By PAN PYLAS, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday fired the country’s ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, over his links to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In a statement in the House of Commons on Thursday, Foreign Office minister Stephen Doughty said the decision came in the wake of the publication this week of emails Mandelson sent to Epstein in the 2000s, in which he gave his support to the disgraced financier even when he was facing jail for sex offenses.

Doughty said the emails showed that the “depth and extent” of Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein was “materially different” from what was known when he was appointed ambassador to Washington last year in the wake of the Labour Party’s election victory.

Mandelson, who took up his post in February this year after what the government described as an “extensive” vetting process, has voiced his deep regret over his previous links with Epstein and said he knew nothing about his criminal activities.

“In light of the additional information in the emails written by Peter Mandelson, the prime minister has asked the foreign secretary to withdraw him as ambassador to the United States,” Doughty said.

In particular, he pointed to Mandelson’s suggestion that Epstein’s first conviction in 2008 was “wrongful and should be challenged.”

FILE — This March 28, 2017 photo, provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry, shows Jeffrey Epstein. (New York State Sex Offender Registry via AP, File)

On Wednesday, The Sun newspaper published emails that it said showed Mandelson telling Epstein to “fight for early release” shortly before he was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

“I think the world of you,” Mandelson told him before he began his sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

The decision to fire Mandelson comes just a day after Starmer said he had “confidence” in him. It’s the latest blow to the prime minister ahead of a state visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to the U.K. next week, which is likely to be met with protests and some controversy. Last week Starmer also saw his deputy, Angela Rayner, quit over a tax error on a home purchase.

The government said James Roscoe, the U.K. deputy head of mission in Washington, will serve as interim ambassador and oversee Trump’s state visit. Roscoe is a career diplomat and former communications chief to the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Starmer’s judgment is being increasingly questioned, particularly over his appointment of Mandelson, who is no stranger to controversy, having twice resigned from former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government in 1998 and 2001.

In the wake of his second resignation from Blair’s government, Mandelson became a European Commissioner when Britain was still in the European Union, before returning to front line British politics in 2008 to serve under Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown.

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Mandelson’s trade expertise was considered a major asset in trying to persuade the Trump administration not to slap heavy tariffs on British goods, and seemed to pay off when the countries struck a trade deal in May, though some details of the agreement have yet to be finalized.

He is also a skilled – critics say ruthless – political operator whose mastery of political intrigue brought him the nickname “Prince of Darkness.”

It’s rare for a politician, rather than a career civil servant, to be given a key U.K. ambassadorial post. The center-left former lawmaker was not an obvious emissary to the Trump administration. Mandelson once called Trump a “danger to the world” — words he later said were “ill-judged and wrong.”

The focus on Mandelson over his links to Epstein accentuated this week after the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a 50th birthday album compiled in 2003 for Epstein, who at the time was a wealthy and well-connected financier. In that album, Mandelson called Epstein “my best pal” in a handwritten note.

Other alleged contributors to the album that was compiled by British convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell were Trump himself, former President Bill Clinton and attorney Alan Dershowitz in a “friends” section, and included other letters with sexually provocative language.

Epstein took his own life in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, more than a decade after his conviction.

Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, MARK SHERMAN and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

OREM, Utah (AP) — Authorities searched on Thursday for a sniper who assassinated Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close ally of President Donald Trump, with one bullet and then slipped away amid the mayhem resulting from the latest act of political violence to befall America.

Kirk was killed with a gunshot from a distant rooftop at the Utah Valley University campus, where he was speaking on Wednesday, authorities said. Federal, state and local authorities were working what they called “multiple active crime scenes.” As the search stretched into a second day, they provided little information about the shooter’s identity, motive, location or evidence and were reviewing grainy security videos of a mysterious person in dark clothing.

 

 

“This is a dark day for our state. It’s a tragic day for our nation,” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said. “I want to be very clear this is a political assassination.”

Two people were detained Wednesday, but neither was determined to be connected to the shooting and both were released, public safety officials said.

The circumstances of the shooting drew renewed attention to an escalating threat of political violence in the United States that in the last several years has cut across the ideological spectrum. The assassination drew bipartisan condemnation, but a national reckoning over ways to prevent political grievances from manifesting as deadly violence seemed elusive.

