UR MAG

As theIran warunfolded in the Mideast, Asif Merchant acknowledged in a U.S. court that he sought to put an assassination in motion during the 2024 presidential campaign — a plot that was quickly disrupted by American investigators before it had a chance to proceed.

A jury in Brooklyn convicted Merchant on terrorism and murder for hire charges.

After showing an acquaintance what he had in mind by usingobjects on a napkinto depict a shooting at a rally, Merchant was introduced to two supposed assassins — actually undercover FBI agents who were secretly recording him, as had the acquaintance.

Merchant told the supposed hit men he needed services that could include killing "some political person" and paid them $5,000 in cash in a parked car in Manhattan.

In remarkable testimony in a New York federal court, Merchant said he was carrying out instructions from a contact in the Islamic Republic's powerfulparamilitary Revolutionary Guard. According to Merchant, the handler never specified a target but broached names including then-candidateDonald Trump, then-PresidentJoe BidenandNikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador who was also in the race for a time.

The Iranian government has denied trying to kill U.S. officials.

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Merchant, 47, worked for Pakistani banks for decades before going into clothing and other businesses. He has two families, in Pakistan and Iran, and he sometimes visited the U.S. for his garment business.

Merchant testified that he met a Revolutionary Guard intelligence operative about three years ago. The contact gave him countersurveillance training and assignments including the assassination scheme, Merchant said.

He maintained that he had to do his handler's bidding to protect loved ones in Iran. The defendant said he reluctantly went through the motions but thought he'd be arrested and explain his situation to authorities before anyone was killed.

"I was going along with it," he said, speaking in Urdu through a court interpreter.

Prosecutors emphasized that Merchant admitted taking steps to enact the plan on behalf of the Revolutionary Guard, which the U.S. considers a foreign terrorist organization, and he didn't proactively go to authorities.

Instead, he was packing for a flight to Pakistan whenhe was arrestedon July 12, 2024, a day before an unrelatedattempt on Trump's lifein Butler, Pennsylvania. Officials said it appeared the Butler gunman acted alone but thatthey had been trackinga threat on Trump's life from Iran, a claim that the Islamic Republic called "unsubstantiated and malicious."

When Merchant subsequently spoke to FBI agents to explore the possibility of a cooperation agreement, he didn't say he had acted out of fear for his family.

Prosecutors argued that he didn't back up a defense of acting under duress. Merchant sought to persuade jurors he simply didn't think the agents would believe him because they seemed to "think that I am some type of super-spy," which he said he was "absolutely not."

Much of the intelligence Russia has shared with Iran has been imagery from Moscow's sophisticated constellation of overhead satellites, one of the people said. It is not clear what Russia is getting in return for the assistance.

CNN has asked the Kremlin and the Russian embassy in Washington for comment.

It is also not clear whether any single Iranian attack can be linked to Russian targeting intelligence, which wasfirst reportedby the Washington Post. But several Iranian drones have hit locations where US troops have been in recent days. An Iranian drone struck a makeshift facility housing US troops in Kuwait on Sunday, killing six US service members, CNN has reported.

One of the sources briefed on the intelligence said, "This shows Russia still likes Iran very much."

The US also has intelligence suggesting that China may be preparing to provide Iran with financial assistance, spare parts and missile components, three people familiar with the matter said, though Beijing has stayed out of the war up until now. China relies heavily on Iranian oil and hasreportedlybeen pressuring Tehran ⁠to allow safe passage for vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

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"China is more cautious in its support. It wants the war to end because it endangers their energy supply," one of the sources familiar said.

The CIA declined to comment. CNN has asked the Chinese embassy in Washington for comment on the suggestion China may be preparing to assist Iran.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters on Wednesday that Russia and China are "not really a factor" in the war with Iran.

Russia and Iran have been cooperating for at least the last three years on missile and drone technology, with Iran providing Russia with Shahed drones and short-range ballistic missiles to target Ukraine and helping to set up a massive drone factory to pump out Iranian-designed drones inside Russia. Iran has in turn sought Russia's help to bolster its nuclear program,CNN has reported.

The US operation against Iran currently involves more than 50,000 troops, more than 200 fighter jets and two aircraft carriers, CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said this week, and administration officials have not said how long the war is expected to last. The US military objective, according to Pentagon officials, is to eliminate Iran's ballistic missile capabilities, which Pete Hegseth said this week Iran was using as a "shield" to develop its nuclear program.

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"It's an experience I wouldn't wish on anyone," López said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo from his home in Alexandria, Virginia.

