New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were filmed laughing together during Friday’s 25th-anniversary 9/11 memorial service as relatives read the names of those killed in the attacks.

The two Democrats appeared to break into laughter during the solemn Ground Zero ceremony in lower Manhattan, while mourners around them remained silent.

Seconds before the camera turned to Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez, a victim’s relative was shown weeping at the memorial as loved ones on stage continued reading the names of the dead.

The footage rapidly spread on social media, where critics said the pair’s reaction was “a slap in the face” to 9/11 victims and their families.

The controversy follows calls from 9/11 victims’ groups for Mamdani not to attend the commemoration, requests the mayor declined.

Mamdani also drew sharp criticism this week for giving a ceremonial pen from a 9/11 remembrance event to an attorney who previously represented a convicted al-Qaeda member and whose brother was among the attack hijackers.

A petition organized by relatives of 9/11 victims calling on the mayor to skip the annual ceremony collected more than 100,000 signatures. Former New York Gov. George Pataki also urged Mamdani to stay away.

Asked this week about the demands that he avoid the event, Mamdani said he would attend and that he wanted “the focus to be on the families whose loved ones were stolen from them 25 years ago in the horrific act of terror of September 11th.”

At the event at Ground Zero on Friday, Mamdani was also seen greeting former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani in an awkward exchange. 

The pair got into a public spat after Giuliani also joined the calls for Mamdani to avoid this week’s 9/11 ceremonies.

Giuliani has said the Muslim mayor’s presence ‘offends’ him, and claimed Mamdani is ‘disturbing the people who are the most important people at that celebration.’

‘He stands in direct support of the movement that killed their children,’ he told Newsmax last week.

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As a result, Mamdani released hundreds of thousands of previously unseen records that allegedly confirmed Giuliani’s administration knew about the toxic dangers of the city’s air quality following the September 11 attacks.

New York City councilwoman Vickie Paladino also joined calls for Mamdani to avoid the event, as she said his presence would sent a ‘message to Osama bin Laden that, look, “We conquered New York.”‘

Paladino cited Mamdani’s decision to allow former attorney for an al-Qaeda operative, Ramzi Kassem, to take part in a recent 9/11-related signing ceremony, and specifically handing him a pen used to sign an executive order recognizing the terror attack.

‘I am sick to death of all of this,’ Paladino complained to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. ‘We need to be able to see through this total, absolute farce that they’re trying to pawn off on New Yorkers and across the country.’

Ahead of the event, the Port Authority Retired Police Association sent an open letter to Mamdani urging him to avoid Friday’s event, saying his attendance would inflict ‘deep pain’ on victims’ families.

John McDevitt, president of the retired first responders’ association, wrote in the letter to the mayor: ‘For us, September 11 is not a political occasion, a photo opportunity, or a platform for public officials.

‘It is a solemn day of remembrance for those who were murdered, those who responded, those who survived, and the families who have carried these losses for twenty-five years.’

The police union said officers have ‘profound concerns’ over Mamdani’s public statements and positions, which they say ‘risk shifting attention away from the people whose lives, courage, and sacrifice the ceremony exists to honor.’

‘This is our day to remember,’ he wrote. ‘Please allow us to remember in peace.’ 

The Daily Mail has contacted Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez’s representatives for comment.  

Dave Regan, a prominent union leader and architect of California’s proposed billionaire tax, has been accused of threatening women and attempting to “extort” backing for the controversial proposal.

Regan, the president of SEIU United Health Workers West, is being investigated over allegations that he sought to pressure an SEIU state council into endorsing the measure, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The accusations include claims that Regan threatened and intimidated women working for the council and physically assaulted a former SEIU executive.

MORE STORY: 9/11 Widow Terry Strada Says US Shielded Saudi Arabia

According to the Los Angeles Times, Regan has denied the allegations.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Terry Strada, who lost her husband in the World Trade Center attack on Sept. 11, 2001, said at Friday’s 25th anniversary observance at Ground Zero that Saudi Arabia has yet to be held accountable for its alleged role in the terrorist attacks.

