After months of mounting criticism over inaction, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has finally launched a national enquiry into grooming gang crimes, marking a major policy U-turn for the Labour government. The move comes in response to widespread public outrage, a damning institutional review, and escalating pressure from campaigners, opposition politicians, and prominent figures, including…
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Saturday said he would back a national inquiry into grooming gangs that sexually abused thousands of girls across the country, marking a significant shift in the government’s stance on the issue. Starmer’s announcement comes after Louise Casey, a former senior government official, conducted a “rapid audit” of the current…
A powerful alliance of armed gangs that has plunged Haiti into violence and launched attacks against state institutions was designated on Friday as a terrorist group by the Trump administration. The move is likely to worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis in Haiti, experts said, since gangs control much of the country’s economy and infrastructure,…
A 16-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of murder in Sweden, the authorities said on Wednesday, after three people were fatally shot the day before, in the latest blow to a country grappling with high levels of gun violence compared to its European peers. The three victims were found in a hair salon in the…
The city of Machala is dotted with posters of Ecuador’s two presidential candidates, their smiling faces looking out over shuttered businesses and streets that empty out after 6 p.m. because of rival gangs that torment the city. Machala, a port city south of Guayaquil, is a microcosm of the challenges facing the South American country…
Soon after he took up his post in El Salvador, U.S. Ambassador Ronald Johnson forged an unusually close relationship with the country’s president. President Trump had nominated Mr. Johnson in 2019 as his ambassador to the country shortly after the White House declared war on El Salvador’s notoriously violent gangs, including MS-13. The relationship between…
A video that circulated widely on the internet recently showed a Haitian gang leader, Joseph Wilson, shirtless, happily showing off belts of .50 caliber ammunition, mockingly saying he used the armor-piercing bullets to groom his hair. “We have enough combs for our hair to last a year,” he joked. So how did he get them?…
Britain’s National Crime Agency has warned of an “unprecedented risk” to young people from online groups that encourage teenagers to share sadistic and misogynistic material and to coerce others into sexual abuse, self-harm or violence. The agency, which is responsible for combating serious and organized crime in Britain, said Tuesday in an annual assessment of…
According to Ms. Casique, her son had no gang affiliation and had entered the United States to seek asylum in late 2023 after several years spent working in Peru to support his family back home. During his journey north, he had been injured in Mexico after a fall from a train, she said. Mr. García,…
President Trump’s executive order on Saturday invoking the Alien Enemies Act targeted Venezuelan citizens 14 years and older with ties to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, saying they “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.” Mr. Trump’s order was quickly challenged in court, but the gang has been a…