Ilia Topuria will look to add a second Ultimate Fighting Championship belt to his collection when he headlines UFC 317 on June 28 – it just won’t be against Islam Makhachev.
After weeks of heightened anticipation for a potential blockbuster face-off between the superstar pair, Topuria, a former undisputed featherweight champ, will now fight former champion Charles Oliveira for the vacant lightweight title, UFC CEO Dana White announced on Tuesday.
Makhachev, a four-time defending champion, will vacate the lightweight belt to move up to welterweight to face newly crowned Jack Della Maddalena, who defeated Belal Muhammad last Saturday at UFC 315 to become the new title holder in the weight class. The date for that fight has yet to be announced.
Topuria has a perfect UFC record of 16-0. The Spaniard relinquished his 145-pound (66kg) featherweight title earlier this year in anticipation of a lightweight title showdown against Makhachev and took to social media to voice his displeasure at the Russian vacating his title belt.
“On June 29, another dream will come true,” Topuria wrote. “I’ll be the champion of the lightweight division. Charles [Oliveira], my apologies in advance… I’m just fighting for my dreams. It’s unfortunate that Makhachev ran away.”
Makhachev, who sports a 27-1 UFC record, is ranked by ESPN as the best pound-for-pound UFC fighter in the world; Topuria is ranked number two.
UFC 317 is scheduled to take place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Islam Makhachev’s next fight will be against Jack Della Maddalena in the welterweight class, rather than IIia Topuria in the lightweight class, after the Russian vacated his lightweight title to move up a weight class [File: Kamran Jebreili/AP]
A man who spent nearly four decades in a British prison for the killing of a barmaid said he was not angry or bitter as his murder conviction was overturned and he was released after being exonerated by DNA evidence.
Peter Sullivan, 68, was freed after the court in London determined on Tuesday that new evidence found on the victim’s body showed that he “was not the defendant” of the murder.
“This is an unprecedented and historic moment. Our client Peter Sullivan is the longest-serving victim of a miscarriage of justice in the UK,” his lawyer told reporters outside the court on Tuesday following the decision issued by an appeals court.
Sullivan, who wept as the judges dismissed his conviction, said, in a statement read outside the court by his lawyer, that despite spending years in jail he was “not angry” or “bitter”.
“I lost my liberty four decades ago over a crime I did not commit,” he said.
Sullivan was arrested in 1986, a month after Diane Sindall, 21, was found dead in Bebington, near Liverpool in northwest England.
Sindall had been on the way home from work when she was attacked, sexually assaulted and beaten to death in a killing which shocked the area.
Sullivan was just 30 when he was convicted in 1987, and his two past attempts to appeal against his sentence failed.
In 2021, he applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission – an independent body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, raising concerns about his police interviews, bite-mark evidence presented in his trial, and what was said to be the murder weapon, the commission said in a statement.
The commission then obtained DNA information from samples taken at the time of the offence and found that the profile did not match that of Sullivan. His case was then sent to London’s Court of Appeal.
Lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service, which brought the case against Sullivan, said the new evidence meant there was “no credible basis on which the appeal can be opposed”.
It was “sufficient fundamentally to cast doubt on the safety of the conviction”, they added.
A judge in the United States has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings after she was accused of helping an undocumented migrant evade authorities.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, 66, was arrested last month after prosecutors said she hindered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who showed up to arrest the man without a judicial warrant outside her courtroom.
Prosecutors alleged she tried to help Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer leave the courtroom from the back jury door before his arrest outside the building.
Dugan faces up to six years in prison if she’s convicted on both counts. Craig Mastantuono, one of Dugan’s lawyers, said in a statement that Dugan “asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court”.
Dugan, who was elected in 2016, is expected to plead not guilty at the next hearing scheduled for Thursday.
Demonstrators protest in front of the federal court where Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan appeared after being arrested by the FBI as she arrived for work at the Milwaukee County Courthouse on April 25, 2025, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin [File: Scott Olson/Getty Images via AFP]
According to court documents, Flores-Ruiz had illegally re-entered the US after being deported in 2013.
