Crime

"Prostitution is a cash crop in Maai Mahiu; the truckers basically fuel it. And that's how we benefit. It's been normalised in Maai Mahiu," she explained, adding that she had one girl as young as 13, who had already been "working" for six months.

"It becomes very risky when you're dealing with minors. You can't just bring them out openly in town. I only sneak them out at night in great secrecy," Nyambura said.

The act of prostitution by a consenting adult is not explicitly criminalised under Kenyan national law but it is banned by many municipal by-laws. It is not banned in Maai Mahiu, which is part of Nakuru county.

Under the penal code it is illegal to live from the earnings of prostitution, either as a sex worker or third party facilitating or profiting from prostitution.

The trafficking or sale of minors under the age of 18 carries a prison sentence ranging from 10 years to life.

When asked whether the clients wear condoms, Nyambura said she usually made sure they had protection but the odd one did not.

"Some children want to earn more [so don't use them]. Some are forced [not to use them]," she said.

In another meeting, she led the undercover investigator to a house where three young girls sat huddled on a sofa, another on a hard-backed chair.

Nyambura then left the room, giving the investigator an opportunity to speak to the girls alone.

They described being repeatedly abused for sex, on a daily basis.

"Sometimes you have sex with multiple people. The clients force you to do unimaginable things," said one of the girls.

There are no recent statistics on the number of children forced to work in Kenya's sex industry. In 2012, the US State Department Country Report on Human Rights Practices in Kenya cited an estimate of 30,000, a figure derived from the Kenyan government and now defunct non-governmental organisation (NGO), Eradicate Child Prostitution in Kenya.

Other studies have focused on specific areas, especially along the country's coast - known for its tourist resorts. A 2022 report for the NGO Global Fund to End Modern Slavery found almost 2,500 children were forced into sex work in Kilifi and Kwale counties.

A second undercover investigator gained the trust of a woman who called herself Cheptoo and had multiple meetings with her.

She said selling young girls meant she could "earn a living and be comfortable".

"You carry out this kind of business in great secrecy because it is illegal," she said.

"If anyone says they want a young girl, I ask them to pay me. We also have our regulars who always come back for them."

Cheptoo took the undercover investigator to a club to meet four of her girls. The youngest said she was 13 years old. The others said they were 15.

She opened up about the profit she makes from them, saying for every 3,000 Kenyan shillings ($23; £17) the girls deliver, her share was 2,500 shillings ($19; £14).

At another meeting, in a house in Maai Mahiu, Cheptoo left the undercover investigator alone with two underage girls.

One of them told her she had, on average, sex with five men a day.

When asked what happened if she refused to have sex without a condom, she said she had no choice.

Police have named four people killed in a shooting at a bar in the US state of Montana as a manhunt for an army veteran suspected of the attack entered its third day.

Barmaid Nancy Lauretta Kelley, 64, and three customers - Daniel Edwin Baillie, 59, David Allen Leach, 70, and Tony Wayne Palm, 74 - died as a rifle-wielding assailant opened fire at the pub in the city of Anaconda on Friday morning.

Police said the suspect, 45-year-old Michael Paul Brown, fled to the nearby foothills afterwards.

"This is an unstable individual who walked in and murdered four people in cold blood for no reason whatsoever," Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen told a news conference on Sunday.

"So there absolutely is concern for the public."

He added that officials had since widened their search area to include national forest land outside Anaconda, a town with a population of almost 10,000 in south-western Montana that is surrounded by dense, mountainous terrain.

"We want to find this guy," Mr Knudsen said. "This is a dangerous individual who has committed an absolute heinous crime against this community."

Around 250 law enforcement officers - federal, state and local - have been aiding in the search on foot as well as by car and helicopter, officials said.

The shooting happened at The Owl Bar at around 10:30 local time on Friday morning, officials said.

Mr Knudsen noted that the suspect was a regular at the pub and had lived next door. He said it was "likely that he [the suspect] knew the bartender and these patrons, which makes this even more heinous".

Cassandra Dutra, another barmaid, told CNN that the suspect would come into The Owl Bar frequently, but "he wasn't a part of the camaraderie" among customers. Ms Dutra was not working on Friday.

