Under the agreement, the city will retain editorial control over the show, titled “Behind the Badge,” after accusing Jordan McGraw and his production company, McGraw Media, of trying to wrest it away. McGraw Media will provide “rough cuts” of episodes to the NYPD and will incorporate its edits into the finished version for the show, hosted by “Dr. Phil,” a clinical psychologist turned TV personality.

McGraw Media agreed to remove all content from the documentary-style series that the department designates as inaccurate or confidential, that the NYPD is legally prohibited from releasing, that reveals investigatory techniques or that would otherwise compromise public safety or the public trust.

It also agreed to remove any content that the NYPD flags as portraying the city or the department in a negative light.

A message seeking comment was left for a lawyer for Jordan McGraw and McGraw Media.

The lawyer, Chip Babcock, has previously said that the city’s lawsuit had come as a surprise “as publication of any programming was not imminent” and that McGraw Media “had worked with the city to address the edits requested” and was willing to continue to do so.

The city sued Jordan McGraw and McGraw Media in January, accusing them of violating an agreement that had allowed them special behind-the-scenes access to the nation’s largest police force and “risking immediate and irreparable harm” to the city. The city obtained a court order blocking them from selling or disseminating any footage from “Behind the Badge.”

Episode “rough cuts” provided to the city by McGraw’s company, McGraw Media, were mostly “unedited footage” dumps and included material not allowed under McGraw’s production agreement with the city, such as discussions of sensitive operations and the identities of undercover officers, crime victims and witnesses, the lawsuit said.

Among other things, the lawsuit said, the show contained footage of an officer inputting a security code at a police station entrance, discussions of encrypted police communications and the unblurred faces of people who were arrested by police but who have not yet been tried or convicted of crimes.

New York City inked a three-year contract with McGraw Media on “Behind the Badge” in April 2025. It called for McGraw Media to produce up to 17 episodes per year, but gave the city the right to opt out.

The city abandoned “Behind the Badge” late last year, hours before Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office, after saying that it had expressed concerns to McGraw about the show’s quality and content. According to the lawsuit, McGraw Media indicated that it would not accept any of the city’s edits and that it intended to distribute the flagged material and was looking for a buyer to air the show.

Episodes were slated to air on Phil McGraw’s MeritTV cable and streaming channels, where he’d previously done segments featuring the police department.

A lawyer for the city had told a judge in a letter Thursday that the city and McGraw Media had “agreed to a framework” to attempt to resolve the matter “through a collaborative effort to review rough cuts of nine episodes.”

According to the settlement agreement, McGraw Media has already edited the first four episodes to the city’s specifications. The city expects to provide feedback on the fifth and sixth episodes by next week and the last three episodes by April 16, the agreement said.

AP

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Warner Bros. announced early Wednesday that Colbert will script “The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past” along with series veteran Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee, Colbert’s son. Producer Peter Jackson revealed Colbert’s involvement in a social media video that introduced a “very special partner” on the film.

“It took me a few years to scrape my courage into a pile to give you a call, but about two years ago I did,” Colbert told Jackson. “You liked it enough to talk to me about it, and ever since then, the two of us have been working with the brilliant Philippa Boyens on how to develop this story.”

“Shadow of the Past” will come after Andy Serkis’ upcoming “The Hunt of Gollum,” which is set to arrive in theaters next year.

Colbert said that a few years ago, while talking with his son, he thought of a potential framing device for the film, which follows a new adventure for Sam, Merry and Pippin 14 years after the passing of Frodo.

“You know what the books mean to me, and what your films mean to me,” Colbert said. “But the thing I found myself reading over and over again were the six chapters early on in (‘The Fellowship of the Ring’) that y’all never developed into the first movie back in the day.”

“I thought: ‘Oh, wait, maybe that could be its own story that could fit into the larger story. Could we make something that was completely faithful to the books while also being completely faithful to the movies that you guys had already made?’” added Colbert.

Colbert’s “The Late Show” on CBS is to air its last episode on May 21 after the network announced it was canceling the late night show last July.

