Why is a new search for Madeleine McCann occuring?
There is a new search for Madeleine McCann, a British toddler who became one of the most famous unsolved missing person cases in the world when she disappeared from a Portugal resort in 2007. Former British detective Graham Hill, who investigated her disappearance, joins "Elizabeth Vargas Reports" to discuss. #Missing #Portugal #MadeleineMcCann
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King Charles, Prince Harry at point of 'no turning back' as monarch refuses reconciliation: expert
As King Charles prepares to put on a united front with his family at this year's Trooping the Colour, the monarch and estranged son Prince Harry are nowhere near ending their rift. "There is no turning back," British royals expert Hilary Fordwich claimed to Fox News Digital. "King Charles remains tender towards his son but can't risk communication," she shared. "Prince William now has absolutely no interest in mending fences. Those close to the king say he [shouldn't] make peace with Harry in a way that would burden Prince William's future reign. The animosity is so deep that William has shut the door on Harry. Charles is not willing to go against his heir's wishes." King Charles, Prince Harry's Painful Feud 'Damaging' Monarch's Reign As Gutted Son Remains Furious: Expert "Everything comes down to trust and the lack of it," Fordwich added. Fordwich's comments came shortly after insiders told People magazine that the monarch, who is battling an undisclosed form of cancer, is hesitant to reconnect with his son. Many royal observers believe it's the monarch who should take the first step in igniting a royal reconciliation. Read On The Fox News App "The underlying issue is trust," royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith told the outlet. "The king and William don't trust Harry and Meghan with any kind of confidential conversation." Insiders told the outlet that the king, 76, isn't surrounded by palace aides urging him to reconcile with his son. Meanwhile, William is said to have "no interest" in extending an olive branch. "There is not a good angel in [the king's] ear to say, 'Be a good dad and make the first move,'" royal author Valentine Low told the outlet. Fox News Digital reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. WATCH: PRINCE HARRY LOOKING TO RECONCILE WITH KING CHARLES, ROYAL FAMILY Fordwich claimed that Harry has crossed such a deep line in Charles's eyes that it's been difficult for the king to forgive his son. Sources close to Harry previously claimed to People magazine that Charles won't respond to his letters or phone calls. "It's Harry's criticisms of Queen Camilla [in his memoir, 'Spare'], as well as his broader attacks on the family and institution, which have seriously crossed a line for the king and those closest to him," Fordwich claimed. "The king is now so puzzled by Harry's constant revelations. It's now beyond sensitive to discuss, so he avoids all interaction regarding the subject. He is so kind but overwhelmed and has quite enough on his plate to deal with, without all this from his son." Harry's troubled relationship with his family and the U.K. establishment has played out in public for years – in books, interviews, TV programs and the courts. Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, stepped back as senior royals in 2020, citing the unbearable intrusions of the British press and a lack of support from the palace. That same year, they moved to California. Since the couple's royal exit, they have aired their grievances and made blistering allegations against the royal family. Harry's explosive 2023 memoir, "Spare," was stuffed with private details and embarrassing revelations. Click Here To Sign Up For The Entertainment Newsletter Harry's rift with his family burst into the open once more with a raw interview he gave to the BBC in May after losing a court case over his security. In a long and at times emotional conversation, Harry said he wanted reconciliation. He admitted that his father, who is battling an undisclosed form of cancer, won't speak to him. "Harry's ill-timed recent interview on the BBC highlighted the lack of trust between them publicly," royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told Fox News Digital. "He seemed to believe his father could and should solve the issue of security, which he insists he and his family should have." "The rift, sadly, seems likely to remain toxic as there is no mutual trust between them," said Fitzwilliams. "Hopefully, it will not worsen as the Sussexes could give further interviews or possibly write more about the feud, something that is invariably remunerative for them." Low told People magazine that despite Harry's call for peace on the BBC, his comments were seen as another blow to the royals. During the interview, Harry, who has met his father only once, briefly, since his diagnosis early last year, said, "I don't know how much longer my father has." "It wasn't meant to be an attack, but it would be seen as one," said Low. "It makes Charles reaching out even harder." Royal expert Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital that the royals take great pride in protecting their public image. They've maintained the late Queen Elizabeth II's motto of keep calm and carry on. Like What You're Reading? Click Here For More Entertainment News "The royals play a positive role to the cameras," he explained. "[But] behind the scenes, they allegedly are constantly bickering with each other… King Charles has a past reputation for not making advances on difficult decisions." A source recently claimed to Us Weekly that William was "absolutely appalled" by Harry's comments to the BBC about their father's health. The insider claimed that the 42-year-old feels like Harry stooped "so low." Royal experts previously told Fox News Digital that William is fiercely protective of Charles. The source also told the outlet that it's unlikely that the feuding brothers will reunite while their father is still alive. "The funeral of Charles would be the first time that courtiers would imagine [them reuniting]," said the insider. "I can't imagine William would invite Harry to his coronation." Despite infrequent updates from the palace about his health, Charles has returned to a full slate of public duties. During his sit-down with the BBC, Harry