Three men face potential charges after a 21-year-old woman died when rope-jumping instructors allegedly launched her from a bridge without attaching the safety ropes meant to stop her fall, authorities said.

Maria Eduarda Rodrigues de Freitas, a 21-year-old student, died Saturday during a rope-jumping event at an abandoned bridge about 90 miles northwest of São Paulo, Brazil.

Police investigator Andrea Levy told reporters Monday that the three instructors involved in the jump acknowledged that Rodrigues de Freitas was not connected to any safety equipment before she was launched from the bridge.

“They do not remember whether they forgot to attach [the ropes], or who was supposed to do it, or who failed to check. But the fact is the ropes were not attached to her,” Levy said.

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The three instructors were arrested following the incident and could face criminal charges, The Associated Press reported.

Brazilian authorities said the three instructors were arrested on suspicion of homicide with “eventual intent,” a legal concept under Brazilian law that generally applies when a person is deemed to have accepted the risk that a death could occur. According to Brazilian outlet G1, citing investigators, the instructors were booked on the charge at the scene.

Investigators said Rodrigues de Freitas requested to be launched from the bridge “airplane style,” with two instructors lifting her above their shoulders while she stretched out her arms.

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Video shared online appears to show two helmeted men tossing the young woman from the abandoned bridge moments before the fatal fall. The instructors appear to be wearing harnesses connected to safety lines.

Authorities said Rodrigues de Freitas fell approximately 130 feet.

Brazilian media reported that Rodrigues de Freitas had purchased a guided hiking excursion that included the rope jump from the abandoned bridge.

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Rope jumping is an extreme sport that differs from traditional bungee jumping. Instead of elastic cords that create a vertical bounce, rope jumping uses low-stretch climbing ropes designed to transform a fall into a pendulum-like swing.

The City of Limeira identified Rodrigues de Freitas as a resident of Jandira and issued a statement expressing condolences to her family.

“At this moment of pain, the City of Limeira stands in solidarity with the young woman’s family, friends and loved ones,” municipal officials said in a statement Saturday.

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The city said it would cooperate with authorities investigating the incident.

Rodrigues de Freitas was buried Sunday.

Levy told Brazilian television program “Jornal Nacional” that investigators were examining whether the group conducting the jump was authorized to operate at the site. According to G1, Levy said investigators believe a failure to verify the placement of the safety rope contributed to the fatality.

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In a statement cited by G1, attorneys for the three instructors said their clients had experience conducting the activity and that the incident was the first fatality during their years of operation.

Authorities continue to investigate the circumstances surrounding the apparent safety failure, including who was responsible for ensuring participants were properly secured before jumping.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Hebron’s mayor warns unilateral changes breach agreements, posing significant consequences for the region’s stability.

Israel has seized planning and construction powers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank ⁠from Palestinian authorities, scrapping parts of an agreement in place since the 1990s, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday.

Under the 1997 Hebron Agreement, Palestinians controlled planning and construction in the entire city of Hebron, including the Jewish Tomb of the Patriarchs and the adjoining Ibrahimi Mosque.

“Yesterday we cancelled the Hebron agreements,” Smotrich said at an inauguration ceremony for the Doran settlement in the southern Mount Hebron area.

While the decision was made on Monday night by Israel’s Higher Planning Council, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said in a tweet that “contrary to the finance minister’s statements, the Hebron Agreement was not canceled”.

It added that a cabinet decision made months ago had addressed planning and construction authority in the Jewish settlement and at Jewish heritage sites only, citing what it called a complete lack of cooperation from the Hebron municipality.

“Beyond that, no change has occurred,” it said.

The Palestinian Authority, meanwhile, condemned Smotrich’s announcement as unlawful.

“Such unilateral measures are unacceptable and constitute a violation of the agreements signed by the Israeli side, as well as international law,” the office of President Mahmoud Abbas said in a statement, calling on the international community and the United States in particular to intervene immediately to stop “this most dangerous step”.

Hebron Mayor Yusuf al-Jabari said the agreements constitute “a political framework governing Hebron’s administrative, security and service arrangements”, and that any unilateral modification outside existing international understandings amounted to “a serious breach” with far-reaching consequences.

The Hebron Agreement, signed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, divided the city into two sectors.

Israel retained security control over H2,which includes the Jewish settlement and the Ibrahimi Mosque, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, while civil powers, including planning and construction, remained with the Palestinian municipality.