Ms Kelley's daughter, Nancy Kelley, told NBC News her mother had been a nurse for around 30 years until retiring recently, when she found part-time work at the bar as "it kept her a little bit social, just seeing people".

She said a mass shooting was once unthinkable in Anaconda.

A billionaire hotelier has pleaded guilty to abetting offences in a rare corruption case that gripped Singapore and landed a former minister in jail.

Ong Beng Seng is accused of giving expensive gifts, including tickets to the Formula 1 Grand Prix, hotel stays and a ride on a private jet to ex-transportation minister Subramaniam Iswaran while they were engaged in official business.

Ministers in Singapore cannot keep gifts unless they pay the market value of the gift to the government, and they must declare anything they receive from people they have business dealings with.

The case shocked many in Singapore, a financial hub that prides itself on a squeaky clean image.

The two men were arrested in July 2023, in a rare corruption scandal that gripped the country.

Charge sheets revealed that Iswaran was gifted more than S$403,000 ($311,882; £234,586) worth of flights, hotel stays, musicals and grand prix tickets.

Singapore's lawmakers are among the highest-paid in the world, with some ministers earning more than S$1 million ($758,000). Leaders justify the handsome salaries by saying it combats corruption.

Mr Ong helped brought the Formula 1 Grand Prix to Singapore and his company Hotel Properties Limited (HPL) has brands like the Four Seasons and the Hard Rock Hotel operating under them.

At the time of the offences Iswaran was in the government's F1 steering committee and the chief negotiator on F1-related business matters.

Mr Ong has been accused of abetting Iswaran in obtaining an all expenses paid trip to Doha, said to be worth around S$20,850 ($16,188; £12,194).

He is also charged with abetting the obstruction of justice by helping Iswaran make a payment to the Singapore Grand Prix for a business flight ticket from Doha to Singapore.

He faces up to two years in jail for abetting a public servant in obtaining gifts, while the maximum jail term he faces for the abetment of obstruction of justice is seven years.

Born in Malaysia in 1946, Mr Ong moved to Singapore as a child and founded a hotel and property company in the 1980s.

“They're doing their job,” she said. “But I know that woman. I've known her really well. Put it this way. Epstein was Pinocchio, and she was Gepetto.”

“She was pulling the strings. She had the money, he had the contacts. … But Ghislaine was much more conniving and smart than Epstein ever was.”

Giuffre said that Prince Andrew, with whom she posed for an infamous picture that includes Maxwell in the background, “should be panicking,” as he “knows he’s guilty.”

“He needs to be held accountable. We need to show the world that the rich and the mighty can fall too.”

The Epstein accuser believes that Maxwell has dirt on “very well-known names” including government officials, politicians, and “royalty.”

“Like, you know, they were taping everybody, every moment, when you walked into the New York mansion, to Palm Beach. Everything was being filmed,” she said, adding those who were filmed didn’t know it.

She said that if Maxwell “squeals on some of the people … they won’t be happy with her talking about that.”

Giuffre told CBS she met Maxwell while she was working in the spa at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

Dershowitz said:

She shouldn’t be, but she is. She is really serving Jeffrey Epstein’s sentence. After he committed suicide, there was no one else to prosecute ’cause there was no real information against anybody else and so they went after her and they sentenced her to the sentence that would have been appropriate for Epstein, but not at all appropriate for her, and so she’s appealing now and I hope the appeal will be granted. She deserves to be out.

A Korean man who tied a Sri Lankan migrant worker to a forklift at a brick factory in Naju, South Jeolla Province, told police he did so because the worker “let out a giggle,” according to a human rights group on Monday.

A migrant worker’s human rights network based in South Jeolla Province said the Korean suspect told investigators, “I told him to teach his colleague well, but he let out a giggle, so I did that.”

The victim, however, said he neither laughed nor understood what the supervisor was saying at the time. “I didn’t know what I did wrong. I was very scared (when I was tied to the forklift),” he was quoted as saying by the group.

The migrant worker, who has been employed at the factory since arriving in Korea under the work permit system last December, initially hesitated to report the abuse out of fear he wouldn't be able to find another job. He is currently staying at a religious facility with support from civic groups.

https://archive.is/YUGTZ

Johannesburg - Muti killings are suspected to be behind the murder and mutilation of the bodies of two young boys, aged five and six, who were discovered yesterday morning in two separate places in Soweto after they went missing on Wednesday night.

