivalent of £48,000 per household) yet raising only £1,235billion (£43,000 per household) in tax.

The difference between these two figures, the annual ‘deficit,’ is £133billion. And to cover that sum, we must borrow money. Every pound we borrow has, for years, been adding to a mountain of public debt which is now valued at more than £3trillion – that’s 3,000 billion pounds.

Last year, merely paying interest on that huge sum – what the industry calls ‘servicing our debt’ – cost taxpayers £130billion. That is more than twice the amount we spent on defence and almost £10billion more than the cost of our education system.

This year the deficit will be significantly bigger, depending on exactly how profligate Mr Burnham ends up being. The more it grows, the higher the risk becomes that Britain’s Government may one day find itself unable to pay its debts. The greater that risk, the more reluctant lenders become to buy our bonds and the higher the interest rates they demand in return.

Andy Burnham’s speech, which was broadcast via rolling news channels on trading floors across the City, illustrated this phenomenon in real time. At the start of the week, the interest rate (yield) on the 30 Year Gilts, the form of bond UK governments use to issue debt, had been 5.7 per cent. By 3.38pm, when the PM walked up to the dispatch box, the price lenders were demanding hit 5.84 per cent.

At 4pm, when he finished speaking, it was 5.85 per cent. By the time markets had closed that afternoon it had reached 5.92 per cent, peaking at 10am on Wednesday at 5.94 per cent. That’s the highest level since 1998. These may sound like tiny moves but they have massive implications. Not least since the figure has already risen from 4.6 per cent when Labour came to power in 2024.

Each time the ‘yield’ ticks up by one per cent, the cost of servicing Britain’s debt rises by around £16billion a year. Thanks to this phenomenon, economists at Bloomberg reckon our new Chancellor, John Healey, has already lost £12billion of the £23.6billion in ‘headroom’ (effectively cash in the bank to pay bills) bequeathed by Rachel Reeves.

To make up that cash, Healey must now either increase taxes, which are already at historic highs, or cut spending, which Labour backbenchers (who have voted against even minor tweaks aimed at reducing our spiralling benefits bill) refuse to countenance. Should neither prove palatable, the only other option would be to borrow still more, at ever higher interest rates.

Guy found that there are fears in Britain’s financial sector the UK will be put in a recession

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That may keep the wolf from the door. But it would also increase the cost of servicing our debt still further, driving up the deficit.

To put things another way, it would create a vicious circle.

This deepening trend is already hurting both consumers (whose mortgage and credit card interest rates mirror bond yields) and companies (who must also borrow to invest at increasingly elevated prices).

It’s also moving wider financial markets. The FTSE 250, made up largely of domestic stocks, fell by almost three per cent between Tuesday morning and Wednesday lunchtime. Although they recovered marginally towards the end of the week as gilt yields fell back from their peak – the red on IG’s computer scenes on Thursday showed the ‘Burnham panic’ subsiding somewhat – it has been a choppy few days.

Here in the City, there are fears that the whole thing will tip the UK into a recession that would damage public finances even more, causing yields of gilts (so named because they were once literal pieces of paper with gold leaf around their edges) to spiral further. Such a crisis could trigger the next great economic crash.

No one is sure when it might happen, or what the exact tipping point will be, but the bond markets are famously powerful beasts and even Left-leaning masters of the universe now take the view that their most important indicators are flashing red.

Take Lord (Jim) O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs economist who was offered (and turned down) a job as Burnham’s economic advisor. He hit the airwaves this week to say the PM must ‘get real,’ saying his speech was the ‘last thing investors wanted to hear’ and calling on him to urgently ‘rein in’ spending.

Take, also, Rich McDonald, a former hedge fund manager who now hosts the IG Art Of Investing podcast. When we spoke this week, he likened Britain’s current relationship with the bond markets to that of a rugby team that finds itself battered, bruised and heavily under the cosh in the 75th minute of a test match.

A gargantuan volume of transactions, worth tens of billions, pass through IG’s platform daily

He tells me: ‘This isn’t a single episode. It’s a problem that has been building up and up through the ill-discipline of successive governments and the refusal to make difficult choices about spending that might be unpopular.

