The International Monetary Fund is discussing proposed electricity tariff revisions with Pakistan authorities, the fund said in a statement to Reuters on Saturday, adding that the burden of the revisions should not fall on middle‑ or lower‑income households.
“The ongoing discussions with the authorities will assess whether the proposed tariff revisions are consistent with these commitments and evaluate their potential impact on macroeconomic stability, including inflation,” it said in its statement.
The federal government announced a proposed tariff overhaul that analysts said would lift inflation while easing pressure on industry, as it seeks to meet conditions under its $7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF) ahead of another review of the programme.
The EFF is a longer‑term IMF loan programme designed to help countries address deep‑seated economic weaknesses and medium‑term balance‑of‑payments problems.
Electricity carries significant weight in the consumer price index, making tariff adjustments highly sensitive at a time when inflation, though sharply lower than its near-40% peak in 2023, remains a key political and economic pressure point.
The power sector has long been weighed down by circular debt — a chain of unpaid bills and subsidies that accumulates across generation companies, distributors, and the government — prompting repeated tariff increases under IMF-backed reforms since 2023.
The accumulation of power sector circular debt has been contained within programme targets, supported by improved performance on recoveries and loss prevention, the Fund added.
Hard on households, helpful to industries
The plan, ending a system where businesses subsidised household energy bills, could trigger a 1.1 percentage point jump in inflation over 12 months, analysts at Optimus Capital Management said.
Analysts say the plan, which only needs formal approval to come into effect, will cause industrial prices to fall between 13% and 15% and remove 102 billion ($365 million) rupees in subsidies.
That means middle-class households will have to pay roughly 50% more for power, the analysts estimated.
Inflation backdrop
The country endured one of Asia’s highest inflation spikes in 2023, nearing 40%, driven by a weakening rupee, rising fuel costs and price hikes linked to IMF-backed reforms.
Although inflation has since slowed to 5.8%, analysts warn the changes to power prices could add inflationary pressure.
The power ministry and the IMF did not respond to a request for comment.
Ahtasam Ahmad, Energy Finance Program Lead at consultancy Renewables First, said that because purchasing power for the average household had significantly declined, the change “adds to the compounding effect of inflation which we have experienced post-2022.”
The pricing overhaul underscores tensions within Pakistan’s IMF programme, which has mandated steep utility price hikes since 2023 to support struggling state power firms.
Industrial groups say high prices erode export competitiveness in textiles and manufacturing.
Consumers using between 100 and 300 units of power monthly – representing a majority of paying residential users – will face rate increases of up to 76% due to new fixed charges under the pricing overhaul, according to Arzachel, a Karachi-based energy consultancy.
The lowest-income households using 1-100 units monthly will see fixed charges jump to Rs400 from zero, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (NEPRA) said on Monday.
Solar pricing in question
The regulator has also cut the rate paid to rooftop solar users exporting power to the grid, replacing a system that previously valued supplied and purchased electricity equally.
A record surge in solar installations has cut emissions and lowered bills for some households, but squeezed revenues at debt-laden utilities as demand for grid power declines.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday ordered a review of NEPRA’s solar changes, directing officials to prevent a transfer of costs from 466,000 solar users to 37.6 million grid consumers.
“Excessively high fixed charges risk driving consumers toward full grid defection, undermining long-term system stability,” Arzachel said in a note on Tuesday.
The third government shutdown in under half a year has officially begun just after midnight on Saturday after Democrats and Republicans spent recent weeks battling over President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Just one area of government has been left without federal funding as of midnight — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Congress has completed roughly 97% of its yearly government spending responsibilities, but a deal on DHS has proved elusive after Democrats walked away from an initial bipartisan plan released last month.
Now DHS, the third-largest Cabinet agency with nearly 272,000 employees, will see key areas of operation limited or paused altogether. Some 90% of DHS workers will continue on the job during the funding lapse, many without pay, according to the department’s Sept. 2025 government shutdown plan.
Established in 2003 after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, DHS has jurisdiction over a wide array of agencies and offices. That includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service, among others.