This has led the community of White City in Soweto to live in fear as they do not know who is behind the killings that have sparked outrage across the Rockville, White City, and Mofolo South communities.

It is reported that the two toddlers, identified as Nqobile Zulu, aged five, and Tshiamo Rabanye, aged six, were playing with one of their friends when they were allegedly approached by unknown men travelling in an unidentified car just after 8pm on Wednesday.

Nqobile’s body was found in White City, while the second body, belonging to Tshiamo was found a few kilometres away in Rockville at Thokoza Park. Both bodies were missing their private parts, noses and lips — resulting in suspected muti or ritual killings.

Speaking to the media, the chairperson of the CPF, Melusi Hlatshwayo, and leader of community patrollers in Mofolo South and White City, said the search party conducted a widespread search across the two townships, including Mofolo South and White City.

“The two kids who were discovered this morning were reported missing from last night just after 8pm. We went on a search for the two kids just after load shedding happened, but we could not find them. This morning, we continued with our search and went to all the hotspots that we knew.

An FBI agent was found guilty of raping three women after luring them into his tattoo shop by promising them free tattoos and modeling contracts, officials said.

FBI supervisor Eduardo Valdivia, 41, ran secret tattoo parlors under the names Lalo Brown and El Boogie when he wasn’t at his day job, prosecutors said.

The agent used fake names and the Instagram account DC Fine Line Tattoos to lure women into the shop, promising them modeling contracts before filming himself sexually assaulting them, prosecutors said, according to NBC 4 Washington.

After filming the assaults, Valdivia, who joined the FBI in 2011, would then use the fake modeling contacts as blackmail to get the women to return.

Valdivia, a married father of three children, sat expressionless as the jury announced he was guilty on all counts on Friday, according to the Washington Post. He could spend decades in prison for the charges.

While in court, Valdivia took the stand and claimed his encounters with the women were consensual. However, he later admitted to hiding evidence after learning that a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

Valdivia said that he threw away a box of condoms and wiped his laptop and memory card, which held photos and videos of himself having sex with the women.

Valdivia also told the courtroom that he never told the FBI about the tattoo parlors. He had been suspended by the bureau.

The former agent holds degrees in Spanish literature and public health and helped oversee public health clinics around the country before joining the FBI in 2011, according to court documents.

It’s the second time within a matter of years that Valdivia went on trial for felony counts in Montgomery County. In 2020, he was charged with attempted murder for shooting a man on a Metro train.

The death of an unarmed 52-year-old man who died after an Alabama police officer kneeled on his neck was ruled a homicide by a county coroner, according to an official autopsy reviewed by The Associated Press. The finding led lawyers representing Phillip Reeder's family on Monday to compare his death to that of George Floyd in 2020.

The report issued by the Jefferson County medical examiner’s office concludes Reeder, of Irondale, Alabama, died last August of heart failure "associated with cocaine use and restraint during altercation."

Officers in the Alabama suburb 10 miles (16 kilometers) from Birmingham were dispatched to a local highway just after 5 a.m. on August 6, 2024, after one of Reeder's colleagues called 911 to report a medical emergency, according to Reeder's wife, Sandra Lee Reeder. Phillip Reeder, who owned a construction company, was driving home from a job in Memphis, Tennessee, she said.

At the time, police said Reeder was wandering in and out of traffic when they approached him, according to AL.com.

A suspect remained on the loose Sunday after stealing a 35,000-pound fire engine in Everett, Washington, and going on a rampage, crashing into more than a dozen parked vehicles before abandoning the emergency rig and fleeing on foot, according to police and fire officials.

The theft of the Everett Fire Department pumper truck unfolded as its fire crew was on the fifth floor of a nearby building attending a medical emergency call, police said.

"Losing a fire engine in such a reckless manner not only jeopardizes the safety of our first responders but also puts our community at risk," Everett Police Chief John DeRousse said in a statement. "We are committed to ensuring the safety of our residents, and any information that helps us resolve this incident is crucial. It is imperative that we hold the suspect accountable for their actions, and we will work diligently to bring them to justice."