About a decade ago, immigration officials argued that the citizenship López obtained as a minor through his naturalized mother was not valid. This put him on a path to deportation because of a previous drug conviction when he was younger.

During those years, López always insisted that he was a U.S. citizen when he was questioned by ICE officers, his lawyers, judges and journalists.

"I came from El Salvador with permanent residency when I was 11 years old, and when my mother became a citizen, I was 16 years old, so I automatically obtained citizenship derived from my mother. That's how it was," he said.

According to the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,derivative citizenship refers to the automatic acquisition of U.S. citizenshipby children under 18 years of age through the citizenship status of their parents and, under certain circumstances, by adopted children of U.S. citizens born abroad.

López was detained by ICE officials in January 2023 and was held at the Caroline Detention Facility in Bowling Green, Virginia. He was not released until Feb. 13 of this year after the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appealsissued a rulingthat not only stopped his deportation, but also reaffirmed that he's a U.S. citizen.

"The court says in its decision that he has been an American citizen since 1998. That's why they are releasing him," said Benjamin Osorio, López's lawyer.

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to requests for comment from Noticias Telemundo on López's case.

Why was a U.S. citizen detained by ICE?

López's arrest was the final step in a long process in which he had to fight the courts to try to have his citizenship recognized.

López came to the U.S. as a legal resident after his mom, a legal resident and a single mother, completed the paperwork to bring him from El Salvador in the early 1990s. When he was 16, his mother became a naturalized U.S. citizen and he automatically acquired derivative citizenship underTitle 8, Section 1432 of the U.S. Code,the law in effect at that time.

At age 20, López was convicted of drug offenses (in 2004 and 2005) and served a seven-year prison sentence. During his time in prison, he was visited by officials from DHS, who in 2009 determined that he had obtained U.S. citizenship through his mother.

"They came to see me in 2009 and declared that I was a citizen," López said in aninterview with Noticias Telemundo last year, while he was in custody.

After his release from prison in 2011, López rebuilt his life: He finished high school, learned electrical work, started his own company and spent more than a decade working, married and raising his children without further legal trouble.

However, in 2016, according to court papers and López's attorney, DHS changed its position, deemed him a legal resident but not a citizen and initiated removal proceedings because of his previous drug conviction.

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From that time until his eventual immigration detention in 2023, López and his attorneys had been trying to prove he had legitimately acquired U.S. citizenship through his single mother.

The government argued that the Salvadoran constitution had eliminated legal distinctions between children born in or out of wedlock, meaning that deriving citizenship from his mother was not enough.

"He would have had to prove that his father was also naturalized, but apparently his father never had a relationship with him," said Charles Wheeler, a senior attorney with theCatholic Legal Immigration Network.

López said that in 2023, "one day I went to work and about eight immigration agents were waiting for me." The agents told him he wasn't a citizen, that he was still a legal resident with "aggravated felonies," and that he was now deportable.

The ruling that declares him a citizen

Last month, the 4th Circuitissued its decisionconcluding that López met the requirements of the law that governed derivative citizenship before its reform in 2001. The judges analyzed Salvadoran law on parentage and legitimation, as well as López's family history, to determine whether or not his biological father had "established paternity" in the required legal sense.

"They concluded that my father never established paternity and never made me a legitimate son, even though his name appeared on my birth certificate," López explained. Essentially, the court agreed that his mom had been his sole parent and legal guardian, so deriving U.S. citizenship from her alone had been legal.

Immigration attorney Enrique Espinoza recommends that people with parents who are U.S. citizens by naturalization or birth consult with a lawyer and, if possible, obtain formal proof of citizenship — such asthe N-600 certificateor a U.S. passport — before a misunderstanding turns into a crisis.

In fact, Espinoza said it's not uncommon for people to have acquired U.S. citizenship through their parents "and not know it — that really does happen."

'ICE should not detain U.S. citizens'

Following the recent court decision, López's legal team is focusing on obtaining all the necessary citizenship certification and pursuing some form of redress.

"We are going to sue the government. ICE should not detain American citizens," said Osorio, López's attorney. After three years in prison, López lost his business as an electrician.

"He has lost his job. He has lost a lot. We are going to try to recover his money," Osorio said.

"This has cost me dearly; I've lost everything. My family had to endure a very unpleasant experience because of my unjust arrest, even though they knew I was an American citizen," López said.

While his legal team continues working on his case, López says he is trying to return to a normal life and always carries a copy of the 4th Circuit's decision in case a police officer or federal agent arrests him again. His main goal is to rebuild his electrical company and resume working with the contractors who knew him before his arrest.

