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Alleged WNBA sex toy thrower arrested in New York on assault charges

The New York Police Department arrested a 32-year-old man from Ohio on Wednesday for allegedly throwing a sex toy that hit other fans during a WNBA game earlier this month.
Police said Charles Burgess of Dayton, Ohio, attended the Aug. 5 game between the Dallas Wings and New York Liberty at Barclays Center and smuggled in a green sex toy that he later flung from the stands. The toy did not reach the court and instead hit a 12-year-old girl sitting nearby, according to police.
Burgess faces 10 criminal charges related to the incident, including multiple counts of assault. The top charge is second-degree attempted assault, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. Among the other charges are interference with a professional sporting event, reckless endangerment, harassment and obscenity. Burgess pleaded not guilty to all charges.
A deposition from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office said an unnamed witness reviewed surveillance video that showed Burgess entering the arena and later pulling an object from his pants before throwing it toward the court.
The complaint said the victim “was struck by a large, hard object” shaped like a sex toy and suffered bodily harm. The deposed person identified the man as Burgess after viewing photographs of him from the Ohio Department of Motor Vehicles.
Video circulated on social media immediately after the incident showed a sex toy on the ground between rows in the stands, with a young girl sitting in a seat directly behind it. Other footage showed arena security appearing to search for the person who threw it. No arrest occurred that night.
Paul D’Emilia, an attorney for Burgess, said in an email to The Athletic that his client surrendered to authorities in Brooklyn after driving overnight from Ohio, where he owns an auto shop and lives with his wife and six children.
“He does not regularly attend WNBA games, he is a casual fan, and he is not involved in any of these or prior incidents,” D’Emilia said. “Mr. Burgess intends to vigorously fight these embellished and exaggerated charges. There seems to be video evidence that no one was actually struck by the thrown object, rendering any of the included assault charges unsustainable.”
D’Emilia also said prosecutors have “indicated a desire to speak to the defense, particularly in regards to others’ involvement in this fast-spreading phenomenon occurring at WNBA venues.”
Burgess is due back in court on Dec. 15. He is at least the third person arrested this month for allegedly throwing sex toys during WNBA games.
The first such incident happened during a game between the Golden State Valkyries and Atlanta Dream. Police in Crawford County, Ga., arrested Delbert Carver, 23, and charged him with disorderly conduct, public indecency/indecent exposure and criminal trespass, according to court records.
An 18-year-old man named Kaden Lopez was arrested at a Phoenix Mercury game the following week after police said he threw a sex toy that hit a man and his 9-year-old niece. He’s accused of assault, disorderly conduct and publicly displaying explicit sexual material.
The Athletic reported earlier this month that the incidents appear tied to a cryptocurrency group using them to generate memes for publicity and potential monetary gain.
WNBA officials and players have denounced the pranks as dangerous and disrespectful. The league has said anyone who throws objects onto the court will face a minimum one-year ban from all WNBA games.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)
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Dancing With the Stars Pros Not Returning for Season 34

While Lindsay Arnold will be cheering on sister Rylee Arnold, she won’t be competing on Dancing With the Stars herself.
“The answer is no,” she shared in an Aug. 29 TikTok video. “I will not be doing Dancing With the Stars this next season.”
Ultimately, the Mirrorball champion, who last vied for the trophy on season 30, noted it’s the right move for her and her family, who include daughters Sage and June with husband Sam Cusick.
“I just know that I’m exactly where I need to be,” she added, “and where I should be.”
But if Lindsay ever did want to return, she’d have to be the one to ask.
“Since the season that I stepped away from the show, never once have the producers been like, ‘Oh please come back’ or asked me to come back,” the dancer, who joined DWTS in 2013 as a pro and has also performed as a troupe member, continued. “If I wanted to come back at this point I would definitely need to express that desire to the producers of the show. And then, it still wouldn’t even be a guarantee.”
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Russia says it will not discuss foreign troops in Ukraine in ‘any format’ | Politics News