At least 30 people were injured after a car plowed through a crowd early Saturday in East Hollywood, Los Angeles, authorities said.

After the crash, the driver was pulled from the car by bystanders and then shot and wounded by an unknown person, who remains at large, police said.

Police identified the driver as 29-year-old Fernando Ramirez. He was taken to the hospital after the shooting but has been booked into jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. The district attorney will determine formal charges in the coming days.

The incident began unfolding around 2 a.m. local time outside the music venue The Vermont, near the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in east Los Angeles.

As of Saturday afternoon, at least one person -- a woman in her 20s with leg injuries -- was still in critical condition, police said, with several others in serious condition. In total, 24 patients were taken to the hospital.

The death of a 9-year-old girl whose father initially reported she was missing and possibly abducted is being investigated amid “inconsistencies” in his account, police said Sunday after the girl’s body was found in New York state.

Melina Frattolin was reported missing from near Lake George in northeast New York late Saturday evening by her father, Luciano Frattolin, according to New York State Police. Both father and daughter were identified by authorities as residents of Canada.

No charges have been announced in the case.

The girl’s body was discovered Sunday in the area of Ticonderoga, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of Lake George near the state line with Vermont during a search, state police said. Police said K9 and aviation units were involved in the search.

Ticonderoga also is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of New York City in a popular resort area in the Adirondack Mountains.

“As the case progressed, law enforcement identified inconsistencies in the father’s account of events and the timeline he provided,” state police said in a statement.

“At this time, there is no indication that an abduction occurred, and there is no threat to the public,” the agency added. The agency did not elaborate.

The Justice Department on Thursday announced that a former Voice of America (VOA) employee has been indicted and charged with allegedly threatening to kill Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The department accuses Maryland resident Seth Jason, who was a longtime employee at VOA, of making eight threatening calls to Greene and her team over a 15-month span from Oct. 11, 2023, through Jan. 21, 2025.

Jason allegedly used various VOA phone lines connected to studios and control rooms at its headquarters to make the calls, where he allegedly threatened to use firearms to kill Greene, her staff and their family members

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The accused assassin responsible for the murders of a Minnesota lawmaker and her husband, wrote in a letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel that Democratic Gov. Tim Walz selected him to kill Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN).

"Recently I was approached about a project that Tim Walz wanted done, and [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] Keith was also aware of the projecrt," the letter statted. "Tim wanted me to kill Amy Klobushar and Tina [REDACTED]. Tim wants to be a senatoer and he doesn't trust. [REDACTED] to retire as planned and thinks she is going to stay on at the last minute."

Five weeks ago today, former Aberdeen City Councilor Riley T. Carter was convicted of three counts of rape of a child in the first degree, three counts of incest in the first degree, one count of child molestation in the first degree, and one count of incest in the second degree, by a jury of his peers in Grays Harbor County Superior Court.

On Friday, Carter was sentenced to a minimum of 46½ years in prison.

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Prior to sentencing, Grays Harbor County Criminal Chief Deputy Prosecutor Daniel Crawford deferred to the victim, her mother and anyone else who wished to give a statement.

Mya Hernandez read her daughter’s statement to the court. It read, in part, “I felt betrayed, very betrayed by someone who was meant to keep me safe and happy, but I did not feel that. … I want Riley to be gone forever. I want him to be stuck in one loop, like how I was, and I want him to be in a bad place — like how he put me in a horrible place.”

Hernandez also read a prepared statement from the victim’s biological father that read, in part, “She is the bravest girl I know,” and went on to describe how Carter had betrayed his responsibilities as a step-father.

Hernandez read from her prepared four-page statement, that read, in part, “This isn’t just about abuse. This is about betrayal that carved through the bones of my family. This is about a man who didn’t just break trust — he broke us. He didn’t just lie, he ‘performed.’ To the world. He was a councilman. A hero. A ‘protector of children against predators.’ But in our home he was the danger. … Riley is vile. He confessed — then took it back — and forced a little girl he broke to take the stand and relive every sick thing he did to her. … He is not safe. He is not sorry. And he does not deserve leniency.”

The victim, who was present via Zoom, chose not to speak.