The U.S. Capitol is pictured in Washington, D.C., Sept. 30, 2025. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
Among those working without pay will be some 64,000 TSA agents and 56,000 active-duty, reserve, and civilian Coast Guard personnel. Those people and others are expected to receive back pay when the shutdown is over.
But as of Friday afternoon, it does not appear the two parties are any closer to an agreement despite the Trump White House sending a potential compromise offer on Wednesday night.
“It’s our expectation that we will respond to the unserious offer that Republicans have made that clearly omits things that need to happen,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said during a press conference.
“There are a variety of different areas where clearly the administration has fallen short of doing things that make things better for the American people. Until that happens, unfortunately, it appears that Donald Trump and the Republicans have decided to shut down other parts of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Democrats blew up bipartisan negotiations over DHS funding last month after federal law enforcement agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during anti-ICE demonstrations there.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill on Nov. 3, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)
They are now demanding significant reforms to rein in ICE and CBP, many of which Republicans in Congress have long panned as non-starters, including banning ICE agents from wearing masks and requiring them to obtain judicial warrants before pursuing suspected illegal immigrants.
What happens next will be up to Senate Democrats and the White House, who are expected to continue negotiating through the weekend and into next week if need be.
Both sides have traded proposals and legislative text on a compromise DHS funding bill, but Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and his caucus remained steadfast in their position that the GOP’s offer didn’t go far enough.
Meanwhile, the majority of House and Senate lawmakers left Washington on Thursday and are not currently expected to return until Feb. 23.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that he would give lawmakers 24 hours’ notice to return to Washington, D.C., should there be a breakthrough, and remained optimistic that there was a path forward despite Democrats’ blockade.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., turns to an aide during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington, June 3, 2025. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
“Every iteration of this gets a step closer, because I think the White House is giving more and more ground on some of these key issues,” Thune said. “But so far, they’re not getting any kind of response to Democrats, even allowing us to continue this, allowing [the] government to stay open.”
But Democrats have reiterated several times that they believe their demands are simple.
“Again, the only — the fundamental ask is that ICE abide by the same principles and policies of every other police force in the country, and if we can get there, then we can resolve the problem,” Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said.
Meanwhile, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., gave House lawmakers his blessing to leave Washington with a 48 hours’ notice to return pending Senate action, two sources told Fox News Digital.
Elizabeth Elkind is a politics reporter for Fox News Digital leading coverage of the House of Representatives. Previous digital bylines seen at Daily Mail and CBS News.
Follow on Twitter at @liz_elkind and send tips to elizabeth.elkind@fox.com
The U.S. military used Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence tool Claude during the operation that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, according to a report.
Claude was deployed through Anthropic’s partnership with data company Palantir Technologies, whose tools are widely used by the Defense Department and federal law enforcement, according to The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter.
“We cannot comment on whether Claude, or any other AI model, was used for any specific operation, classified or otherwise,” an Anthropic spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “Any use of Claude — whether in the private sector or across government — is required to comply with our Usage Policies, which govern how Claude can be deployed. We work closely with our partners to ensure compliance.”
Captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is escorted, as he heads towards the Daniel Patrick Manhattan United States Courthouse for an initial appearance to face U.S. federal charges including narco-terrorism, conspiracy, drug trafficking, money laundering and others in New York City, U.S., January 5, 2026. (Adam Gray/Reuters)
Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used for violence, weapons development, or surveillance.
A source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital that Anthropic has visibility into classified and unclassified usage and has confidence that all usage has been in line with Anthropic’s usage policy, as well as its partners’ own compliance policies.
Reached by Fox News Digital, the Department of War declined to comment.
The U.S. military reportedly used Anthropic’s AI tool Claude during the operation that captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.(Kurt “CyberGuy” Knutsson)
Anthropic was the first AI model developer to be used in classified operations by the Department of War, according to the Journal.
Anthropic has raised concerns about how Claude can be used by the Pentagon, prompting officials within the Trump administration to consider canceling its contract worth up to $200 million, which was awarded last summer, the paper reported.
