Crime

Up to a million women worldwide are facing sexual violence and forced labour in prisons, where they are overlooked and forgotten, in what is being called a growing global crisis.

The number of incarcerated women is rising much faster than men and is expected to surpass one million on current trends. While on average women account for between 2% and 9% of national prison populations, since 2000 the number imprisoned has grown by 57%, compared with a 22% increase in the men’s prison population.

“We are facing a global crisis,” said Olivia Rope, executive director at Penal Reform International. “If you look at the rate of growth compared to men in prison, it is really alarming. Women are often an afterthought, and they face very harsh, difficult conditions where their needs are unmet in most cases.”

In fact, equity demands equal outcomes according to the modern interpretation. So, we have too few women in prison…..

Aided by allies in Congress and the conservative press, Trump’s team has also waged a relentless campaign against perceived media bias in the reporting of January 6.

The media has been hugely biased in its reporting. As have the courts. So, what is to be done about that?

Williamson is a longtime Democratic power player in Sacramento. She was a cabinet secretary for former governor Jerry Brown before opening her own political affairs firm. She was also Becerra’s campaign manager when he ran for attorney general in 2018, and she later rejoined state government as Newsom’s chief of staff.

Roughly $225,000 in funds were diverted from Becerra’s political campaign coffers to “an associate’s personal use”, between February 2022 and 2024 – a time that overlapped when Williamson was serving as Newsom’s chief of staff, according to the indictment, which was unsealed upon her arrest.

California politics has long been notably vile and corrupt. But they normally steal from the taxppayer not each other….

Damning new emails that suggest Donald Trump knew about the conduct of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Wednesday, including one in which Epstein said “of course [Trump] knew about the girls” procured for his sex-trafficking ring, and another that said Trump “spent hours” with one victim at Epstein’s house.

Top of front page in The G. More space – or better space perhaps – than they’ve given to the hundreds of grooming gangs here in Blighty, eh?

Also, we know Trump knew about the girls. That’s why Epstein was asked not to be at Mar a Largo, why Trump said “apparently he likes them young”.

But, you know, TDS etc….this is actually first 7 stories on the front page.

A former Metropolitan police officer allegedly used sex workers while on duty in the midst of a major investigation into behavioural standards, the Guardian can reveal.

Britain’s largest police force has been described as “institutionally misogynistic” after widespread claims that a “toxic” sexist culture has been allowed to thrive for decades.

Doing it on duty isn’t right. Nope.

Mumping it – gimmie a freebie or I’ll arrest you – isn’t right either.

But shagging birds who are advertisig themselves to be shagged seems a great deal less bad than shagging underaged birds being vilely raped. It’s also legal, as it happens.

But my best guess here is that the complaints aren’t, in fact, about mumping or on duty but about the having sex with adult women who agree to having sex.

The repatriation comes after Indonesia’s senior law and human rights minister, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, signed a deal with British foreign minister Yvette Cooper last month for the transfer of Sandiford and Shahabadi.

Both prisoners are suffering from severe health problems.

Yusril said last month that Sandiford was “seriously ill”,

Umm:

Two British drug convicts including death row prisoner Lindsay Sandiford

Not executing someone because they’re ill seems, umm, odd. But there’s something at the back of the head telling me that it happens – even to the point of treatment to make the condemned well again so they can be hanged. Not sure where that comes from at all but it is there, rolling around in the wide open spaces of my mind.

A fugitive child sex offender spent 90 minutes asking prison staff who had mistakenly released him from HMP Chelmsford where he should go before they sent him to a train station, a witness said.

Part of the plot will be some well fit lawyer bird (say, that blondie who keeps insiting she be called Dr. It’s her mind that’s wrong, not physique) defending him on charges of having absconded and thus having his sentence increased for having been on the run etc. That defence will be just a retailing of what actually happened when he was released.

Actually, the film opens at his trial for having absconded with her questioning screws etc, their answers appearing as flashbacks. “Yes, we told ‘im to git”. “And he asked you why he was being released?” and so on….

Now, where we take it from there is the question. We’ve a good 20 minutes of comedy there. So, does it become realist? He goes on to thieve and steal and aggress his way acros the country? Or off into phantasy where the brown illegal immigrant changes a car tyre so that the cancer stricken kid can get to cancer treatment as choirs of angels sing and bystanders clap?

A former asylum seeker who was released from prison in error after sexually assaulting a woman and a 14-year-old girl has been spotted boarding a London-bound train, Essex police said.

The deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said on Friday night Kebatu was now “at large in London” and the Metropolitan police was assisting in the search.

The Ethiopian national Hadush Gerberslasie Kebatu was jailed for 12 months in September for sexual assault and made the subject of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.

The 41-year-old was meant to be sent to an immigration detention centre to be deported but was freed by mistake, it has emerged, and police in Essex are now urgently trying to find him.

The main Palestinian factions have said they have agreed that an independent committee of technocrats would take over the running of Gaza after Hamas said it had received “clear guarantees” from mediators that “the war has effectively ended”.

A joint statement published on the Hamas website said the groups had agreed in a meeting in Cairo to hand “over the administration of the Gaza Strip to a temporary Palestinian committee composed of independent ‘technocrats’, which will manage the affairs of life and basic services in cooperation with Arab brothers and international institutions”.

Myself, about as long as those claims of famine which everyone’s gone very quiet about as soon sa piccies show an unhappy but not starving population.

But, you know….