Videos posted to social media from Utah Valley University show Kirk speaking into a handheld microphone while sitting under a white tent emblazoned with the slogans “The American Comeback” and “Prove Me Wrong.” A shot rings out, and Kirk can be seen reaching up with his right hand as blood gushes from the left side of his neck. Stunned spectators gasp and scream before people start running away.

Vice President JD Vance and his wife, Usha, were set to visit with Kirk’s family on Thursday in Salt Lake City. According to a person familiar with Vance’s plans but not authorized to speak about them publicly, the Vances will visit Utah instead of New York, which had been their planned destination for an outdoor ceremony to commemorate Sept. 11.

Vance posted a lengthy remembrance on X chronicling the origins of their friendship, dating back to initial messages in 2017, through Vance’s run for the Senate and ultimately praying after hearing of the shooting. Through the years, Vance wrote, Kirk checked in and played a pivotal role in setting up the second Trump administration.

“So much of the success we’ve had in this administration traces directly to Charlie’s ability to organize and convene,” Vance wrote. “He didn’t just help us win in 2024, he helped us staff the entire government.”

Kirk was taking questions about gun violence

Kirk was speaking at a debate hosted by his nonprofit political youth organization, Arizona-based Turning Point USA, at the Sorensen Center courtyard on campus. Immediately before the shooting, he was taking questions from an audience member about gun violence.

“Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last 10 years?” the person asked. Kirk responded, “Too many.”

The questioner followed up: “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in America over the last 10 years?”

“Counting or not counting gang violence?” Kirk asked.

Then a shot rang out.

The shooter, who Cox pledged would be held accountable in a state with the death penalty, wore dark clothing and fired from a building roof some distance away.

Madison Lattin was watching only a few dozen feet from Kirk’s left when she heard the bullet hit him.

“Blood is falling and dripping down, and you’re just like so scared, not just for him but your own safety,” she said.

She said she saw people drop to the ground in an eerie silence pierced immediately by cries. She ran while others splashed through decorative pools to get away. Some fell and were trampled in the stampede.

When Lattin later learned that Kirk had died, she wept, she said, describing him as a role model who had showed her how to be determined and fight for the truth.

Trump calls Kirk a ‘martyr for truth’

About 3,000 people were in attendance, according to a statement from the Utah Department of Public Safety. The university police department had six officers working the event, along with Kirk’s own security detail, authorities said.

Trump announced Kirk’s death on social media and praised the 31-year-old co-founder and CEO of Turning Point as “Great, and even Legendary.” Later, he released a recorded video from the White House in which he called Kirk a “martyr for truth and freedom.”

Utah Valley University said the campus was immediately evacuated after the shooting, with officers escorting people to safety. The campus will be closed until Monday.

Meanwhile, armed officers walked around the neighborhood bordering the campus, knocking on doors and asking for any information residents might have on the shooting. Helicopters buzzed overhead.

Wednesday’s event, billed as the first stop on Kirk’s “The American Comeback Tour,” had generated a polarizing campus reaction. An online petition calling for university administrators to bar Kirk from appearing received nearly 1,000 signatures. The university issued a statement last week citing First Amendment rights and affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry, and constructive dialogue.”

Last week, Kirk posted on X images of news clips showing his visit was sparking controversy. He wrote, “What’s going on in Utah?”

Condemnation from across the political spectrum

The shooting drew swift condemnation across the political aisle as Democratic officials joined Trump, who ordered flags lowered to half-staff and issued a presidential proclamation, and Republican allies of Kirk in decrying the violence.

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“The murder of Charlie Kirk breaks my heart. My deepest sympathies are with his wife, two young children, and friends,” said Gabrielle Giffords, the former Democratic congresswoman who was wounded in a 2011 shooting in her Arizona district.

The shooting appeared poised to become part of a spike of political violence that has touched a range of ideologies and representatives of both major political parties. The attacks include the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband at their house in June, the firebombing of a Colorado parade in June to demand Hamas release hostages and a fire set at the house of Pennsylvania’s governor, who is Jewish, in April. The most notorious of these events is the shooting of Trump during a Pennsylvania campaign rally last year.