The AI tools can be used for everything from summarizing documents to controlling autonomous drones, the outlet noted.
The Trump administration has prioritized AI development, and in December War Secretary Pete Hegseth said “the future of American warfare is here, and it’s spelled AI.”
Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence model Claude was reportedly used in a classified U.S. military operation targeting Nicolás Maduro.(Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
“As technologies advance, so do our adversaries,” he said. “But here at the War Department, we are not sitting idly by.”
OXFORD, Ohio — Brant Byers scored 21 points, Peter Suder had 20 and 23rd-ranked Miami University beat Ohio 90-74 on Friday night to remain the lone unbeaten team in Division I.
Eian Elmer added 15 points for the RedHawks (25-0, 11-0 Mid-American Conference), who tied the single-season school record for victories, which was set last season.
Jackson Paveletzke led Ohio (13-13, 7-6) with 22 points, and Javan Simmons scored 12. The Bobcats struggled on 3-pointers, making only 5-of-21, while the RedHawks were 9-of-18 from beyond the arc and 21-of-28 on free throws.
Byers, Suder and Almar Atlason had six rebounds apiece as the RedHawks had a 38-29 advantage on the boards.
Miami had a 43-35 lead at halftime before steadily pulling away. It opened the second half on a 7-2 run, including five points by Byers, who finished 13-of-16 from the foul line.
The RedHawks’ largest lead was 83-63 with four minutes remaining.
The game was close for the first 15 minutes. The RedHawks were up 30-26 before getting some breathing room thanks to an 11-4 run to extend their lead to 41-30 with 1:58 remaining in the first half.
Miami tied a school record for single-game home attendance with a sellout crowd of 10,640 at Millett Hall. It was the same crowd figure for the Jan. 31 game against Northern Illinois.
SAG-AFTRA calls for ban on AI creations featuring real movie stars
SAG-AFTRA has become the latest entity to condemn the AI productions featuring imagery of real actors and references to already existing movies.
Describing the eerily realistic creations as “blatant infringement”, the entertainment union called out ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok and innovator behind the viral AI model Seedance.
“SAG-AFTRA stands with the studios in condemning the blatant infringement enabled by ByteDance’s new AI video model Seedance 2.0,” the organisation’s official statement revealed.
“The infringement includes the unauthorized use of our members’ voices and likenesses. This is unacceptable and undercuts the ability of human talent to earn a livelihood. Seedance 2.0 disregards law, ethics, industry standards and basic principles of consent. Responsible AI development demands responsibility, and that is nonexistent here.”
Furthermore, SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin was also one of the stars whose likeness was exploited in the recent Seedance trend.
His character from the Lord of the Rings franchise, Samwise Gamgee, appeared in one of the AI videos circulating online.
The footage, which is no longer available due to a copyright strike, was shared on X (formerly called Twitter) with the description, “LOTR in 15 seconds”.
Meanwhile, the Seedance AI trend has been criticised by various players in the entertainment industry, including Disney.
According to Variety, the company sent a cease and desist letter to ByteDance general counsel John Rogovin on Friday, citing “willful, pervasive, and totally unacceptable” usage of the Disney-owned IP.
While the current discourse was initially kick started by the AI creation of an action sequence featuring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, shared on X and widely circulated shortly after, prompting further such videos and myriad responses.
MACCLESFIELD, England — Sam Heathcote is out on the field, handing out training bibs on a cold January morning. He’s no stranger to this: At 28 years old, he has been a footballer all his adult life, plying his trade in English soccer’s lower leagues. His proudest moment came a few weeks ago when he helped Macclesfield, a sixth-tier semiprofessional club, defy all odds in the FA Cup to knock out Premier League side Crystal Palace.