The mosque has long been a focal point for settlers, who took control of half the site following the original protocol. In 2017, Palestine inscribed Hebron’s Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque on the World Heritage and World Heritage in Danger lists maintained by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

“After the government promised victory and failed on all fronts, Smotrich the pyromaniac is trying to set the West Bank on fire,” said Israeli peace group Peace Now, adding that the move was politically motivated.

“This is a dangerous and irresponsible step of a failed politician who is ready to harm Israel’s interests and security in order to gather a few votes from the extreme right,” it said.

Palestinians say the move is the latest in a series of steps towards Israel’s de facto annexation of the West Bank.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Author Amy Griffin sued a former classmate for defamation on Monday, saying the woman’s statements in a New York Times story and a subsequent lawsuit alleging Griffin appropriated her stories of sexual abuse for her bestselling 2025 memoir “The Tell” are false in “every element.”

Griffin’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in Nevada, says that in 2025 her former middle school classmate “told The New York Times — and through it, the world — that Amy Griffin is a fraud and a thief.”

The lawsuit says that in the woman’s telling, “Mrs. Griffin stole the rape of another woman and built a bestseller on it.”

A Times spokesperson said the lawsuit misrepresents its story and reporting. The former classmate said her account will prove true in court.

In “The Tell,” a hit that became an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Griffin, a venture capitalist and memoirist, recounts being sexually abused as a child by a teacher at her middle school in Amarillo, Texas, and writes that years later she recovered memories of the experience by undergoing therapy using the psychedelic drug MDMA.

The Times story published six months after the book included stories from a classmate who said some of Griffin’s experiences were eerily similar to her own. Then in March the woman filed a lawsuit in California state court, which Griffin is fighting and seeking to have dismissed.

The Associated Press doesn’t typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or otherwise consent. The woman who sued Griffin filed her lawsuit as Jane Doe, and her name did not appear in the Times story.

Griffin says documentation backs her in every aspect

Griffin’s lawsuit says the most essential fact is that she put her account of her abuse in writing in 2020, and in 2021 she provided another detailed and documented account in an interview with the Amarillo Police Department. Both accounts match up with the book, and both came before Griffin is alleged to have extracted the woman’s abuse story by having someone posing as a talent agent call her in 2022, according to the lawsuit. The statute of limitations prevented the criminal investigation from moving forward.

Griffin’s lawsuit says the woman falsely claimed to be another middle school classmate who appears in “The Tell” under the pseudonym “Claudia,” whose meeting with the author is recounted in the book. The lawsuit Griffin had not talked to the woman in more than 35 years, had never been part of the same church youth group as alleged, and was demonstrably not in the Palm Springs area in 2019 — or the years before or after — when the woman claims the two of them met for coffee.

Griffin’s lawsuit says the coffee shop conversation with “Claudia” took place thousands of miles away in the presence of a collaborator, and that the woman in the Times story had been unable to produce any evidence the meeting with her had taken place.

Accuser says this is an attempt to silence her

In an email to The Associated Press sent through her lawyers, the woman said the shame and humiliation from her sexual assault were unimaginable and she was “violated all over again after reading about my own experiences in Amy’s book.”

“Despite trying to remain anonymous, Amy has now chosen to use her immense wealth and influence to try and silence me,” the email said. “She has had her lawyers identify me publicly as well as sue me. I am shocked and disappointed that she would choose to take this route, especially since she herself knows the truth.”

Griffin’s lawsuit seeks a declaration that the allegations that she stole the woman’s abuse stories are false, along with financial damages to be determined at trial.

New York Times stands by its reporting and story

Griffin’s lawsuit, while not naming the Times as a defendant, is harshly critical of the paper, saying it “deemed the story too good to scrutinize” despite Griffin’s lawyers making it clear the woman’s account was “demonstrably false.”

Times spokesperson Danielle Rhoades Ha said in an email to the AP that the lawsuit and related filings “repeatedly misrepresent The New York Times story and its reporting,” and that the article “is markedly different in key aspects put forth” in both women’s lawsuits.

Rhoades points out that many of the allegations Griffin is pushing back against did not appear in the Times’ story, including that the woman they spoke to was “Claudia,” or that a person posing as a talent agent on Griffin’s behalf called to get her stories of abuse.

And Rhoades said the Times story did not say Griffin “misappropriated” the woman’s story, and she said claims that the reporters did not vet their story are false, and that they “engaged extensively with Ms. Griffin’s legal representatives prior to publication including meticulous fact checking.”

“Our story was about a publishing phenomenon, the reliability of memories recovered while under the influence of MDMA and the impact of a bestselling memoir on the author’s hometown,” Rhoades said. “Our reporters’ only agenda was to pursue the facts, including corroboration of accounts from all sources.”