AP

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Mugabe and his co-accused appeared in the Alexandra Magistrate’s Court, where charges were confirmed and relate to the missing firearm that police could not locate.

ALSO READ: Mugabe’s son appears in Alexandra court for attempted murder, could face new charge

Police are still searching for the firearm used.

Mugabe, 28, was held at Bramley police station over the weekend, and he, alongside a 33-year-old man, will appear in court.

Police suspect Mugabe and his co-accused were directly involved in the shooting, though the exact circumstances remain unclear.

Mugabe, 28, was held at Bramley police station over the weekend, and he, alongside a 33-year-old Matonhdze are suspected to be directly involved in the shooting.

The pair remain in custody until 3 March for a formal bail application.

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Bellarmine Mugabe faces attempted murder charges and a possible defeating the ends of justice charge after a 23-year‑old gardener was allegedly shot and critically injured at his Hyde Park residence last week Thursday.

ALSO READ: Budget 2026| Godongwana has fiscal space. How he uses it matters

Police are still searching for the firearm used.

Mugabe, 28, was held at Bramley police station over the weekend, and he, alongside a 33-year-old man, will appear in court.

Police suspect Mugabe and his co-accused were directly involved in the shooting, though the exact circumstances remain unclear.

Bellarmine’s older brother, Robert Mugabe Jr, has also faced recent legal issues in Harare involving drug possession charges.

ALSO READ: Nkabinde Inquiry to hear more ballistics evidence in Cato Manor unit cases

He was arrested in early October 2025 after police spotted him driving a silver Honda Fit the wrong way down a one-way street in central Harare.

During a search of his sling bag, officers discovered two sachets of cannabis, a cannabis grinder, and rolling papers.

In November 2025, Harare magistrate Lisa Mutendereki ordered him to pay a $300 fine or serve four months in prison.

He also received a three-month suspended prison sentence, valid for five years, on the condition that he does not commit a similar offence.


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Sylvia Bongo and Noureddin Bongo Valentin were convicted of concealment and embezzlement of public funds, money laundering, criminal association, and forgery.

The court sentenced the duo late Tuesday, according to a judgement, and also issued an arrest warrant for them. They were ordered to pay millions of dollars in damages for “crimes against the Gabonese state.”

Valentin said the verdict had long been “predetermined” under the office of President Oligui Nguema and called the trial a “simple formality.”

Sylvia Bongo and Noureddin Bongo Valentin were influential during former president Ali Bongo’s 14 years in power of the central African country.

Ali Bongo was ousted in a coup in 2023 after winning a disputed election that the military and opposition said was marred by fraud. The coup put an end to the Bongo dynasty’s 56 years in power. Ali Bongo’s father, Omar Bongo, ruled for 42 years.

The prosecutor accused both defendants of manipulating the former president’s health issues to control state funds.

Valentin, who held the position of coordinator of presidential affairs, was described by witnesses during the trial as the main person giving orders at the presidential palace after his father suffered a stroke in October 2018.

Following Ali Bongo’s ouster, both Valentin and his mother were detained for 20 months before being allowed to travel out of the country.

The Bongos, who live in London and hold French citizenship, refused to participate in the trial. During the trial, the prosecutor released images of two private jets allegedly procured with laundered money and listed land holdings, including a mansion in London and Morocco.

“They reigned unchallenged, and tried to pass themselves off as victims of the system they shaped,” said Eddy Minang, prosecutor general at the Libreville Court of Appeal.

-AP

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President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

The commutations announced Thursday are for people who have served out home confinement sentences for at least one year after they were released. Prisons were uniquely bad for spreading the virus and some inmates were released in part to stop the spread. At one point, 1 in 5 prisoners had COVID-19, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press.

Biden said he would be taking more steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review clemency petitions. The second largest single-day act of clemency was by Barack Obama, with 330, shortly before leaving office in 2017.

“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”

The clemency follows a broad pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for gun and tax crimes. Biden is under pressure from advocacy groups to pardon broad swaths of people, including those on federal death row, before the Trump administration takes over in January. He’s also weighing whether to issue preemptive pardons to those who investigated Trump’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and are facing possible retribution when he takes office.