‘In the UK, we are getting to levels of bond yield that are simply unsustainable for continued economic growth because companies won’t be able to borrow and credit card and mortgage rates hammer consumers.’

At IG’s headquarters, Beauchamp shows me a striking chart on his monitor illustrating yields on 10-year UK Government bonds, a ‘variety’ which must be repaid within a decade. At the height of the Covid lockdown, it stood at 0.16 per cent, making Government borrowing virtually free.

As the world emerged from the pandemic and economists grappled with the long-term impact of that extra debt, it began to tick up.

In October 2022 – during the brief reign of Liz Truss, who announced massive tax cuts and an expensive energy bill cap without explaining how she might pay for it – they spiralled from two to four per cent in a matter of days.

Rishi Sunak’s arrival in Downing Street brought rates back down to three per cent, only for them to slowly rise to four by the time Keir Starmer won the 2024 election. They are now at 5.2 per cent.

As Beauchamp sees it, this is a long-term trend that will be very hard to reverse, not least since it’s being mirrored in other major economies, such as the US, Germany and Japan, where bond yields have also risen, despite being significantly lower than here. ‘The UK seems to want European levels of spending but American levels of taxation. You can’t have both,’ he says.

‘The Labour party of the last two years can’t seem to cut spending, despite having a huge majority. So you end up with what happened this week, when a small rise shaved off half the Government’s headroom.’

Our prospects bring to mind a quotation from Ernest Hemingway: ‘You go bankrupt very slowly and then quite suddenly.’

Luke Moore, IG’s Head Of Growth who looks after its most important clients, characterised this week’s events as the latest in a series of ‘speed crashes’ in the bond markets. ‘We have had three of four of these so far this year, where everyone gets very excited and the narrative is that the end is nigh but then the trade pulls back over the next few weeks,’ he says.

The big question, of course, is what happens when that ‘pull-back’ doesn’t materialise.

What is galling, to many who work at the sharp end of the financial markets, is how little even senior figures in the Labour Government seem to know or care about the looming crisis. Andy Burnham being a case in point. Less than a year ago, our new Prime Minister told an interviewer: ‘We have got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond market.’

The remark caused bond yields to rise instantly. Angry Treasury sources briefed one news outlet that the comments had cost the Government around £1.5billion in fiscal headroom.

Shortly afterwards, the Left-leaning New Statesman magazine published a sobering article warning of a looming bond crisis.

It reported that at a recent meeting in No 10, a special adviser had piped up with the question ‘what are gilt yields?’ suggesting that ‘a government whose opponents were destroyed by the bond markets, and which is paying those markets £300million a day in debt interest, apparently employs people who have not taken five minutes to understand how they work’.

The article then quoted an investor who was betting on bond yields continuing to spiral due to the fact that ‘around 100 Labour MPs are prepared to rebel’ against any effort to cut public spending. The investor ‘thought it was reasonable to expect that this would add 75 basis points (or three quarters of a percentage point) to the interest on Government debt. Over the course of the Parliament, they said, this works out to an additional premium on debt of £1billion per rebel MP.’

Other investors are now making similar bets, believing that UK gilt yields will also be affected by global trends, including inflation caused by the Iran war, which has increased oil prices.

There’s also the fact that major corporations are being forced to borrow huge amounts of cash to invest in AI by issuing corporate bonds which means greater competition for funds and this, in turn, makes borrowing more expensive still.

Where exactly these trends now lead is anyone’s guess. But Chris Fellingham, a 40-year veteran of the bond markets, who has worked in senior roles for Blackrock, George Soros and Merrill Lynch, believes that without significant efforts to balance the country’s books, which will have to involve significant cuts to public spending, we are facing a sort of doomsday scenario.

It revolves around the fact that investors have historically faced a simple choice.

Stick cash in bonds and you will enjoy small but relatively safe returns. Buy stocks and you’ll tend to make higher returns in the end but volatility will be far higher.

Yet current trends mean that metric is on course to change.

‘For years, people have been able to make around four per cent a year in bonds and expect to get around double that by investing in stocks,’ he says.