held out little hope of another meeting with his father. "The only time I come back to the U.K. is, sadly, for funerals or court cases," he said. Fitzwilliams said that Charles must address his ongoing rift with Harry, 40, as it remains a dark cloud over his reign. "We are now less than a fortnight away from Trooping the Colour, which celebrates the monarch's birthday," he said. "King Charles can surely congratulate himself on negotiating a year where he has worked so hard and achieved a great deal despite battling cancer." "The one area that remains problematic is the rift with the Sussexes. He has only seen Prince Harry once after his diagnosis and then fleetingly." Back in 2024, Christopher Andersen, author of "The King," claimed to Fox News Digital that the king is still unable to forgive his son for casting Camilla as the villain in "Spare." "I think people have to realize that the one thing that Charles finds unforgivable is criticism of Camilla," said Andersen at the time. "There's no criticism of Camilla," Andersen claimed. "And unfortunately for Harry… Harry said some pretty devastating things about her. He made it clear that he felt she was… the villain in the piece. I think that still bothers the king, and I don't know that it will be easy for him to [forgive]. I don't think they'll ever forgive Harry for that." WATCH: PRINCE HARRY'S JABS AT QUEEN CAMILLA UNFORGIVABLE FOR KING CHARLES: EXPERT "[He's] on his own," Andersen added, referring to the Duke of Sussex. In televised interviews to promote the book, Harry accused his stepmother, 77, of leaking private conversations to the media to burnish her own reputation. He accused members of the royal family of getting "into bed with the devil" to gain favorable tabloid coverage, singling out Camilla's efforts to rehabilitate her image with the public after her longtime affair with his father. "That made her dangerous because of the connections that she was forging within the British press," Harry told CBS ahead of his book launch. "There was open willingness on both sides to trade information. And with a family built on hierarchy, and with her on the way to being queen consort, there was going to be people or bodies left in the street." The Duke and Duchess of Sussex reside in the wealthy coastal city of Montecito with their two young article source: King Charles, Prince Harry at point of 'no turning back' as monarch refuses reconciliation: expert
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Trump Appoints 22-Year-Old Ex-Gardener and Grocery Store Assistant to Lead U.S. Terror Prevention
The inexperienced 22-year-old reportedly tasked by Donald Trump with tackling U.S. extremism was working as a neighborhood gardener just five years ago and in a grocery store as recently as August 2023, the Daily Beast can reveal. Thomas Fugate, who graduated from the University of Texas at San Antonio just 12 months ago, is currently heading up the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the DHS, as first reported by ProPublica Tuesday. The center, also known as CP3, plays a vital role supporting nationwide efforts to combat terrorism and hate-fueled violence. But according to the youngster's LinkedIn page, Fugate has almost no experience in this field—and in 2020 was working as a self-employed 'Landscape Business Owner.' There isn't much else on his resumé to suggest Fugate has the requisite skills to weed out terrorists. Prior to his work as a gardener—while studying for a degree in politics and law—Fugate worked at an H-E-B supermarket in Austin, Texas, as a 'Cross Functional Team Member.' According to his LinkedIn, he would 'perform various activities around every department of the store, fulfilling key duties contributing to store operations.' Since leaving college, Fugate has had a meteoric rise in the political world, having served as an 'advance team member' on President Donald Trump's 2024 campaign, according to his LinkedIn page. An avowed Republican, he also interned at the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, and for Texas Representatives Terry Wilson and Steve Allison. Fugate was reportedly hired as a 'special assistant' in an immigration office at the DHS in February, according to ProPublica. He then took over CP3 after its previous director quit. Fugate did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast's request for comment. 'Tom Fugate has performed well in his current role as a Confidential Assistant in our Immigration & Border Security suboffice,' a senior DHS official told The Daily Beast. 'Due to his success, he has been temporarily given additional leadership responsibilities in the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships office (CP3). This is a credit to his work ethic and success on the job.' Fugate set up a political Instagram account last year, where his profile contains the motto, 'Men used to do great things. I believe they still can.' He has posted a number of photos from the campaign trail and his time in Washington, D.C. He also posted a video that showed him with a host of lesser lights in the Republican party, including the disgraced former congressman Madison Cawthorn, Kennedy Center President Ric Grenell, and MAGA personality Riley Gaines. He is also pictured with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. An older account in the name of Trey Fugate on X suggests that he was a fan of LEGO and Star Wars. He used the social media account to call on Texas politicians 'to protect the international affairs budget!' and 'Help the global poor, save lives.' That was just two years before he launched his new MAGA personality with the thomas4texas Instagram account, saying: 'Legend has it that Thomas Fugate didn't start the fire 🔥, but that is always been burning since the world's been turning 🤔. Welcome all to my new account for public service, community involvement, and politics 🇺🇸. Recently things have got to the point where I felt like my main account has become too focused on politics, so I wanted to switch things up!' The plethora of selfies and portraits plastered across his social media accounts suggest that the wryly arched eyebrow Fugate chose for his LinkedIn profile—a photograph taken in front of the seal of the Department of Homeland Security—was very much a knowing choice from a young man who seems to think he is destined for the top.