According to online state court records, he was charged with three counts of misdemeanour domestic abuse in Milwaukee County in March, to which he was in court in April for a hearing.
Court documents suggest Dugan was alerted that the immigration agents appeared in the court’s hallway by her clerk.
In an affidavit, Dugan was described as visibly angry over their arrival and called the situation “absurd” before leaving the bench and returning to her chambers.
She and another judge later approached the ICE agents in the court with what witnesses described as a “confrontational, angry demeanour”.
After a back-and-forth over the warrant for Flores-Ruiz, Dugan demanded they speak with the chief judge and led them away from the courtroom, according to the affidavit.
When she returned to the courtroom, she was heard telling Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer to come with her, and they were ushered out through a back jury door.
Flores-Ruiz was later captured by federal agents outside the court after a foot chase.
The indictment is the latest incident in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration and local authorities.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has pledged to press his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to attend negotiations with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Turkiye, adding to calls on Moscow to enter talks and end its three-year war.
Lula is expected to stop in the Russian capital on the way back from attending a regional forum in China.
“I’ll try to talk to Putin,” Lula said at a news conference in Beijing on Wednesday before his departure.
“It costs me nothing to say, ‘hey, comrade Putin, go to Istanbul and negotiate, dammit,’” he said.
The negotiations, expected to take place on Thursday in Turkiye’s commercial hub, Istanbul, would be the first direct talks between Kyiv and Moscow since 2022, shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
Lula’s comments come after the Ukrainian foreign minister urged Brazil to use its influence with Russia to secure a face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.
Brazil and China issued a joint statement on Tuesday calling for direct negotiations as the “only way to end the conflict”.
Zelenskyy earlier dared Putin to meet him in Turkiye, saying if he does not show up, it would show that Moscow is not interested in peace.
He also urged United States President Donald Trump, currently on a tour of Middle Eastern countries, to also visit Turkiye and participate in the talks.
Trump had announced that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would participate in the talks in Istanbul.
A State Department official said Rubio was expected to be in Istanbul on Friday.
The Kremlin has not yet specified whether Putin will attend in person, stating only that the “Russian delegation will be present”.
At least three people were killed in a Russian bombardment of Ukraine’s Kharkiv, an official from the region said.
Russia’s air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones overnight, according to Russian news agencies.
Ceasefire talks
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would travel to Turkiye this week for negotiations with Russia on the war in Ukraine and urged President Vladimir Putin to meet him for face-to-face talks.
Zelenskyy called on US counterpart Donald Trump to help secure a meeting with Vladimir Putin in Turkiye on Thursday, while accusing the Russian leader of not seriously wanting to end the war.
Zelenskyy also said he hopes to attend Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural Mass on Sunday, depending on developments in talks with Russia this week.
Trump said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio would participate in talks on the Ukraine war in Turkiye, saying he expects “some pretty good results”. A State Department official said Rubio was expected on Friday in Istanbul.
Brazil’s president said he will press Vladimir Putin to attend negotiations with Zelenskyy in Turkiye.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Moscow was ready for serious talks on Ukraine but had doubts about Kyiv’s capacity for negotiations.
Four days after India and Pakistan reached a ceasefire after a rapid escalation in a military conflict between them, key differences between their battlefield claims remain unresolved.
Among them is Pakistan’s assertion that it shot down five Indian fighter jets on May 7, the first day of fighting, in response to Indian attacks on its territory.
As a battle of narratives takes over from the actual fighting, Al Jazeera takes stock of what we know about that claim, and why, if true, it matters.
What happened?
Tensions between India and Pakistan erupted into military confrontation on May 7 after India bombed nine sites across six cities in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
India said it had struck what it called “terrorist infrastructure” in response to the deadly April 22 killings of tourists by suspected rebels in India-administered Kashmir.