"I can't get that time back — what's lost is lost," López said. "Now I have to start over. I have many contacts who know that my dedication and honesty at work are 100% guaranteed."

During the long nights while he was detained, López began writing songs about his legal situation and what he saw in the detention centers. He wrote that his family kept him going as he fought the government, and that the "love of my family continues to wait for me."

An earlier version of this story was first published in Noticias Telemundo.

Antonelli's first response was, "Who?"

"I had no idea," she recalls now. "I had never heard of her."

Antonelli declined that gig because she had just had a baby. But in the fall of 1996, she heard Mowins' name again, this time from a local TV station in Pennsylvania that wanted her to call Penn State women's basketball games. This time, she accepted.

On Tuesday, Nov. 26, 1996, Antonelli and Mowins were the voices on Penn State's 76-62 win over Seton Hall. Angie Potthoff scored 21 points in the victory for theNittany Lionsin what would be the first of countless women's college basketball games Antonelli and Mowins have called together.

This is the 30th season the duo has been telling the story of women's college basketball. At a time where the sport is growing by leaps and bounds in viewership and attendance, fans know when they see Antonelli and Mowins that they are tuning into an important game.

"They've been trailblazers as broadcasters," ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told USA Today Sports. "It's hard for me to think of a better combination than Debbie and Beth and what they've meant. I just think they are the gold standard and it gives me great comfort when I watch a game they're on. I don't know if they have any peers that I'm aware of that have quite done what they've done."

Antonelli and Mowins went from not knowing each other to close friends. After traveling the country together for three decades, sketching out ideas on bar napkins after games and vacationing together with their families, they can finish each other's sentences. They have a routine that's second nature. Even while sitting in a green room in Colonial Life Arena in South Carolina, Antonelli sat on the left side of the couch while Mowins sat on the right — just as they would be if they were courtside at a broadcast table.

"She's a part of our family. She's watched my boys grow up," Antonelli said of Mowins. "I prep a certain way when I work with Beth, because I don't have to worry about the other things and that allows me to do what I really am good at, which is taking a deeper dive. We tell you the how and why."

'Wild wild west' of women's basketball

Antonelli's path to television began when she was 23-years-old. After playing basketball for the Hall of Fame coach Kay Yow at NC State — she was on a Wolfpack team that won the ACC regular season and tournament championships in 1986 — Antonelli went to work at the University of Kentucky as director of marketing for the athletic department. A local TV station approached the Wildcats with the idea of producing and televising some of their games. Antonelli not only convinced them to do women's basketball, but persuaded them to let her be on the broadcast as an analyst.

A few years later, Antonelli took a similar job at Ohio State and, again, struck up conversations with the local cable company. Antonelli soon became the voice of Buckeyes women's basketball games across Ohio.

"I was like, 'Wow, this is just like everything I thought coaching would be, except you don't deal with the players,'" Antonelli told USA Today Sports. "It had everything else. Watching film, prep, practice, you know, all the things that I love about the job. It ran parallel with my interest in growing the game."

Mowins' path was a bit more traditional. Her dad was a coach and she played college basketball at Lafayette College where she set program records for assists in a single season and career. She then went to Syracuse's Newhouse School and not long after graduating with her master's degree, became the play-by-play voice for a Big East women's basketball game of the week shown on six different cable outlets in the northeast in the early 1990s.

ESPN, which is based in Bristol, Connecticut, is nestled in the heart of the Big East footprint.

"The Big East Network saw me doing Syracuse games, and I started doing the Big East Game of the Week, and those were on in Connecticut, and ESPN saw me doing those. And then it just kind of grew from there," Mowins told USA Today Sports. "Back in those days, it was the wild wild west."

Mowins said when she and Antonelli first started working together, they would call several games a week in different time zones for multiple different networks. They were women's basketball broadcasting mercenaries. They might be at Michigan State working a CBS game on a Saturday, then fly to North Carolina for a Duke game on ESPN on Sunday, then to New York for a St. John's game for the Big East, then to Texas to do a broadcast for Fox Sports Southwest.

"Shoot, I'd be gone for three weeks at a time," Antonelli says. "It was a hustle."

"But we were young, we were hungry, we were working on our craft," Mowins says. "And probably staying out too late."

"We would meet the coaches after the game for a drink. We'd make them buy," Antonelli says. "We did all that before the internet, before phone cameras. … When it comes to making postgame arrangements, I make those."