Clemency is the term for the power the president has to pardon, in which a person is relieved of guilt and punishment, or to commute a sentence, which reduces or eliminates the punishment but doesn’t exonerate the wrongdoing. It’s customary for a president to grant mercy at the end of his term, using the power of the office to wipe away records or end prison terms.

Those pardoned Thursday had been convicted of nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses and turned their lives around, White House lawyers said. They include a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who has worked as an addiction counselor and youth counselor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

The president had previously issued 122 commutations and 21 other pardons. He’s also broadly pardoned those convicted of use and simple possession of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia, and pardoned former U.S. service members convicted of violating a now-repealed military ban on consensual gay sex.

Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., and 34 other lawmakers are urging the president to pardon environmental and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who was imprisoned or under house arrest for three years because of a contempt of court charge related to his work representing Indigenous farmers in a lawsuit against Chevron.

Others are advocating for Biden to commute the sentences of federal death row prisoners. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, paused federal executions. Biden had said on the campaign trail in 2020 that he wanted to end the death penalty but he never did, and now, with Trump coming back into office, it’s likely executions will resume. During his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented number of federal executions, carried out during the height of the pandemic.

More clemency grants are coming before Biden leaves office on Jan. 20, but it’s not clear whether he’ll take action to guard against possible prosecution by Trump, an untested use of the power. The president has been taking the idea seriously and has been thinking about it for as much as six months — before the presidential election — but has been concerned about the precedent it would set, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

But those who received the pardons would have to accept them. New California Sen. Adam Schiff, who was a part of the House committee that investigated the violent Jan. 6 insurrection, said such a pardon from Biden would be “unnecessary,” and that the president shouldn’t be spending his waning days in office worrying about this.

For Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., another target of Trump’s threats, said in a statement this week that his suggestion that she and others be jailed for the investigations “is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Before pardoning his son, Biden had repeatedly pledged not to do so. He said in a statement explaining his reversal that the prosecution had been poisoned by politics. The decision prompted criminal justice advocates and lawmakers to put additional public pressure on the administration to use that same power for everyday Americans. It wasn’t a very popular move; only about 2 in 10 Americans approved of his decision, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

AP

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Tiger Woods is returning to the PNC Championship with 15-year-old son Charlie, his first competition since the British Open in July and after having a sixth surgery on his back three months ago.

Woods has played the 36-hole PNC Championship with Charlie every year since 2020. The tournament invites players who have won majors or The Players Championship with family members, typically their children.

“Playing together is something we look forward to and it’s always more special when you’re surrounded by friends and family,” Woods said.

The PNC Championship is Dec. 21-22 at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida, for 20 teams. New to the tournament this year are Fred Couples and stepson Hunter Hannemann, and Trevor Immelman and son Jacob.

Because the tournament is sanctioned by the PGA Tour Champions, Woods will be able to ride in a cart, key to him playing. He chose to sit out last week at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, where he is the tournament host, because he said his game was not sharp enough to compete against a field of the top 40 players in the world.

Woods set a Masters record in April by making his 24th consecutive cut, but he missed the cut in the other three majors. He had a microdiscectomy in September to alleviate pain down his legs, his sixth surgery on his lower back.

The biggest one was fusion surgery in 2017, and he followed that by winning the Tour Championship a year later and capturing his 15th major with a fifth Masters title in 2019. His last victory was the Zozo Championship in Japan in the fall of 2019, tying Sam Snead for the PGA Tour’s record of 82 career titles.

But there is no indication how often he can play in 2025.

“Whether my commitment going forward is once a month, yeah, I could say that all over again,” Woods said last week. “But I truly don’t know. I’m just trying to rehab and still get stronger and better and feel better, really give myself the best chance I can going into next year.”

The PNC Championship features 13-year-old Will McGee, the son of Annika Sorenstam, and 89-year-old Gary Player. Nelly Korda returns to play with her father, former tennis Grand Slam champion Petr Korda.

AP

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