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman says deployment of a post-conflict security force would be ‘fundamentally unacceptable’.
Published On 4 Sep 2025
Russia has flatly rejected the prospect of any talks that consider the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday that Moscow would not entertain discussion of an international post-conflict security force “in any format”.
“Russia is not going to discuss the fundamentally unacceptable and security-undermining foreign intervention in Ukraine in any form, in any format,” Zakharova told reporters on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Zakharova said that European leaders, who are working on plans for a multinational force in the event of an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, should take note that the “next time they aim to discuss this topic, they should have a pointer in the form of Russia’s position”.
“Judging by Ukraine’s losses, the European Commission has simply outdone itself,” she said.
Zakharova made her comments after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told The Financial Times earlier this week that the European Union had “pretty precise plans” for deploying a multinational force to Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders are set to meet in Paris on Thursday to firm up details of post-conflict security guarantees for Kyiv.
On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said the details of the security guarantees for Ukraine had been worked out but remained “extremely confidential”.
“We are ready, we the Europeans, to offer the security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukrainians the day that a peace [accord] is signed,” Macron said.
Despite United States President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring a swift end to the conflict, Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on the terms of any potential peace agreement.
Russia has said that any deal with Ukraine would need to include land in four regions it has annexed since 2022, while Kyiv has ruled out ceding any territory.
Trump is scheduled to speak with Zelenskyy by phone on Thursday, and has said he intends to speak to Putin in the coming days.
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Louisiana prison chosen for immigration detainees due to its notoriety, says Noem | US immigration

The Trump administration purposefully chose a notorious Louisiana prison to hold immigration detainees as a way to encourage people in the US illegally to self-deport, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday.
A complex inside the Louisiana state penitentiary, an immense rural prison better known as Angola, will be used to detain those whom Noem described as the “worst of the worst” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainees. Noem was speaking to reporters as she stood on the grounds of the facility near a new sign reading, “Louisiana Lockup.”
“This facility will hold the most dangerous of criminals,” Noem said, adding it had “absolutely” been chosen for its reputation.
Officials said 51 detainees were already being housed at Angola. But Louisiana governor Jeff Landry said he expects the building to be filled to capacity, expecting over 400 people to come in ensuing months, as president Donald Trump continues his large-scale attempt to remove millions of people suspected of entering the country illegally.
The dirt road to the new Ice facility meanders past lofty oak trees, green fields and other buildings – including a white church and a structure with a sign that says, “Angola Shake Down Team”.
The facility is surrounded by a fence with five rows of stacked barbed wire. Overlooking the outdoor area is a tower, where a guard paced back and forth.
At the prison entrance a sign reads: “You are entering the land of new beginnings.”
The Associated Press joined officials for a brief tour of the facility, viewing some of the cells where detainees would be held. The cells, built of three cinder block walls and steel bars on the front, were single occupancy – one bed, toilet and sink in each.
Outside were confined enclosures of chain-link fencing, tall enough for multiple people to stand in.
“If you don’t think that they belong in somewhere like this,” Landry said of the detainees during Wednesday’s news conference, “you’ve got a problem.”
The building holding Ice detainees is not new, but rather refurbished after sitting vacant for years. The rest of Angola, which is made up of many buildings, has remained active. Many of Angola’s 6,300 inmates still work the fields, picking long rows of vegetables by hand as armed guards patrol on horseback.
In addition, the prison is home to more than 50 death row inmates. The most recent execution was in March, using nitrogen gas to deprive the inmate of oxygen, causing death. The state’s electric chair, nicknamed “Gruesome Gertie”, is still on display in the prison’s museum.
The notoriety of the 18,000-acre (7,300-hectare) prison stretches back well over a century. Described in the 1960s and 1970s as “the bloodiest prison in America,” it has seen violence, mass riots, escapes, brutality, inhumane conditions and executions.
The Trump administration has crafted its immigration messaging to reinforce a tough-on-crime image and create a sense of fear among people in the US illegally, most pointedly with the detention center dubbed Alligator Alcatraz that it built in the Florida Everglades.
The Everglades facility may soon be completely empty after a judge upheld her decision ordering operations there to wind down indefinitely.
Racing to expand the infrastructure necessary for increasing deportations, the federal government and state allies have announced a series of new immigration detention facilities, including the “Speedway Slammer” in Indiana and the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
The approximate 400 people the Angola immigration facility will be able to hold is just a tiny percentage of the more than 100,000 people that Ice seeks to detain under a $45bn expansion for immigration detention centers that Trump signed into law in July.
The prison traces its history back to a series of wealthy slave traders and cotton planters who built an operation known as Angola Plantation. An 1850s news report said it had 700 slaves, who historians say were forced to work from dawn to dark in Louisiana’s brutal summer heat.
The plantation became the state prison after the Civil War, with a former Confederate officer awarded a lease that gave him control over the property and its convicts.
“The majority of black inmates were subleased to land owners to replace slaves while others continued levee, railroad, and road construction,” the museum’s website says. White inmates at the time worked as clerks or craftsmen.
Inmate leasing ended in the late 1800s amid a public outcry, and the state took direct control of the prison in 1901.
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