Strada also accused the U.S. government of shielding Saudi Arabia, arguing that successive administrations have let down families of the victims for a quarter-century.

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fomented a rancid culture of anti-American terrorism around the globe, and then sent its agents to support the radical Islamist hijackers so they could attack you and all of our loved ones,” said Strada, national chair of 9/11 Families United.

“But for 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she added.

Her remarks also directly addressed Vice President JD Vance, the highest-ranking Trump administration official present at the Lower Manhattan ceremony.

President Donald Trump delivered remarks separately at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.

“It has been one betrayal after another. President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this,” Strada said. “Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back. Stand with the families. Stand with the survivors. Stand with Americans.”

Strada’s husband, Tom Strada, was working on the 104th floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building, she told WPTV in an interview marking the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

Tom Strada, 41, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. Just days before the attacks, he and Terry had returned home from the hospital with their third child. After the plane hit the tower, he called his wife and told her he was making his way toward the stairwell.

Since her husband’s death, along with the deaths of nearly 3,000 others at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and aboard the hijacked planes, Strada has become a leading advocate for accountability and transparency surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.

Strada is among thousands of Sept. 11 family members and survivors who sued Saudi Arabia, alleging the kingdom provided material support to the al Qaeda hijackers. Saudi Arabia has repeatedly denied the allegations.

During her remarks Friday, Strada reminded the crowd that a federal judge ruled last August there was “reasonable evidence” that two Saudi government employees supported two future al-Qaeda hijackers who came to the United States in early 2000 and took flight lessons.

The judge, George B. Daniels, allowed the lawsuit to go forward, denying Saudi Arabia’s attempt to dismiss it.

For more than a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, victims’ families were barred from pursuing a lawsuit against a foreign government because of sovereign immunity protections.

That changed in September 2016, when Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), allowing Americans to sue foreign governments accused of providing material support for terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

In her speech, Strada criticized President Barack Obama for vetoing JASTA.

At the time, he argued the legislation went too far by threatening “to strip all foreign governments of immunity from judicial process in the United States based solely upon allegations by private litigants.”

Congress overrode his veto days later, making JASTA law and paving the way for the lawsuit against Saudi Arabia to be filed in March 2017. The case remains pending in federal court.

Scientists have pieced together the long-hidden story of how life changed in one part of Europe after the Roman Empire collapsed.

An international research team sequenced the DNA of 314 people who lived on the Little Hungarian Plain between the third and sixth centuries.

The remains, dating from around 1,400 to 1,800 years ago, were excavated from seven cemeteries in present-day northwestern Hungary.

By comparing individuals buried under Roman rule with those laid to rest after the empire’s fall, the researchers tracked a dramatic shift in the region’s population.

Most Roman-period graves held people with southern European ancestry, although some individuals also had roots linked to Asia and Africa.

Later burials, however, revealed a substantial increase in northern European ancestry and genetic connections to communities farther north. The findings indicate that newcomers entered the former Roman province and intermarried with local people.

Archaeological clues suggest that many of these arrivals were Lombards, who came over a period of several years rather than as a single vast invading force, before going on to conquer much of Italy.

DNA evidence also identified clusters of close relatives within the cemeteries, pointing to the emergence of influential families that helped shape a new society in the aftermath of Roman rule.

From its founding in 625 BC until its fall in AD 476, the Roman Empire conquered and incorporated dozens of cultures.

The findings challenge the traditional image of isolated bands of barbarians seizing Europe as the Western Roman Empire disintegrated.

Historians have long struggled to understand this turbulent period because the kingdoms that replaced Roman rule left behind few written records.

Much of what is known came from Roman accounts, meaning the story was largely told from the perspective of the people who had lost control of the territory.

The new study, published in Science, allowed researchers to reconstruct what happened by combining ancient DNA with archaeological evidence recovered from graves.