Kirk confronted liberals

Turning Point was founded in suburban Chicago in 2012 by Kirk, then 18, and William Montgomery, a tea party activist, to proselytize on college campuses for low taxes and limited government. It was not an immediate success.

But Kirk’s zeal for confronting liberals in academia eventually won over an influential set of conservative financiers.

Despite early misgivings, Turning Point enthusiastically backed Trump after he clinched the GOP nomination in 2016. Kirk served as an aide to Donald Trump Jr. during the general election campaign.

Soon, Kirk was a regular presence on cable TV, where he leaned into the culture wars and heaped praise on the then-president. Trump and his son were equally effusive and often spoke at Turning Point conferences.

Richer and Sherman reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; Michael Biesecker, Brian Slodysko, Lindsay Whitehurst and Michelle L. Price in Washington; Jesse Bedayn in Orem, Utah; Hallie Golden in Seattle and Meg Kinnard in Chapin, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

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By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press Media Writer

They were careful with the explicit imagery — as usual. But did it make any difference?

Traditional news organizations were cautious in their midafternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk’s assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot, instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before, and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.

In practical terms, though, it mattered little. Gory video of the shooting was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed. Millions of people watched.

Joseph Vogl stands outside Timpanogos Regional Hospital on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025, in Orem, Utah. (AP Photo/Alex Goodlett)

Video was easy to find on X, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube — even on Truth Social, where President Donald Trump posted official word of the conservative activist’s death. It illustrated how the “gatekeeping” role of news organizations has changed in the era of social media.

Kirk was shot at a public event before hundreds of people at a Utah college campus, many of them holding up phones to record a celebrity in their midst and savvy about how to disseminate video evidence of a news event.

On X, there was a video showing a direct view of Kirk being shot, his body recoiling and blood gushing from a wound. One video was a loop showing the moment of impact in slow-motion, stopping before blood is seen. Another, taken from Kirk’s left, included audio that suggested Kirk was talking about gun violence at the moment he was shot.

For more than 150 years, news organizations like newspapers and television networks have long been accustomed to “gatekeeping” when it comes to explicit content — making editorial decisions around violent events to decide what images and words appear on their platforms for their readers or viewers. But in the fragmented era of social media, smartphones and instant video uploads, editorial decisions by legacy media are less impactful than ever.

Images spread across the country

Across the country in Ithaca, New York, college professor Sarah Kreps’ teenage sons texted her about Kirk’s assassination shortly after school was dismissed and they could access their phones.

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No, she told them. He was shot, but there were no reports that he had died. Her son answered: Have you seen the video? There’s no way he could have survived that.

The videos were posted and reposted at lightning speed. One person on X urged “stop the violence” but then included a clip of the shooting. Several people took to social media to plead for people not to spread the images. “For the love of God and Charlie’s family,” read one message, “just stop.”

YouTube said it was removing “some graphic content” related to the event if it doesn’t provide sufficient context, and restricting videos so they could not be seen by users under age 18 or those who are not signed in, the company said.

“Our hearts are with Charlie Kirk’s family following his tragic death,” YouTube said. “We are closely monitoring our platform and prominently elevating news content on the homepage, in search and in recommendations to help people stay informed.”

Meta’s rules don’t prohibit posting videos like Kirk’s shooting, but warning labels are applied and they are not shown to users who say they are under 18. The parent company of Instagram, Facebook and Threads referred a reporter to the company’s policies on violent and graphic content, which they indicated would apply in this case, but had no further comment. An X representative did not immediately return a request for comment.

It’s an issue social media companies have dealt with before, in equally gruesome circumstances. Facebook was forced to contend with people wanting to livestream violence with a mass shooting in New Zealand in 2019, said Cornell University’s Kreps, author of the forthcoming book, “Harnessing Disruption: Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society.”

Getting to the other side

Some images seeped out into more traditional media. TMZ posted a video of Kirk in which a shot and a voice saying, “Oh, my God,” can be heard, but Kirk’s upper body was blurred out. A similar video with a blurred image of Kirk was posted on the New York Post’s website.