‘But if bond yields were to rise to seven or eight per cent, the returns would be almost identical, so why on earth would you choose to buy equities or stocks anymore?’

If levels hit that point, Fellingham says, ‘people will respond by selling shares on a scale that causes a stock market crash.’ He adds: ‘That’s more or less what happened in the 1970s.

‘Andy Burnham has been saying that he wants the 70s back, wants to undo Thatcherism. But does he also want the 1976 IMF crisis back? Because that’s what will happen. I believe that without an urgent change of course, we are now in a death spiral. It could take years or it could take weeks but there will have to be a reckoning.’

One person who seems to think so is Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who is perhaps understandably determined to talk up Burnham’s reluctance to cut Government spending in the face of a looming bond crisis.

Describing the Prime Minister as a man who ‘doesn’t know how to say no’ she declared this week that his Government ‘will run out of money,’ adding: ‘The problem with socialism is they always run out of other people’s money.’

In the City of London, many share that view.

And the question increasingly being asked is when, rather than if, Mr Burnham’s coffers will run dry.

The brothers – former kickboxers with dual US and British citizenship – have been under criminal investigation in Romania since December 2022.

They have been mainly based there since 2017, drawing a large social media audience – many of them young men – through misogynistic messages and images of a luxury lifestyle.

Many of the new charges centre on a vulnerable woman investigators allege was recruited by Tristan when she was 15.

She is alleged to have been sheltered in a building in Luton, Bedfordshire, for sexual exploitation by Andrew.

DIICOT investigators allege Andrew controlled her through surveillance and physical aggression and coerced her to perform sex acts on video chats for his financial gain.

He is also accused of moving her to Romania to carry on exploiting her in two of his homes.

Andrew is separately charged with having sex with a minor, who was 15, in Romania.

Prosecutors have also requested four of the brothers’ luxury cars worth £710,000 are confiscated. They believe money was laundered through their purchase.

It is not yet clear if DIICOT will seek their extradition from the US, and the indictment has to be examined by a judge before any trial can open.

The Tates have denied all the allegations and say their online personas are not their real personalities.

Their lawyer Eugen Constantin Vidineac said: “Today’s decision by DIICOT does not determine guilt and it should not be presented as though it does. It represents the prosecution’s latest attempt to bring this case before a court following the failure of its previous indictment to proceed to trial.

“The history of these proceedings matters. The previous indictment was subjected to judicial scrutiny and the court identified significant irregularities which prevented the case from moving forward to trial.

“DIICOT has now chosen to file a new indictment. We will examine every aspect of it with the same level of scrutiny and we will challenge any evidential, procedural or legal deficiencies through the appropriate judicial process.

“Our clients continue to reject the allegations against them. They have the right to the presumption of innocence, the right to properly examine the evidence relied upon against them and the right to mount an effective defence.”

Moyes continued, suggesting he was not overly impressed with the club’s performance in the transfer window: “If you want success, then you all need to be aligned. I think we’ve got new owners in who are still finding their way at the club. I think as we get to know each other a bit more, it will be better.

Lindsay Clancy‘s ex-husband has spoken out after her case was declared a mistrial.

Patrick Clancy issued a statement through his attorney expressing gratitude for those involved with the trial.

His ex-wife was facing charges over the deaths of their three children Cora, five, Dawson, three, and baby Callan, eight months, before the trial collapsed earlier today.

‘Patrick Clancy is grateful to the Court and to the jurors for their hard work, their commitment, and their perseverance,’ his lawyer David Meier said.

‘The loss of Patrick’s children is something from which he will never recover and from which there will never be closure. 

‘The prospect of reliving this tragedy through another trial is extraordinarily painful for Patrick, for his family, and for all us.’

It comes two days after Patrick was seen stepping out with his new wife Rachel Danis in New York City while the jury remained locked in tense deliberations.

The Daily Mail previously revealed that Patrick has relocated to a Midtown Manhattan high-rise with his new wife, who is a fertility specialist and doctor. 

Public records show Patrick relocated from suburban Massachusetts to Manhattan in May 2023, four months after the deaths of his children.

