Dwight Howard isn’t telling the truth, at least according to the NBA.

The eight-time NBA All Star recently said he was told to delete a 2014 tweet supporting Palestine during a call with league commissioner Adam Silver. That claim is “categorically false” and Silver did not contact the former Orlando Magic star, NBA spokesman Mike Bass said in an email on Wednesday. Howard, who was a member of Houston Rockets at the time, said the tweet jeopardized his playing career.

“I tweeted Free Palestine,” Howard said during a recent podcast appearance on The Gauds Show podcast. “Less than 10 minutes (later), I get a call from the commissioner of the NBA, agents, people working with my foundation at the time … [telling me] ‘you have to erase this tweet, you have to take it down’.”

Howard and his media rep didn’t immediately respond for comment when contacted on Wednesday.

The former NBA champion, who last played in the NBA during the 2021-2022 season with the Los Angeles Lakers, took his career overseas in 2022 and most recently played for the Taiwan Mustangs, teaming up with ex-NBA star DeMarcus Cousins and former Lakers teammate Quinn Cook. His deal with the Mustangs also reportedly made him part owner of The Asian Tournament (TNT) team. The 39-year-old, who won the Defensive Player of the Year award three times and has Hall of Fame worthy career numbers, has previously said that he still wants to return to the NBA despite his age.

“It’s because I went against the grain and said something that people didn’t like,” Howard told Gauds host Ray Daniels. “When you’re in the league, you’re in a place where if (you) say too much, (you) may not get a job anymore. I got to hold my tongue which is so hard to do.”

Howard’s claim that the NBA tried to suppress his attempt to raise awareness around the plight of Palestinians has drawn wide attention on social media and online with multiple Middle East publications reporting on his statement. Several pro-Palestine activists have chimed in on Howard’s claim while denouncing the league, which separately has been criticized for its complex business relationship with China.

Howard, who was aiming to support the Palestinian community he met in Houston, says the tweet situation which came during the 2014 Gaza war highlights the pressure players regularly face to remain silent on controversial topics. His recent claim involving the NBA a decade later comes amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hamas-led Palestinian military groups, which has resulted in the death of more than 45,000 Palestinians since the attack on October 7 in southern Israel, according to Reuters.

Howard, who reignited his beef with Hall of Famer turned sports analyst Shaquille O’Neal over what he views as O’Neal’s lack of respect for him during the same podcast appearance, separately has made off-the-court headlines over the last year. Businessman Calvin Darden Jr. was convicted in October of scamming Howard out of millions of dollars in a false scheme with help of his former agent Charles Briscoe, who pleaded guilty to his role in perpetuating the fraud back in 2023.

British lawmakers voted against launching a national inquiry into the U.K. grooming gang scandal on Wednesday, after objections to the way the vote was being put forward – and amid international scrutiny of the crisis spearheaded by Elon Musk.

The House of Commons voted on an amendment to hold a statutory inquiry into the scandal – where it was revealed that men of predominantly Pakistani heritage had sexually abused girls for years in towns in northern England.

The measure was an amendment to a children’s well-being and schools bill backed by the Labour government. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer warned that a vote in favor of the amendment would kill the overall bill to which it was attached. The amendment was voted down by 364 votes to 111 in the Labour-controlled chamber, Sky News reported.

UK PM STARMER HITS BACK AGAINST MUSK ATTACKS ON CHILD GROOMING GANGS

“What we need now is action. What can’t be tolerated is the idea that this afternoon members opposite will vote down a bill which protects children,” Starmer said ahead of the vote, calling it a “wrecking amendment.”

Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch pushed back.

“Be a leader, not a lawyer,” she told him, as she said that a new inquiry should investigate the connected issues between the towns. 

“The reason why a national inquiry is important is because this issue is systemic,” she said, involving “local and national officials, the police, prosecutors and politicians.”

“These interlinked issues cannot be covered by local inquiries alone,” she said.

Previous reports had found evidence of “appalling” abuse, with more than 1,400 girls abused between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham alone. Reports also found that authorities had been scared of fueling racism in their handling of the crimes given the ethnic makeup of the perpetrators. The scandal tapped into brewing concerns about multiculturalism and mass immigration.

The issue came back to the spotlight recently after local officials in Oldham called on the government to launch a national inquiry into the town’s handling of the crisis. A 2022 report had found that children had been failed by officials, but had found no cover-up despite concerns that it would be capitalized on by right-wing activists.