It was one of those magical days in football — an all-time Cinderella story — and it’s really hard to overestimate how unprecedented that result was. There were 117 places between Macclesfield and Palace in the English soccer pyramid when they met on Jan. 10, and Palace were the tournament’s defending champions. Never before during 154 years of the FA Cup — a competition, just like NCAA’s March Madness, known for its “David vs. Goliath” upsets — had a result delivered such a shock. Fans had streamed onto the field at the final whistle; players were paraded on shoulders. It was a scene that everyone at Macclesfield replayed in their heads again and again.
Those memories were fresh for Heathcote on this brisk morning, although it’s not the kind of training session you would expect. It’s on a concrete pitch at a grade school just outside of Manchester, and all the players in the session are 10 years old. Most of Macclesfield’s squad have second jobs: There is a property developer, a lawyer, a podcaster and a gym owner. Their captain, Paul Dawson, supplements his wages packing boxes for a friend’s candle company.
Heathcote, their 6-foot-2, no-nonsense center back, is a gym teacher, and on this particular morning, his day job is in session.
“Aubrey, everyone’s gone for red. You’ve gone for orange,” Heathcote says to one of the children.
“I like the color orange!” Aubrey, seemingly unaware of soccer’s strict two-color system, replies.
“Well, fair enough,” Heathcote says as Aubrey sticks resolutely to orange. Life comes at you fast as a semiprofessional footballer.
Macclesfield’s 15 minutes of fame is not over yet. The upset victory meant they won a place in the FA Cup fourth round and a date with Premier League side Brentford on Monday (Stream live on ESPN+). The question is whether they can do it all over again.
Brentford can learn a lot from Palace, whose manager, Oliver Glasner, said afterwards that his players “never showed up.” But what can they and other teams learn from Macclesfield?
LESSON 1: Find a purpose
If one person in the small town of Macclesfield were to teach a class on resilience, the football club’s 48-year-old owner, Robert Smethurst, would be a good place to start. He bought the club six years ago, just as it went out of business. English soccer’s pyramid can be a cruel system and Macclesfield had been on the losing end for years, tumbling down the league pyramid as unpaid tax bills and debts of £190,000 ($258,554 USD) piled up, causing players to go on strike.
Despite growing up 8 miles from the club’s stadium, Moss Rose, Smethurst had never been a fan of the team, nor had he ever been to see a game. He never realized the scale of the problem: Debt collectors had already taken pretty much anything of value. There was no kitchen equipment. Copper pipes were removed. There was a gap where an air-conditioning unit had been. The playing squad had left. Why did he do it?
The truth is, Smethurst doesn’t actually remember buying the club. Macclesfield was on its knees, but so was he. After selling his online car business for more than £10 million ($13.6 million) a couple of years prior, he felt he’d lost any sense of purpose.
“Being bored at 12 o’clock, what do you do? I opened a bottle of wine,” Smethurst tells ESPN. “For me, that then got worse. It went into addiction. I was drinking more and more and losing the person I was.”
It was a friend of Smethurst’s who had spotted Macclesfield, recently out of business, on a real estate website called Rightmove. Without much thought — and in a cloud of his alcoholism — he asked his solicitor to send a £500,000 ($680,267) offer.
“I can’t really remember it because I just thought it was fun for me,” Smethurst says, barely paying a second thought to it until he got a call days later to say the sale had gone through. That’s when reality hit.
“I was like, ‘What the hell have I bought?'” he says. “When I finally came round a little bit, came to have a look at it — I’d never even seen it — I realized that it had been ripped apart. The whole place was just s—.”
If the stadium was bad enough, the club’s wider predicament was even worse. After going out of business, a club has to be recreated, starting at the very foot of English soccer’s pyramid system. Forget the sixth-tier where they are now. Macclesfield Town were entered into the North West Counties Football League — the ninth and final tier — where attendances often rank in the low hundreds.
Smethurst’s drinking didn’t stop until a year later. “I put myself into recovery,” he says. He did the steps, learned more about why he drank and realized he had a purpose that he was leaving unfulfilled. Around the same time, he was diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
“I went into recovery and kind of came out there with a great mindset,” he says. “I was really fighting for my life, but also wanting to make a difference … Everything that I’ve done with the club was about: ‘How can I build something special after recovery? How can I change people’s lives?’