Patrick Clancy released a statement after the mistrial, confessing that the loss of his children was ‘something from which he will never recover’ 

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Patrick and his new wife, Rachel, were seen smiling in New York City just two days before the jury declared a mistrial in the case 

During the trial, Patrick was forced to revisit the tragedy that struck his family’s home in the affluent Boston suburb of Duxbury on January 24, 2023, when his former wife strangled their three children using exercise bands. 

Judge William Sullivan announced a mistrial at a court in Plymouth, Massachusetts, shortly before 2.30pm ET Friday after an emergency appeal by Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, failed.

A mistrial means the prosecution will have the opportunity to try Clancy again. The trial will have to start over from jury selection.

The jury deliberated for almost 40 hours after hearing five weeks of evidence, but one juror was not convinced that Clancy should be acquitted. 

A second trial would not violate Clancy’s Fifth Amendment right against double jeopardy, which protects citizens from being punished twice for the same crime.

The Constitution of the United States prevents the government from trying a person again for the same crime after they have already been found innocent or guilty.

But because Clancy’s first trial has resulted in a deadlock, the prosecution is allowed to charge her a second time. It is unclear whether the prosecution will move forward with a second trial.

Clancy is likely going to be kept institutionalized in the interim while a decision is made.

Patrick, Lindsay’s husband, filed a suit against her doctors. He is shown with the children, Cora, Dawson, and baby Callan

The Daily Mail previously revealed that Patrick relocated from suburban Massachusetts to Manhattan in May 2023 

Dr Rachel Danis works as a fertility specialist in New York

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She admits killing her children and attempting to take her own life in 2023 but says she did so while overmedicated and suffering from postpartum psychosis.

A hearing to decide what to do next will take place September 29. District Attorney Tim Cruz maintained Clancy’s killing of her children was cold-blooded murder, but he refused to be drawn into whether he would push for a retrial and said the decision was yet to be made.

Prosecutors now face several options, including retrying Clancy on reduced charges or seeking a verdict decided by a judge rather than jurors.

The jury of nine women and three men sent four notes to the judge this week saying they had been unable to reach a verdict. 

It emerged on Thursday that 11 of the 12 jurors had reached the same verdict, but a twelfth holdout refused to follow them.

Reddington filed an appeal claiming this unidentified juror was biased towards people with mental disabilities.

The final note sent by jurors on Friday morning read: ‘It is with a heavy heart that we are unable to come to a unanimous decision and will not be able to.’

The previous family life of Patrick Clancy (right), came crashing down in 2023 when wife Lindsay (left) strangled their three children to death then tried to take her own life

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Couple Patrick Clancy, 38, and Rachel Danis, 37, are pictured above together in the fall of 2025

Friday’s Hail Mary motion was put before Associate Justice Dalila Argaez Wendlandt around 2pm ET. The brief hearing took place over Zoom, with Wendlandt issuing her ruling rejecting the appeal shortly afterward.

A few moments before the mistrial was declared, Reddington suggested to Judge Sullivan that he still had the power to send the jury back out to deliberate again, one final time.

During the sensational five weeks of testimony, prosecutors argued the killings were intentional and well planned, not the work of someone who had lost control.

The mistrial was declared hours after tensions between Reddington and Judge Sullivan boiled over. That came after Reddington accused Sullivan of giving a ‘soft’ instruction to jurors about how to interpret the concept of reasonable doubt.

Before the court adjourned, Reddington spoke to the judge and demanded that ‘one juror’ who is ‘refusing to listen to the law’ be removed from the panel. The prosecutors argued against this, and the judge did not make a ruling. 

Both Patrick and Clancy have filed separate lawsuits against several of her medical providers, alleging that they overmedicated Clancy while treating her for postpartum mental health issues. 

Patrick Clancy gave evidence in support of ex-wife Lindsay Clancy during her murder trial at Plymouth Superior Court  

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Lindsay Clancy was paralyzed from the waist down following her suicide attempt

Patrick has publicly supported his ex-wife from the start and urged the public to ‘find it deep within yourselves to forgive Lindsay, as I have.’

