Missing US woman found after 10 years

May 22, 2014

Missing US woman

California, May 22: A 25-year-old woman who went missing 10 years ago in California has told police she was forced to marry her captor and have his child.

The unnamed woman contacted police shortly after communicating with her sister on Facebook, officers said.

Isidro Garcia, 41, was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of kidnapping, rape and false imprisonment.

Police said in a statement he had been living with the girl's family at the time of her disappearance.

The abuse began in 2004, the statement said, when Mr Garcia was dating the victim's mother and residing with her and her daughters in Santa Ana, a city in Orange County.

The police allege that Mr Garcia began sexually assaulting the victim in June of that year, only four months after the girl arrived in the US from Mexico.

In August, he assaulted the victim's mother and drugged the teenager, driving her 26 miles north to Compton, Los Angeles, where she was locked in a garage, say police.

"Over the course of the following months and years, Mr Garcia repeatedly told the victim her family had given up looking for her, and if she tried to go back to them, the family would be deported," police said.

The two moved on several occasions to avoid police detection, and used different identities, the police statement said.

Mr Garcia frequently physically and sexually assaulted the victim, it is alleged, and the two of them worked together at a night cleaning service.

"Even with the opportunity to escape, after years of physical and mental abuse, the victim saw no way out of her situation and lived a life with Garcia under sustained physical and mental abuse," police said.

At a press conference, Corporal Anthony Bertagna of the Santa Ana Police Department told reporters Mr Garcia had "brainwashed" her.

He said that in 2007, he forced the woman into a marriage, using documents he obtained in Mexico, and in 2012 the two had a child.

Recently, she contacted her sister on Facebook and was told that her mother had indeed been trying to find her, using a Spanish language newspaper and television station.

The communication with her sister made her realise she needed to leave, said Mr Bertagna, and on Monday she went to police to report that she was a victim of domestic abuse, and she told them she had been abducted.

The following day, police formally arrested Mr Garcia on suspicion of kidnapping for rape, lewd acts with a minor and false imprisonment. He has not been charged.

Neighbours in the street in Bell Gardens, Los Angeles, where the couple lived in recent years said on Wednesday evening they were stunned by the news, describing them as a happy couple who doted on their young daughter and even hosted parties.

The arrest comes a year after three women who went missing separately about a decade earlier were rescued from a house in Cleveland, Ohio.

Their captor, Ariel Castro, killed himself in prison in September 2013 at the beginning of a life sentence plus 1,000 years.

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News Network
May 18,2020

Washington, May 18: US President Donald Trump on Sunday called his predecessor Barak Obama a ‘grossly incompetent president’.

The Trump’s reaction came after Obama on Saturday criticised the US authorities' response to the coronavirus outbreak.

“He (Obama) was an incompetent president. That’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” Trump told reporters at the White House on his arrival from Camp David.

Trump was responding to a question on the virtual commencement address by Obama a day earlier.

In his address to college graduates, Obama had said that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the American leadership.

“More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama said without naming officials.

“A lot of them aren’t even pretending to be in charge,” he added.

There was no immediate response from the office of the former president on the remarks made by Trump.

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News Network
March 29,2020

Beijing, Mar 29: In a rare display of public anger in China, dozens of people in central Hubei province, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak till recently, attacked official vehicles after they were stopped from crossing a bridge and travel to neighbouring Jiangxi after the lifting of the lockdown.
Hubei province with over 56 million people was kept under lockdown from January 23 as part of aggressive measures to bring down COVID-19 cases which rapidly spread in the area.

Videos on Chinese social media on Friday showed unprecedented scenes of police from Hubei and Jiangxi clashing on the bridge connecting the two provinces over barricades erected from stopping Hubei people from moving out over fears of coronavirus spreading.

Policemen from both sides argued over how to verify if people were allowed to enter Jiangxi, according to local media reports.

It was a major relief for millions of people in Hubei province, when the Chinese government which kept it under lockdown lifted the restrictions on travel.

The government will permit people from the province to travel if they hold a green health code, meaning no contact with any infected or suspected COVID-19 cases.

But people of Hubei to their shock on Friday found roadblocks on the 1st Yangtze River Bridge that separates Huangmei county in Hubei erected by Huangmei county of Jiangxi province.

In local media reports, witnesses were quoted as saying that Huangmei police in Jiujiang erected roadblocks on the bridge to stop people from Hubei from crossing it, a move they alleged stigmatised them.

Video footage shared online showed rows of police armed with riot shields holding back the crowds, while members of the public could be seen damaging and even overturning police vehicles.

In a clip published by the Huanggang city government, which administers Huangmei, the county's Communist Party chief Ma Yanzhou could be heard speaking to the people through a loud hailer, warning them that by gathering in a large group they were increasing their chances of contracting the virus, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

While it is unclear exactly how the clash started, police from the two sides published separate official statements online, which were quickly deleted, it said.

The incident underlines the problems China faces as it seeks a return to normalcy after months of lockdown, the Post said.

After the incident, the governments of Huangmei and Jiujiang on Friday issued a joint statement saying they had agreed to remove the barriers set up to restrict travel during the lockdown, and also to recognise each other's health screening codes to make it easier for people in good health to get to where they needed to be, the Post report said.

An article by the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) mouthpiece, People''s Daily acknowledged the problems in getting the country back on its feet.

"In the past few days, all walks of life have called for governments to accept workers from Hubei," it said.

"However, it is undeniable that some places, intentionally or not, have set up obstacles for Hubei migrant workers to return to their posts and hold prejudices against them."

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News Network
June 6,2020

Islamabad, Jun 6: Pakistan has reported a record 97 COVID-19 deaths in a single day, taking the total number of fatalities to 1,935, while the number of confirmed cases in the country approached 94,000 after over 4,700 infections were detected, the health ministry said on Saturday.

Punjab registered 35,308 COVID-19 cases, Sindh 34,889, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 12,459, Balochistan 5,776 Islamabad 4,323, Gilgit-Baltistan 897 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 331 cases, the Ministry of National Health Services said.

The total number of COVID-19 cases reached 93,983 after 4,734 new infections were detected across the country, it said.

With a record 97 fatalities in one day, the death toll in the country has reached 1,935, while 32,581 people have recovered from the disease.

The ministry said that the total number of active COVID-19 cases in Pakistan are 59,467, out of which 1,265 patients are in critical condition.

More than 100 labs in the country have so far conducted 660,508 tests, including 22,185 in the last 24 hours.

There are 747 hospitals across the country with COVID-19 treatment facilities where 5,060 patients are being treated. Others have been asked to self-isolate at home.

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