ELON MUSK DEMANDS UK ACT ON GROOMING GANG SCANDAL AMID GROWING CALLS FOR PROBE

The U.K. government rejected the request, saying that any inquiry should be organized locally. That, in turn, drew calls from Badenoch and Elon Musk for a national inquiry.

The Palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament, in the heart of London.

“Across the country, thousands of girls were tortured and sexually abused at the hands of men who treated them as things to be used and disposed of, destroying many lives forever. The prime minister has mentioned previous inquiries. He is right, there has been an inquiry into child sexual abuse. But it wasn’t about the rape gang scandal,” Badenoch said.

Musk, who has been hammering away at the issue on X – even calling for the prosecution of top U.K. government officials, including Starmer – appealed again to the British public before the vote.

President-elect Trump and Elon Musk attend a SpaceX Starship launch on Nov. 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

“Please call your member of parliament and tell them that the hundreds of thousands of little girls in Britain who were, and are still are, being systematically, horrifically gang-raped deserve some justice in this world,” Musk said on X on Wednesday.

“This is vitally important, or it will just keep happening,” he said.

BRITAIN HIT BY ANOTHER ASIAN GROOMING GANG SCANDAL AS REPORT EXPOSES CHILD SEX ABUSE IN MANCHESTER

Starmer had previously slammed “lies and misinformation” without naming Musk directly, and had accused U.K. politicians of jumping on a “bandwagon of the far-right.”

On Wednesday, he again accused Badenoch of jumping on a bandwagon and urged lawmakers to make sure the broader bill passed.

“One of the provisions in the bill is to protect children vulnerable today who are out of school to prevent abuses ever taking those children out of school. I implore members opposite to defy the misleading leadership of the Leader of the Opposition and vote for a really important bill.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

A Russian guided bomb attack on the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia has killed at least 13 civilians and injured about 30 others, officials said.

Graphic footage posted on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Telegram page on Wednesday showed bloodied civilians lying in a city street being treated by emergency services.

“There is nothing more brutal than aerial bombing of a city, knowing that ordinary civilians will suffer,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

High-rise residential blocks, an industrial facility and other infrastructure were damaged in the attack, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said on Telegram on Wednesday. The debris hit a tram and a bus with passengers inside, it added.

Regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said Russian forces launched guided bombs at a residential area in the city in the middle of the afternoon, and at least two residential buildings were struck in the attack.

Moscow has frequently launched aerial attacks on civilian infrastructure during its almost three-year war on Ukraine. It has consistently denied targeting civilians.

Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull, reporting from Kharkiv in Ukraine, said that “strikes were aimed at what has been described as an ‘industrial site’.”

Hull described “scenes of devastation outside a factory, in a multi-storey apartment building opposite … in addition to a passing tram and minibus, which would have been carrying passengers.”

Marina Miron, a military analyst at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that “the plant had already been targeted in November, as the Russians say Ukrainians were using it to assemble drones”.

“Owing to the deaths of civilians, however, there is a possibility that Russian navigation systems were jammed,” said Miron.

The attack comes as both Russia and Ukraine seek to project strength before US President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

Earlier in the day, the Ukrainian military said it had struck a fuel storage depot inside Russia, causing a huge blaze at a facility that supplies missiles to a Russian air base.

Ukraine’s General Staff said that the assault hit the storage facility near Engels, in Russia’s Saratov region, about 600km (373 miles) east of the Ukrainian border.

As Ukraine faces certain restrictions in using Western-supplied missiles, Kyiv has been developing its own long-range arsenal capable of reaching targets behind its front line.

The attacks have disrupted Russian logistics in the war, which began on February 24, 2022.

‘Serious security guarantees’

Earlier on Wednesday, Zelenskyy said that countries wanting to end the war should offer Ukraine assurances about its future defence.

“To be honest, I believe that we have a right to demand serious security guarantees from countries that aim for the peace in the world,” Zelenskyy said.

Ukraine’s leader was speaking at a news conference in Kyiv, responding to comments from US President-elect Donald Trump that he understood Russia’s opposition to neighbouring Ukraine joining NATO.

Speaking to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago estate in a wide-ranging media conference late on Tuesday, Trump said “Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feelings about that.”

The United States, Germany, Hungary and Slovakia have stood in the way of Ukraine immediately joining the 32-nation NATO alliance, Zelenskyy noted.