"After carrying her for two hours, I'm exhausted," Mowins says with a laugh. "I don't want to have to make any decisions after that."

Antonelli was a freelancer for the first 28 years of her television career. These days, she's mainly calling games for ESPN and its partners on the ACC and SEC networks, typically working one men's game and two women's games a week. There are times where her schedule gets stacked up, like when she called nine games in a 14-day span earlier this season.

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Mowins stays busy as the college sports seasons cross over. In the fall she calls college football, and in the spring she's the play-by-play host of the Women's College World Series. Since joining ESPN in 1994, Mowins has called NCAA Championships in basketball, softball, soccer and volleyball. In 2017, she became the first woman to call a nationally televised NFL game when she did a Monday Night Football broadcast between the Chargers and Broncos.

For many young women in broadcasting Mowins isn't just a role model, she's the standard.

"She has always been someone to aspire to and learn from, but she's also someone who has given me hope in the incredibly wild world that is being a woman in sports," says Mia O'Brien, an ESPN Radio host based in Jacksonville, Florida. "As I've strived to grow as a play-by-play announcer, it's made me respect Beth tenfold. It's been difficult for me to find reps today in the 2020s, so I can't even begin to imagine what her road to national prominence entailed."

'I know nothing except for hoops'

Antonelli has one of the sharpest minds in basketball. Part of that could be due to the fact that basketball is all Antonelli consumes, which is why Mowins' pop culture references fly over her head.

"I know nothing except for hoops," Antonelli says. "I don't watch any shows. I watch basketball."

Mowins likens Antonelli's ability to dissect X's and O's to Tony Romo and Dan Orlovsky on NFL broadcasts, in that she can predict what is about to happen on the court.

"Very few people have that ability, to not only have it stored in there, but then to bring it out when it's appropriate. Debbie is in that group that is just extraordinary because of the way she prepares," Mowins says. "She has relationships with all of the coaches. One of the most significant things is, if Debbie calls somebody, they're going to pick up."

In addition to the thousands of women's basketball games that she's called on television, Antonelli has also been the radio analyst for Westwood One's broadcasts of the Final Four for 30 years. In 2022, Antonelli joined her college coach, Yow, in the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

Wherever she goes, the folks most proud of what Antonelli has accomplished in growing the game of women's basketball seem to be at her alma mater, NC State.

"She's one of the premier announcers, and I'm telling you, she works harder than anybody I know. She's got irons in a lot of fires," NC State head coach Wes Moore said of Antonelli. "She does her homework. She knows going into a game what she wants to talk about and cover."

'Like an old married couple'

Over three decades, Antonelli and Mowins estimate they've called around 30 games per year together. With that many to choose from, it's difficult for them to pinpoint the most memorable game.

The first that came to mind for Antonelli was during the COVID-impacted season of 2020-21. On Dec. 15, 2020, Antonelli and Mowins were two of the few people in the building when Stanford beat Pacific, pushing Tara VanDerveer ahead of Pat Summitt to become the all-time winningest women's college basketball coach.

For Mowins, a trip to North Carolina's Research Triangle sticks out, when on Feb. 1, 2003, No. 2 UConn upset No. 1 Duke in a sold-out Cameron Indoor Stadium.

"We hit the heyday of the ACC in the early 2000s. Every weekend was a top 20 matchup," Mowins says. "For years, those Triangle schools had tried to build up fanbases, and when UConn came to Cameron Indoor it was like a men's game. The students all turned out."

A photo from that game of Diana Taurasi preparing to throw an inbounds pass with Alana Beard defending her appeared in Sports Illustrated the next week. If you look closely at it and spot a woman wearing a red sweater, that's Mowins' mother sitting near Antonelli's parents.

Three decades into broadcasting women's college basketball, Antonelli and Mowins still have a passion for the games, the players and the coaches.

And they show no signs of slowing down. This weekend they'll be calling games together in Duluth, Georgia, at the ACC Tournament and will be paired again during March Madness.

The duo has lost count of exactly how many games they've done together.

"I would certainly say it feels like it's been 1,000 games," Mowins says.

"And I would say one of us deserves a medal," Antonelli says. "The other one might need therapy."

"I think that's something that sort of sets our chemistry apart," Mowins says. "When we're working together, we're not afraid to pick at each other, you know, like an old married couple."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:The voices behind the rise of women's college basketball

In order to make those moves, however, an NFL team has to have an adequate amount of salary cap space. With the rising costs of player contracts and the exorbitant amount of money required to sign a quarterback to a second contract, some teams are in far worse shape to add talent as free agency fast approaches.