In such an atmosphere, the care shown by most traditional news outlets may seem quaint or old-fashioned. But news industry leaders are acutely aware of protecting people from graphic images when they are not expecting it; happening upon them is a little harder online, where many people have to search for and click on an image if they want to see it — if it hasn’t already been sent to you or your group chat.

There can also be an important message sent by news outlets being cautious in what they show, Kreps said. “The traditional media can amplify and validate behavior,” she said. “It can be a signal for how things should be stigmatized, rather than validated or normalized.”

But on the day of the shooting in a politically polarized country, the easy availability of shocking images ran the risk of making society’s wound even more painful.

“I don’t see how many signs of how we get — as a people, as a nation — to the other side of this,” said CNN’s David Chalian. “I think we are broken, and potentially beyond repair.”

AP correspondent Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about media for the AP.

By PHILIP MARCELO, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans are marking 24 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks with solemn ceremonies, volunteer work and other tributes honoring the victims.

Many loved ones of the nearly 3,000 people killed will join dignitaries and politicians at commemorations Thursday in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Others choose to mark the day at more intimate gatherings.

James Lynch, who lost his father, Robert Lynch, during the World Trade Center attack, said he and his family will attend a ceremony near their hometown in New Jersey before spending the day at the beach.

“It’s one of those things where any kind of grief, I don’t think it ever goes away,” Lynch said as he, his partner and his mother joined thousands of volunteers preparing meals for the needy at a 9/11 charity event in Manhattan the day before the anniversary. “Finding the joy in that grief, I think, has been a huge part of my growth with this,” he said.

The remembrances are being held during a time of increased political tensions. The 9/11 anniversary, often promoted as a day of national unity, comes a day after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah.

The reading of names and moments of silence

Kirk’s killing is expected to prompt additional security measures around the 9/11 anniversary ceremony at the World Trade Center site in New York, authorities said.

At ground zero in lower Manhattan, the names of the attack victims will be read aloud by family and loved ones in a ceremony attended by Vice President JD Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance. Moments of silence will mark the exact times when hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center’s iconic twin towers, as well as when the skyscrapers fell.

At the Pentagon in Virginia, the 184 service members and civilians killed when hijackers steered a jetliner into the headquarters of the U.S. military will be honored. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will attend the service before heading to the Bronx for a baseball game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers Thursday evening.

And in a rural field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, a similar ceremony marked by moments of silence, the reading of names and the laying of wreaths, will honor the victims of Flight 93, the hijacked plane that crashed after crew members and passengers tried to storm the cockpit. That service will be attended by Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins.

Like Lynch, people across the country are also marking the 9/11 anniversary with service projects and charity works as part of a national day of service. Volunteers will be taking part in food and clothing drives, park and neighborhood cleanups, blood banks and other community events.

Reverberations from attacks persist

In all, the attacks by al-Qaida militants killed 2,977 people, including many financial workers at the World Trade Center and firefighters and police officers who had rushed to the burning buildings trying to save lives.

The attacks reverberated globally and altered the course of U.S. policy, both domestically and overseas. It led to the “ Global War on Terrorism ” and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and related conflicts that killed hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.

While the hijackers died in the attacks, the U.S. government has struggled to conclude its long-running legal case against the man accused of masterminding the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The former al-Qaida leader was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and later taken to a U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but has never received a trial.

The anniversary ceremony in New York was taking place at the National Sept. 11 memorial and Museum, where two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets inscribed with the names of the dead mark the spots where the twin towers once stood.

The Trump administration has been contemplating ways that the federal government might take control of the memorial plaza and its underground museum, which are now run by a public charity currently chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent Trump critic. Trump has spoken of possibly making the site a national monument.

In the years since the attacks, the U.S. government has spent billions of dollars providing health care and compensation to tens of thousands of people who were exposed to the toxic dust that billowed over parts of Manhattan when the twin towers collapsed. More than 140,000 people are still enrolled in monitoring programs intended to identify those with health conditions that could potentially be linked to hazardous materials in the soot.

Associated Press reporters Michael Hill in Albany, New York, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this story.