“I started on that journey. I spent about £4 million ($5.4 million) of my own money doing it all up, new pitches, new bars, a gym for the community, all that kind of stuff.”
Macclesfield earned three promotions in four seasons, winning three league titles along the way. The trophies are proudly on display inside the club bar. They did so, primarily, by being the biggest spenders in each of those divisions. Anyone you speak to in Macclesfield will readily cite the club’s facilities and Smethurst’s financial backing as the primary reason for going from the ninth tier to beating Crystal Palace.
Smethurst is the first to admit that the club’s relative financial might got them through the first three divisions. Now that they’ve found their level in the sixth tier, it is the town’s togetherness — and outside investment — that can take them further.
“People like the fans can come and talk to me and access and come and meet me in the office,” he says. “I’ve been out for a coffee with fans before. It’s a different thing. We’re all in this together. I’m accessible to everybody. If anybody wants to come and talk to me, they can. If they want to take my number, they can. If they’re worried about anything, they can call me.”
LESSON 2: You always have each other
John Rooney should really have been worrying about the tactics board. It was an hour before the FA Cup clash with Palace, and Rooney, brother of Manchester United legend Wayne Rooney, taking his first steps into football management at Macclesfield, was worried about something else entirely.
The team gathered in the home dressing room, but one player’s locker was left empty. It was for their 21-year-old striker Ethan McLeod, who died in a road traffic collision on Dec. 16 — just one week after Macclesfield got the dream draw to face Palace, and less than a month before the big game.
Rooney had spoken to McLeod’s parents the night before the Palace game. McLeod’s father had wished the team luck and said they would be in attendance. Now, as the team counted down the minutes to kickoff, Rooney was worried that passing on that message would add too much pressure.
“I was questioning myself, do we tell them or do we not?” Rooney tells ESPN.
Ultimately, he decided against it. The grief was still fresh. Rooney knew his players genuinely wanted to win it for Ethan, whose image looks over the pitch at Moss Rose and whose number was retired. That kind of message could wait until after the game.
The incident happened on a Tuesday night after a last-gasp 2-1 win over Bedford Town FC. McLeod, who had just started to get a run in the team, was an unused substitute.
“Something I’ll never forget that will live with me for a long, long time is the selflessness that he had,” striker Danny Elliott, Macclesfield’s top scorer, says. “He was a striker, I’m a striker. For most of the season, I think it’s fair to say that he was kind of second to me. That night against Bedford, he didn’t actually get on the pitch, but I scored a winning goal in the last minute. As a 21-year-old striker, I know that I would have probably been a bit disappointed to not get on the pitch, but he was the first person to come and celebrate with me. He was really happy for me.”
McLeod would typically have travelled back with the rest of the squad on the team bus, but on this occasion, it was easier for him to drive back to his hometown, Wolverhampton. He got in his car and drove ahead. The team bus left minutes later, but was soon held up in standstill traffic. When they passed the incident, they realized it was a major crash. They didn’t give it much more thought until Rooney, who returned home at 6 a.m. in part due to the traffic, got a call to say it was McLeod’s car in the fatal collision.
Rooney, who had now been awake for nearly 24 hours, decided his players should hear the news from him. He called them all, one by one.
“The players were breaking down on the phone, and after that, I’d pick the phone up, tell someone else and — and then someone else,” Rooney recalls.
“I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been for him,” Elliott said of his manager. “I have the utmost respect for him. That was actually his birthday as well, so I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”
The following night, the team met at their Moss Rose stadium in the club bar and sat for hours. “We sat in the room and cried together for a few hours,” Elliott says. “But also, the beautiful thing about football is that it continues.”
Macclesfield canceled their game the following weekend to, as Elliott put it, “grieve as a group.” They lost two of their next three games. The FA Cup third-round date would be the fourth.
LESSON 3: Ignore the odds
All Crystal Palace’s players had to do was look to their left to see the warning sign. It was written on the side tunnel, the last they would have seen before they stepped out onto the field for the FA Cup tie. It read, in capital letters: “DREAM. BELIEVE. ACHIEVE. AGAINST ALL ODDS.”