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Hopes of closure fade as police wrap up Madeleine McCann search
From the moment I arrived in Praia da Luz on Monday the word on everyone's lips was "closure". All the long-term residents of the sleepy Atlantic resort told me closure was what they were hoping for. From the English woman who lived at the time above the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, to the former neighbour of the main suspect in the case. They all said: "We hope her family get closure". Of course, any chance of a really positive outcome disappeared years ago. Closure now would mean either finding Madeleine McCann's body, or finding her living with another family, unable to remember her parents or her younger twin siblings. But, frustrated as residents are when the world's media return to Praia da Luz - year after year at the same time that purple flowers appear on the jacaranda trees - they do understand the unbearable pain that Kate and Gerry McCann must feel. How that shock of realisation that Madeleine was not in her bed turned into minutes, then hours, and then days of panic. Then tortuous, unending months and years of uncertainty. For 13 years there was no single theory as to what happened to Madeleine McCann. Did she wake up in the middle of an opportunistic burglary and have to be silenced? Was she abducted on behalf of a couple desperate for a child of their own? Had her own parents covered up her accidental death? (A theory given sufficient weight by Portuguese prosecutors that for a while Kate and Gerry McCann were officially under suspicion.) The initial Portuguese investigation failed to preserve the scene adequately, so the opportunity to gather forensic evidence from Madeline McCann's room at the Ocean Club was lost. Long-term residents remember joining in uncoordinated and ad-hoc searches of the town. The Metropolitan Police investigation that began in 2011 built to a peak in 2014, with substantial searches near Praia da Luz - but they did not appear to have any identifiable suspects. They had 60 people of interest, 38 of whom they were investigating. Portuguese prosecutors had allowed them to search only one of three sites they had asked for access to. Everything changed in June 2020 when, out of the blue, the head prosecutor in Braunschweig in Germany, Hans Christian Wolters, said he had evidence that Madeleine McCann was dead. Working with the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the German equivalent of the FBI, he said he had identified a suspect, later identified as Christian Brückner. "The evidence is strong enough to say that the girl is dead, and to accuse a specific individual of murder," Hans Christian Wolter said. Brückner, who spent many years of his life in the Algarve, was a drifter, a petty criminal and a convicted sex offender. It all fitted neatly into place and it seemed that the mystery might finally be solved. Brückner's long list of previous convictions includes ones for sexually abusing children in 1994 and 2016. The Braunschweig prosecution team have never disclosed the extent of any evidence they have, but we do know their suspicions are partly based on a conversation an old acquaintance of Brückner's claims they had at a festival in 2008. Helge Busching says the topic of Madeleine McCann's disappearance came up, and Brückner said she "didn't scream". Mr Busching says it was clear to him what Brückner meant. Since 2019, Brückner has been in prison in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. But he is due for release in September, or in January if he does not pay an outstanding fine. Brückner told an RTL reporter earlier this year that he was looking forward to a "decent steak and a beer". The concern is that he will leave the country and head somewhere with no extradition treaty with Germany, though he appears to have no money. The Braunschweig prosecutors' confidence was dealt a severe blow last year when they put Brückner on trial for rape and unconnected attempted child abductions. Mr Busching gave evidence, but the court in Braunschweig acquitted Brückner and suddenly time was very short. Mr Wolters has made no secret of the fact that he wants more evidence to charge Brückner. That is why the BKA footed the bill for the search this week in ruined farm buildings on merciless, shadeless scrubland in the rising heat of an Algarve summer. The buildings are frequented at night by the kind of drifters and petty criminals that Brückner once was. Nearby residents told us they sometimes find looted suitcases among the ruins that have been stolen from holidaymakers. But this week's searches were not targeted on one specific building, so any intelligence they were based on was clearly quite vague. It all felt a bit like a last desperate attempt to back Mr Busching's statements with concrete, physical evidence. In some ways this search was similar to those I have seen on previous trips. The use of shovels in the heat, digging up stone-hard ground. But the German team were mostly targeting old farm buildings. This meant they needed a large, yellow mechanical digger to break up the concrete floors and sift through the resulting rubble. They also made extensive use of a ground-penetrating radar, slowly pushing the device across the buildings' floors, looking for anomalies and cavities underneath. The Portuguese fire brigade helped on the first day, pumping out an old well so it could be safely searched. The officers were looking for traces of Madeleine McCann, or some of her clothing. Every time I travel to Portugal for a new search it always begins optimistically. Could police find something this time? But on every occasion it quickly becomes apparent the searches are not tightly targeted. The police work always clearly based on quite vague intelligence - or just an investigator's hunch. Luis Neves, the National Director of the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI, said at the end of the week that, "nothing is in vain, not least because doors are being closed". As we watched the German detectives packing away it felt like the spring of hope of a resolution that had bubbled up in June 2020 was evaporating in the thankless heat. Diggers brought in to help latest Madeleine McCann search in Portugal Madeleine McCann search goes on but is it 18 years too late? Madeleine McCann disappearance: A timeline