He previously told The New Yorker: ‘I wasn’t married to a monster – I was married to someone who got sick.’

Patrick spent six hours testifying as a prosecution witness during the trial. He told jurors that Lindsay had been a ‘loving mother’ before she was derailed by a months-long battle with postpartum depression, suicidal ideation and sleep deprivation.

Doctors did not warn him about postpartum psychosis or that he should not leave Lindsay alone with the children, he told the court.

While giving evidence, he wore the wedding ring from his new marriage to Dr Danis. 

Observers noted that Patrick and Lindsay barely made eye contact with each other in court – which is understood to be the first time they saw each other since the tragedy.

Four people were killed and two were critically injured in an auto wreck when a car veered off a mountain road near Wrightwood, California, early on Friday.

“For unknown reasons, the vehicle swerved away from the roadway, struck a telephone pole and rolled down an embankment. At that time, four parties were ejected from the vehicle,” California Highway Patrol Officer Thaniel Ong told ABC 7.

The crash, which was called in around 1:30am, occurred on Highway 2, between Big Pines and Wrightwood, near the LA-San Bernardino County line.

Most of those inside the 2016 Hyundai Veloster were not wearing seat belts and alcohol is thought to be a contributing factor to the crash, according to officials.

According to CHP, all six people involved in the crash are from Wrightwood, a town of about 5,000 people in the mountains north of Los Angeles.

The dead include two women and two men.

Responding to the scene involved a complicated rescue process because most of the occupants were scattered outside the car and responders didn’t know how many people had been inside, Chris Prater, a public information officer for the San Bernardino County Fire Department, told The Los Angeles Times.

Upon searching the scene, responders found five people had been ejected from the car, and a sixth person, who had been wearing a seat belt, took it off and exited the vehicle.

Four people were confirmed dead on the scene, while two were flown by air ambulances to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center in Colton in critical condition.

“The CHP reminds all motorists and passengers that seat belts save lives,” the agency told the paper. “Wearing a seat belt is the single most effective action a person can take to protect themselves in the event of a traffic collision.”

“Impaired driving is illegal, dangerous, and entirely preventable,” the statement added. “If you plan to consume alcohol, designate a sober driver, use a rideshare service, or contact a friend or family member.”

The man told the victim that she would be the reason his children didn’t have a dad if she didn’t reply to him

A stalker who bombarded a woman with more than 300 emails and tried to break into her house has been jailed. Carl Ashton, 46, began to persistently email the victim in July 2025.

His emails became obsessive. Despite being told to stop multiple times, he still sent more than 300 emails to her between July and August 2025.

Ashton’s emails would threaten suicide and self-harm unless she replied. He also told the victim she would be the reason his children would be without a dad.

The 46-year-old would reference his own funeral, suggesting that the victim would be responsible for his death because she refused to be in contact with him.

On September 6, 2025, Ashton turned up uninvited to the woman’s house at 4am. He tried to open her front door, called through the letterbox, dropped his keys through the letterbox, and partially climbed into the victim’s house through a bathroom window.

The woman called 999 and Ashton was arrested. On August 28 at Cambridge Crown Court, Ashton, of Coach Mews, Somersham, was sent to prison for two years and eight months. He had admitted to stalking and breaching a non-molestation order.

Ashton was subjected to a non-molestation order in December 2025. He breached it on May 11, 2026 where he posted about the victim on social media.

Detective Constable Sarah Hurrell, who investigated, said: “Ashton’s ongoing campaign of harassment left the victim living in fear, and in a constant state of emotional distress. Ashton was manipulative in his emails, and used emotionally abusive tactics to prey on the victim’s kindness, guilt-tripping her into thinking he would harm himself if she did not respond.

“This type of behaviour is completely unacceptable, and the impact it can have on victims’ lives cannot be underestimated. Stalking and harassment can, and does, have a devastating impact on victims, whose lives are overtaken by obsessive and unwanted behaviour.

“We encourage anyone experiencing similar behaviour to come forward. We take these crimes extremely seriously and will do everything we can to protect victims and bring offenders to justice.”