Maybe Palace players never paid much notice. The pitch had been freshly thawed from a snowstorm days earlier. Macclesfield captain Dawson, on top of his job at the candle company and youth coaching, made time to help club staff shovel snow off the pitch earlier that week for a league game — much to the ire of his manager, Rooney.
“I was on the shovel until the gaffer rang me,” Dawson says. “He wasn’t very happy. I told him that I was just sat on the tractor all day, which I hadn’t. I just lied.”
Dawson’s hard work had paid off, but it still would have been below the standards that Premier League teams are used to. Before the game, Dawson walked out onto the field and met his opposing captain, England international Marc Guéhi (who would sign for Manchester City later in January). Dawson later told British radio station TalkSport: “Franny [our assistant coach Francis Jeffers] turned around to Marc and he goes, ‘Pitch all right for you?’ He replied, ‘No, not a bit of me this.’ From that moment on I thought, ‘You know what? There’s something here for us.'”
As it turned out, it was Dawson who scored the game’s opening goal. He had been bleeding from his head just eight minutes into the tie from a clash with Palace defender Jaydee Canvot, meaning he donned a bandage around his forehead for the rest of the game. When Macclesfield were awarded a free kick 30 yards from Palace’s goal, Heathcote helped him rearrange the dressing before the ball was floated into the box, which Dawson duly headed home.
“I have to be honest, I’ve watched it several times. I don’t actually remember it happening,” Dawson says. “When a big moment like that happens, it just erases from your memory. I don’t really remember much of the game until I’ve watched it back.”
Scenes in the dressing room 🍾
Macclesfield FC players and staff sing Adele’s Someone Like You after their FA Cup victory over Crystal Palace 🎶 pic.twitter.com/by44M82ZFx
What happened next only added to the Cinderella story. Macclesfield went in at halftime with their highly unlikely 1-0 lead, and manager Rooney told his team to calm down: If they just didn’t concede in the second half, then they would pull off the upset. You can imagine the shock when forward Isaac Buckley-Ricketts made it 2-0 in the 61st minute, prodding the ball past the Palace goalkeeper.
There was still time for Palace to spoil the party. Macclesfield’s two-goal lead was cut in half after a free kick from Palace winger Yéremy Pino, whose £26 million ($35 million) transfer fee last summer is 26 times larger than Macclesfield’s entire player expenditure. When that proved too little, too late, the customary fan pitch invasion followed. Soon, Dawson was hoisted onto two fans’ shoulders.
“The next minute I was in the air. My calf had a cramp!” he says. “I was trying to stretch it, but everyone kept patting me and singing.”
Dawson reunited with his teammates in the changing room, McLeod’s spot still vacant. They linked arms and sang Adele’s “Someone Like You.” McLeod’s parents came to join the celebrations, and Rooney passed on the message he had agonized about before the game.
“I will always remember that they were part of this day with us,” Rooney says. “To have his family around to be part of that day with us meant a lot to me.”
Opta, the leading data provider in world soccer, have a live global power ranking of 13,000 teams across world football. Palace were 19th prior to that FA Cup clash; Macclesfield were 6,879th — around the same level as Mons Calpe, who are third in the Gibraltar Premier League, and similar to Ghanaian minnows WaleWale Catholic Stars FC.
Next up in their FA Cup odyssey is Brentford, another Premier League side who, at the time of writing, are ranked 13th in Opta’s system. Macclesfield were the first team to beat a club five leagues above them. Lightning would have to strike twice for it to happen again.
But who would bet against it?
“I’m a football fan. My whole life has been football, so the Premier League for me is what I always watch,” Rooney says. “We know lots about them … Listen, we’re not going to be naïve. We’ll treat them like any other game, like we did with Crystal Palace.
“As we do with teams in our own league, we treat every team with respect, and I’m sure they’ll treat us with that respect as well.”