Government officials blocked investigators from questioning Martin McGuinness over the Remembrance Day bombing in Enniskillen, one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles.

A cold case team reinvestigating the 1987 massacre requested to interview the Sinn Fein politician, who was by then deputy first minister of Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly. At the time of the IRA bombing in the Co Fermanagh town, McGuinness was head of the republican group’s northern command, which oversaw operations across the north of Ireland.

British intelligence reports determined that McGuinness — who went on to become Sinn Fein’s negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace process, working with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, at the time the US president and British prime minister — was aware of the bombing beforehand.

Well, yes, in order to gain peace etc. Hanging would still have been a good idea.

One of the suspects in the Chinese espionage case was carrying a “suitcase full of cash” when he was stopped by police under terrorism laws after flying into Heathrow from China.

Christopher Berry, 33, an academic from Witney, Oxfordshire, was discovered with £4,000 when he was intercepted at the airport on February 2023, almost six weeks before he was formally arrested on suspicion of spying for China.

What is it with the young people of today. Treason for the price of a decent night out? Rilly?

Or more accurately, who in buggery would really decsribe £4k as a suitcase full? That’s 80x £50 notes. There are wallets that will take that.

The justice department filed federal charges against John Bolton, the former national security adviser to Donald Trump who turned into one of his biggest critics, accusing him of transmitting and retaining highly classified information under the Espionage Act.

The 18-count indictment was handed up by a grand jury in federal district court in Maryland on Thursday. Bolton has been charged with sending diary entries to two unnamed individuals about his day-to-day activities when he was national security adviser, many of which contained highly classified information.

Also not convinced that’s an 18 counter but there we are.

The Biden justice department initially dropped the lawsuit and grand jury investigation in 2021. They later reopened the investigation as the US intelligence community learned more about Bolton’s emails through a foreign spy service, according to people familiar with the matter.

Ahhhh, there is more to it then. This is not, in fact, Trump activated. Or not solely….

Police officers investigating the collapse of a betting syndicate led by Rory Campbell have made an arrest, The Times understands.

Gosh. I wonder.

The Times can reveal the force arrested a man from north London last month as part of the police’s investigation. He has been bailed, and cannot be named for legal reasons.

No, no speculation, legal reasons.

Activists from New Zealand detained in Israel after they were removed from vessels carrying aid to Gaza are being held in poor conditions without access to water and legal representation, their families have said, as dozens more passengers from the Global Sumud Flotilla were set to be deported.

You don’t get legal representation if you’re held by the US border police either. So?

A man has been fined £400 for fly-tipping after leaving a bag of clothes outside a charity shop.

Jan Goodey, 60, dropped the donations in front of Shabitat in Brighton one morning in June before heading off to work.

He later received the £400 penalty along with a letter accusing him of fly-tipping.

Lost the appeal too, finally omeon rescinded the fine. Ho well, all’s well that ends well.

Councillor Tim Rowkins, a BHCC cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said the charity shop had contacted the council to report Mr Goodey’s donation as a fly-tip.

Well, yes, guess who dobbed him in?

A former prisoner killed an ex-prison guard after he exposed his affair with a female guard.

Elias Morgan, 35, shot Lenny Scott, 33, six times as he left a gym in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, on Feb 8 last year, out of “revenge”. Mr Scott later died in hospital.

Morgan was found guilty of his murder at Preston Crown Court on Friday.

Mixing the men and the women does produce a certain tension and storm of emotion now and again, dunnit?

Whose bright idea was it, anyway?

Groom dies of injuries from celebratory gunfire after wedding in Turkey
State media report that Ali K, 23, was wounded by shots allegedly fired by a female relative of his wife

Celebratory, definitely.

Armed escorts and £900 handouts: How Germany

Was a bit early in the morning, I was wondering what was making the tarts so militant…..

Armed escorts and £900 handouts: How Germany sent migrants back to the Taliban
It took a colossal legal, political and diplomatic juggling act before Berlin could deport Afghan criminals

Ah…..

A police officer who was caught paying prostitutes for sex was granted anonymity during his misconduct hearing.

The officer, who resigned from Staffordshire Police before they could be sacked, was not named by the force during disciplinary proceedings.

No reason was given for the decision to grant anonymity, but the force said they would have been dismissed if they had not already left.

At an accelerated misconduct hearing, the force said the ex-PC had engaged in sexual activity with sex workers for payment while off duty.

They were found to have breached the standards of professional behaviour and will now be placed on the National College of Policing’s Barred List, preventing them from working within policing and other law enforcement bodies.

Acting Assistant Chief Constable Sally Blaiklock.said: “We expect all of our officers, staff and volunteers to act with the highest level of integrity and professional behaviour, both on and off duty.

Paying up beats the usual mumping, no?

A band of “pasta grannies” in Italy who have achieved worldwide fame with their handmade products have gone on strike after they were targeted in police raids.

The women have been celebrated on television and social media for their traditional practice of making orecchiette, or “little ear”, outside their homes in the medieval alleyways that make up the historic heart of Bari, a port in the southern region of Puglia.

But police conducted a series of raids this week, alleging that some of the grannies have been selling commercially produced orecchiette that they secretly buy from retailers and then pass off as homemade to unsuspecting customers.

Officers seized dozens of bags of pasta and other merchandise, including taralli, savoury biscuits made from flour and water, fining three of the women 5,000 euros each for fraudulent commercial activities.

Of *course* someone would cash in on that fame. That’s just how humans work. The only questions are who and how many?