Gunmen on April 22 shot dead 25 male tourists and a local pony rider in the picturesque meadows of Pahalgam, triggering outrage and calls for revenge in India. New Delhi blamed Pakistan for supporting the fighters responsible for the attack, a charge Islamabad denied.
Pakistan said Indian forces on May 7 struck two cities in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and four sites in the country’s largest province, Punjab. It said civilians were killed in the attacks. India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh rejected the Pakistani claims, reiterating that Indian forces “struck only those who harmed our innocents”.
Over the next four days, the two nuclear-armed neighbours were engaged in tit-for-tat strikes on each other’s airbases, while unleashing drones into each other’s territories.
Amid fears of a nuclear exchange, top officials from the United States made calls to Indian and Pakistani officials to end the conflict.
On May 10, US President Donald Trump announced that Washington had successfully mediated a ceasefire between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Despite initial accusations of violations by both sides, the ceasefire has continued to hold so far.
Pakistan reported on Tuesday that Indian strikes killed at least 51 people, including 11 soldiers and several children, while India has said at least five military personnel and 16 civilians died.
A person inspects his damaged shop following overnight shelling from Pakistan at Gingal village in Uri district, Indian-administered Kashmir [Dar Yasin/AP Photo]
What has Pakistan claimed?
Speaking to Al Jazeera shortly after the May 7 attacks, Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Islamabad, in retaliation, had shot down five Indian jets, a drone, and many quadcopters.
Later in the day, Pakistan’s military spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said the warplanes had all been downed inside Indian territory, and aircraft from neither side crossed into the other’s territory during the attacks – an assertion India seconded.
“Neither India nor Pakistan had any need to send their own aircraft out of their own national airspace,” British defence analyst Michael Clarke told Al Jazeera.
“Their standoff weapons all had long enough ranges to reach their evident targets whilst flying in their own airspace,” Clarke, who is a visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College, London, added.
On Friday, Pakistan’s Air Vice Marshal Aurangzeb Ahmed claimed that among the five downed aircraft were three Rafales, a MiG-29, and an Su-30, providing electronic signatures of the aircraft, in addition to the exact locations where the planes were hit.
The battle between Pakistani and Indian jets lasted for just over an hour, Ahmed, who is also the deputy chief of operations, told reporters.
He stated that the confrontation featured at least 60 Indian aircraft, among them 14 French-made Rafales, while Pakistan deployed 42 “hi-tech aircraft,” including American F-16s and Chinese JF-17s and J-10s.
What has been India’s response?
After Chinese state news outlet The Global Times wrote that Pakistan had brought down Indian fighter planes, India’s embassy in China described the report as “disinformation”.
However, beyond that, New Delhi has not formally confirmed or denied the reports.
Asked specifically whether Pakistan had managed to down Indian jets, India’s Director General of Air Operations AK Bharti avoided a direct answer.
“We are in a combat scenario and losses are a part of it,” he said. “As for details, at this time I would not like to comment on that as we are still in combat and give advantage to the adversary. All our pilots are back home.”
What else do we know?
Beyond the official accounts, local and international media outlets have reported different versions of Pakistan’s claims of downing the jets.
According to Indian security sources who spoke to Al Jazeera, three fighter jets crashed inside India-controlled territory.
They did not confirm which country the warplanes belonged to. However, with neither side suggesting that Pakistani planes crossed into Indian airspace, any debris in Indian-controlled territory likely comes from an Indian plane.
Reuters news agency also reported, citing four government sources in Indian-administered Kashmir, that three fighter jets crashed in the region. Reports in CNN said that at least two jets crashed, while a French source told the US outlet that at least one Rafale jet had been shot down.
Photos taken by AP news agency photo journalists showed debris of an aircraft in the Pulwama district in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Will both sides ever agree on what happened?
Defence analyst Clarke said if India has indeed lost a Rafale, that would certainly be “embarrassing”.
“If it came down inside Indian territory, which must be the case if one was destroyed, then India will want to keep it only as a rumour for as long as possible,” he added.