Megan Thee Stallion on new romance with Klay Thompson: ‘I’m comfy’
Megan Thee Stallion finally broke the silence on her romance with Klay Thompson.
In a new interview with People magazine on Friday, the 30-year-old rapper said that she is “overly comfortable” in her relationship with an NBA star.
“Well, I don’t never want to tell [anybody] to just jump in a relationship just because everybody else got one, and I’m not going to tell you to just jump in a relationship because you have to,” said Megan. “I didn’t even know I was going to be in my relationship, to be honest.”
The Grammy winner singer further said, “I think that because finally I started being in a better mind space about myself and my life, and I had already been doing a lot of work to heal me.”
“I had been going to therapy, I had a bunch of activities that I started doing for myself, maybe God just opened up that space for me to have somebody that loved me right,” continued Megan.
The Sweetest Pie hitmaker added that Klay entered her life at the perfect time.
“This is one of the first times that I’ve ever been just overly comfortable,” said Megan. “I’m comfy, babe!”
Elsewhere in the interview, the songstress also advised her fans to let love come to them rather than chase it.
“I think people got to stop trying to be in love and trying to chase love,” said Megan. “They just got to let it come to them. When it’s meant for you, it’s going to happen. God does not give you nothing that is not meant for you.”
For those unversed, Megan and Klay began dating in July 2025.
A federal agent was injured after being attacked during an anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protest in Downtown Los Angeles on Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed.
“LAFD responding to a Federal Agent who was injured during the incident,” the LAPD wrote on X before 1 p.m.
In several other posts updating the progress of the marching protesters, the department said the demonstrators had blocked traffic, committed acts of vandalism, including at the Federal Building, and had thrown items at police.
The department later wrote that the “Suspects who attacked the Federal Agents have blended into the March.”
A federal agent was injured after being attacked during an anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protest in Downtown Los Angeles on Friday, the Los Angeles Police Department confirmed.(KTTV)
The protest was part of a student walkout, according to local outlets.
The students could be seen in aerial video stalling traffic as they walked down a street holding up American, Mexican and other flags.
The protesters also waved signs that said things like “Honk if you hate Nazis” and “F—k Trump,” according to the California Post.
Anti-ICE protesters march during a rally in Downtown Los Angeles on Friday, February 13, 2026.(KTTV)
At least four suspects were detained for vandalizing property in the area during that protest and were expected to be charged with felony vandalism, according to the LAPD.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the LAPD for comment.
North Carolina star Caleb Wilson, a projected top-five pick in the 2026 NBA draft, is out with no timetable for return after he suffered a fractured left hand in the 75-66 loss at Miami on Tuesday, the school announced.
“X-rays taken during the [Miami] game were negative, and he returned to play later in the second half vs. the Hurricanes, but additional imaging done in Chapel Hill revealed the fracture,” the school’s announcement Thursday said. “The evaluation process is ongoing to determine the timetable for Wilson’s return.”
In a social media post Thursday night attached to North Carolina’s injury announcement, Wilson wrote “I will be back Tarheel Nation.” He also responded to a fan on X who asked about his timetable for a return by saying “it’s not over.”
In Tuesday’s game, the 6-foot-10 standout finished with a season-low 12 points in 26 minutes. The freshman forward is averaging 19.8 points, 9.4 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and 1.5 steals this season. He is on pace to earn All-American honors and compete for multiple national awards.
In ESPN’s Big Board of the top 100 NBA prospects entering the draft, Wilson is fourth.
Wilson suffered the hand injury days after he scored 23 points in UNC’s 71-68 win over archrival Duke on Saturday, when Tar Heels fans stormed the floor after the game, prompting accusations from Jon Scheyer that some of his coaches had been “punched” in the scrum. It was North Carolina’s first win over Duke since the 2023-24 season.
This season, North Carolina’s entire system revolves around Wilson, a talented player who has a 28.5 usage rate (97th in the country). With Wilson, the Tar Heels are second in offensive efficiency in the ACC behind Duke.
Wilson also set a UNC record this season by scoring in double figures in all 24 of his games thus far.
