A woman at a hotel in the 400 block of Fairgrounds Drive on Friday expressed fear for her safety and reported being subjected to force, threats, and coercion related to sexual exploitation, say police. Police arrested Julius Stinson III, who was detained at a motel on the 1400 block of Enterprise Street on Friday. Stinson is a convicted felon with multiple previous convictions, including attempted murder and voluntary manslaughter.
As the standoff between the United States government and Minnesota continues this week over immigration enforcement operations that have essentially occupied the Twin Cities and other parts of the state, a federal judge delayed a decision this week and ordered a new briefing on whether the Department of Homeland Security is using armed raids to pressure Minnesota into abandoning its sanctuary policies for immigrants.
For more than a week I have been watching Google Trends as Trump flings more and more spaghetti at the wall to find something that sticks. Something with enough adhesion and coverage to hide his failure to produce the Epstein files, a kind of flying spaghetti monster more real than the snarky faux deity - sticky strands like the flip-floppery on tariffs, the unwarranted and unlawful occupation of Washington DC by National Guard, the embarrassing meeting with Putin on US soil.
He was writing from hell, 8,000 miles away. A summer shower had left a rainbow over my Brooklyn neighborhood, and my two children were playing in a kiddie pool on the roof of our apartment building. Now the sun was setting, while I-in typical 21st-century parenting fashion, forgive me-compulsively scrolled through every app on my phone. The message had no subject line and came from an address on the encrypted email service Proton Mail: "vaultwhistle@proton.me." I opened it.
"I have a girl that's 12 years old for your client,'" the pilot said. The client's response: "No, we think we need an 8-year-old." The group was horrified. "I have two daughters," Lux says. "We said, 'Wait a minute, really? Where are these people?' Until that time, I thought it only happened overseas. And they said, 'No, it happens in every community in the United States'."
Their attackers had tried to burn them to cover their tracks, but the double femicide left no doubt: it bore the mark of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization. In the wake of the crime, investigations and news reports about the Venezuelan gang followed. And arrests began. Although the Mexico City Security Secretariat tried to downplay its role, police operations proved that this criminal network, after spreading across the continent, was already operating in Mexico.
At least since 2016, Chinese-speaking criminal groups have erected industrial-scale scam centers across Southeast Asia, creating special economic zones that are devoted to fraudulent investment and impersonation operations. These compounds are host to thousands of people who are lured with the promise of high-paying jobs, only to have their passports and be forced to conduct scams under the threat of violence. INTERPOL has characterized these networks as human trafficking-fuelled fraud on an industrial scale.
When black markets for drugs, guns, and all manner of contraband first sprang up on the dark web more than a decade ago, it seemed that cryptocurrency and the technical sophistication of the anonymity software Tor were the keys to carrying out billions of dollars worth of untouchable, illicit transactions online. Now, all of that looks a bit passé. In 2025, all it takes to get away with tens of billions of dollars in black-market crypto deals is a messaging platform willing to host scammers and human traffickers, enough persistence to relaunch channels and accounts on that service when they're occasionally banned, and fluency in Chinese.
A trial got underway in Seoul last week for 46 South Koreans, mostly men in their 20s, accused of participating in online scam operations in Cambodia. Since mid-October, South Korea has repatriated 107 nationals from Cambodia where officials estimate upwards of 1,000 of its citizens are working either "voluntarily or involuntarily" in scam compounds. The repatriation effort follows public outrage over the death of a South Korean college student, who was reportedly lured to Cambodia and forced to work in a scam center.
Caltrain had a 56% increase in ridership in 2025, landing it the title of fastest growing transit agency in the US by American Public Transportation Association's (APTA's) Transit Wrapped 2025 list. Additionally, the agency is rolling out its new electric-powered, one-day-only Holiday Train Saturday tickets sold out in a whopping 45 minutes, but spectators can still watch it roll along its route from SF to Santa Clara with a few notable destinations.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office has charged members of a San Jose family with running a network of brothels in Santa Clara County that were trafficking dozens of women and bringing in about a million dollars per year. Multiple co-defendants are facing felonies involving their operation of a network of at least 10 commercial sex brothels in Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Jose, Cupertino and Mountain View, according to an announcement today by the District Attorney's Office.
A 17-year-old girl known in court records as Jane Doe had been missing for roughly six weeks when her pictures turned up on an online prostitution advertisement based in the Bay Area, authorities said. So on Nov. 13, an Oakland police investigator went undercover and responded to the ad, posing as a potential sex buyer, and arranged to meet the teen at the hotel in the 1800 block of Embarcadero in Oakland, court records show.
Hundreds of thousands of workers-hailing from over 50 countries-are currently trapped within Southeast Asia's sprawling scam centers, according to estimates by the United Nations. But humanitarian experts think these workers may soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. In some scam centers, messages initiating contact between scammers and potential victims are already being crafted and sent by AI, says Ling Li, a researcher and co-author of Scam: Inside Southeast Asia's Cybercrime Compounds.
Polynesian Adventure Tours served as the co-title sponsor, hosting ABA leadership and group travel partners in support of Ho'ōla Nā Pua's mission to restore the lives of children who have been sexually exploited. "This engagement builds on the Association's growing leadership in the fight against human trafficking," according to a press release. "In 2024, ABA was honored with the Truckers Against Trafficking Champion Award, recognizing its dedication to raising awareness and promoting training within the motorcoach and group travel sectors.
These are extremely disturbing allegations involving repeated sexual abuse of a young female victim. Our office will provide this young woman and her family all the support they need as the court process moves forward.
Clergyman at Christian church in South Africa told the trial how murderer Lawrence helped him 'run a safe house for victims of human trafficking'.