Scientists examined 68 people from two Roman-era sites and 246 from five post-Roman cemeteries across the Little Hungarian Plain, an area in present-day northwestern Hungary.

Under Roman rule, communities there were connected through a dense network of roads, settlements and trade.

Most residents had ancestry associated with southern Europe, but the genetic links to Asia and Africa showed that people had traveled to the frontier region from across the vast empire.

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That picture changed significantly after Roman authority weakened.

The post-Roman graves contained a sharp increase in northern European ancestry, with genetic connections linking the dead to populations living farther north.

Researchers said this change most likely reflected the expansion of the Lombards from north of the Danube into former Roman lands.

However, the genetic evidence did not point to a single mass migration or the total replacement of the local population.

Instead, it revealed years of sustained movement in which individuals and families traveled into the region, settled there and interacted with people whose ancestors had lived under Roman rule.

The newcomers eventually emerged as the dominant political power, but local residents continued to play a role in forming the new communities.

The cemeteries also revealed that these people had not simply established scattered rural settlements in the ruins of the empire.

Although the communities shared similar ancestry, burial traditions and grave goods, they were organized in different ways.

Some graves contained clusters of close biological relatives, suggesting that influential families held power and status within particular settlements.

Those families appear to have formed wider networks connecting multiple communities and helping establish a new Lombard political system.

The result was a diverse but deeply hierarchical society shaped by migration, intermarriage, family ties and cooperation, not simply conquest.

The research was conducted through the HistoGenes project, an international collaboration between geneticists, archaeologists, historians and anthropologists.

Lead authors Yijie Tian of Stony Brook University and István Koncz of Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary combined the genetic findings with objects, burial customs and other evidence discovered at the sites.

Patrick Geary, a professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study and co-leader of the project, said its work showed that population movements after Rome were far more complicated than previously believed.

‘The project has revealed both gradual and localized forms of movement across short and long distances, as well as rapid, large-scale population shifts from Eastern Asia into the Carpathian Basin,’ Geary said.

‘It has also demonstrated that material culture and genetic ancestry do not necessarily coincide and has illuminated the diverse ways newcomers integrated into existing populations.’

Cassie Ventura made a rare public appearance in the UK alongside her husband, Alex Fine, after the pair relocated from the United States earlier this year.

The “Long Way 2 Go” singer joined Fine at the Season 2 red carpet premiere for “MobLand” at London’s Odeon Luxe Leicester Square on Thursday.

Ventura, 40, stepped out in a gray bustier dress paired with brown pointed-toe pumps.

Fine, 33, opted for a black knit sweater, coordinating pants and matching shoes.

The fitness instructor and actor plays Donnie in the crime drama, which also stars Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Paddy Considine and Helen Mirren.

Ventura and Fine, who share three children, had largely stayed out of the public eye since she testified last year in the racketeering and sex trafficking case involving her former partner, Sean “Diddy” Combs.

In May, Page Six confirmed that Ventura had filed paperwork indicating she left the United States.

“I reside outside of the United States. I do not intend to move back to the United States,” she wrote in court documents.

The next month, Us Weekly reported that Ventura was living a “very ‘normal’ life” and concentrating on “family, routines and being present.”

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“At the end of the day, her biggest priority is her kids,” an insider told the outlet.

The source added that the “Me & U” singer “wants to be a strong, healthy example for [her kids] and show them what it looks like to choose yourself, set boundaries and move forward even after really difficult experiences. “

During her May 2025 testimony against Combs, Ventura told the New York City jury of the alleged years of abuse she suffered during her relationship with the disgraced music mogul, which lasted from 2007 until 2018.

The mom of three claimed Combs, 56, raped and abused her and forced a male escort to urinate in her mouth during a “Freak-Off” party.

Before the trial, Ventura filed a bombshell lawsuit against Combs in 2023 that was settled 24 hours later.

Combs was ultimately found guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution — and acquitted of sex trafficking and racketeering charges.

The rapper is serving time at New Jersey’s Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution. His current release date is Feb. 5, 2028.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.