It doesn't have to be that way, of course. A team can drastically alter its situation with a key release or trade, suddenly freeing up the necessary funds to make that one move that finally puts it over the edge.

With free agency on the horizon, here's the amount of cap space with which each team is working this offseason.

When does NFL free agency start?

NFL players can officially sign with their new teams March 11 at 4 p.m. ET. While deals can't become official until that date and time, there's a bit of a catch to NFL free agency.

NFL legal tampering period, explained

NFL free agency can be broken down into two phases: the legal tampering period and the signing period. The legal tampering period, which will begin Monday, March 9 at noon ET, allows teams to get in touch with agents and start negotiating contracts with players. Players can't technically be signed during this period, which lasts until 4 p.m. ET on Wednesday, March 11.

Contracts, however, can essentially be completely behind the scenes, meaning there should be plenty of reports and rumors about where premier free agents are going during the legal tampering period.

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Once 4 p.m. ET hits on March 11, the signing period begins, and free-agent moves (and trades) can become official. This is the point in free agency where teams start putting out releases and social-media posts announcing player signings.

What is the NFL salary cap?

More broadly, the NFL salary cap is a set dollar amount that NFL teams can not exceed with their player contracts. It seeks to create a more even playing field among all NFL teams, as no one team can vastly outspend another. That's not the casein a sport like baseball, where the Los Angeles Dodgers can run a $318 million payroll and the Miami Marlins can come in at $76.6 million.

For 2026, the NFL set the salary cap at $301.2 million. All 32 teams need to be under that number by the start of the new league year, which is slated for March 11 at 4 p.m. ET.

What is dead money in the NFL?

Most mentions of a team's salary cap situation typically include the term "dead money." That figure is the amount of money a team is paying a player who is no longer employed by the team. For example, despite releasing veteran wideout Stefon Diggs, the Patriots are still charged $9.7 million toward the salary cap due to Diggs' dead-cap number. The move ultimately saved the team roughly $15 million, though, because Diggs' 2026 cap hit was set to be $26 million in 2026.

When trying to determine how close a team is to hitting the salary cap, you need to include a team's dead money number in the equation.

NFL salary cap tracker

With all that out of the way, here's how each team sits ahead of free agency in 2026:

(All figures via OvertheCap.com)

Los Angeles Chargers

$198,486,367

$99,055,741

Tennessee Titans

$213,056,097

$17,069,272

$92,691,559

Las Vegas Raiders

$191,631,472

$34,812,266

$86,025,607

New York Jets

$157,502,049

$91,246,438

$73,886,113

Washington Commanders

$237,133,738

$20,692,736

$69,991,063

Seattle Seahawks

$253,840,022

$58,081,261

Cincinnati Bengals

$251,479,006

$11,248,222

$47,238,882

Pittsburgh Steelers

$258,208,286

$12,221,838

$46,227,382

Arizona Cardinals

$260,723,155

$14,434,104

$39,697,226

New England Patriots

$289,460,498

$21,790,382

$39,281,396

San Francisco 49ers

$263,132,123

$29,893,741

$37,530,476

Los Angeles Rams

$272,963,794

$27,459,655

Denver Broncos

$276,755,391

$25,228,534

Kansas City Chiefs

$265,940,605

$24,888,634

Houston Texans

$222,849,818

$63,366,709

$22,489,837

New Orleans Saints

$230,681,600

$65,798,682

$20,032,740

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

$293,339,073

$19,962,510

Baltimore Ravens

$276,021,158

$16,002,715

$18,557,187

Philadelphia Eagles

$249,451,996

$50,921,852

$12,525,188

New York Giants

$283,300,257

Dallas Cowboys

$290,307,014

$25,994,177

Carolina Panthers

$287,950,323

$14,382,844

Chicago Bears

$287,870,070

$12,917,993

Atlanta Falcons

$291,513,644

Green Bay Packers

$287,912,619

$17,165,048

Miami Dolphins

$235,539,497

$73,949,387

-$1,949,137

Indianapolis Colts

$305,468,497

-$4,715,711

Jacksonville Jaguars

$269,947,778

$43,863,713

-$6,049,652

Detroit Lions

$310,377,163

$17,024,791

Cleveland Browns

$309,873,765

$33,373,848

-$17,193,567

Buffalo Bills

$301,616,489

$30,093,166

-$30,093,166

Minnesota Vikings

$353,414,552

-$46,675,553