Kenya ‘psychopath’ serial killer suspect escapes from custody

Kenya ‘psychopath’ serial killer suspect escapes from custody
Collins Jumaisi Khalusha (C), 33, looks on at the Kiambu law Courts in Kiambu on July 16, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 20 August 2024
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Kenya ‘psychopath’ serial killer suspect escapes from custody

Kenya ‘psychopath’ serial killer suspect escapes from custody
  • Collins Jumaisi, 33, described by police as a “vampire, a psychopath,” was arrested last month after the horrific discovery of mutilated bodies in a garbage dump in a slum in the Kenyan capital

Nairobi: Kenyan police launched a major manhunt on Tuesday after a man they claim has confessed to murdering and dismembering 42 women escaped from a Nairobi police cell, along with a dozen other detainees.
Collins Jumaisi, 33, described by police as a “vampire, a psychopath,” was arrested last month after the horrific discovery of mutilated bodies in a garbage dump in a slum in the Kenyan capital.
“Investigations have been launched and a major security operation is under way to get the 13 suspects,” Kenya police spokeswoman Resila Onyango told AFP.
Police said in a separate statement that they discovered the breakout when officers made a routine visit to the police station cells at around 5 am to serve the prisoners breakfast.
“On opening the cell door, they discovered that 13 prisoners had escaped by cutting the wire mesh in the basking bay,” it said, referring to an area in the station where detainees could get access to fresh air.
Those who fled were Jumaisi and 12 other people that police said were of Eritrean origin and were in custody for being “illegally present immigrants.”
The police station is located in the upmarket Nairobi district of Gigiri, home to the regional headquarters of the United Nations and numerous embassies.
It is the second time in barely six months that a suspect in a high-profile case has escaped from custody.
Kenyan national Kevin Kangethe, who is accused of murdering his girlfriend in the United States last year and leaving her body in an airport car park, fled a police station in February before being caught about a week later.

Jumaisi had appeared in a court in the Kenyan capital on Friday, when the magistrate ordered him to be held for a further 30 days to enable police to complete their investigations.
Ten butchered female bodies trussed up in plastic bags were found in the dumpsite in an abandoned quarry in the Nairobi slum of Mukuru, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) said last month.
The grisly find shocked Kenyans, already reeling from the so-called Shakahola forest massacre after the discovery of more than 400 bodies in mass graves near the Indian Ocean coast.
A Kenyan cult leader is accused of inciting his followers to starve themselves to death in order to prepare for the end of the world and “meet Jesus.” He faces numerous charges including terrorism, murder and child cruelty along with dozens of co-defendants.
Jumaisi was detained in the early hours of July 15 near a Nairobi bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football final.
The head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Mohamed Amin, said after his arrest that Jumaisi had confessed to murdering 42 women over a two-year period from 2022, and that his wife had been his first victim.
“We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin said at the time.
The dumped bodies threw a fresh spotlight on Kenya’s police force as they were found just 100 meters (yards) from a police station.
The state-funded KNCHR said in July it was carrying out its own investigations into the Mukuru case because “there is a need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings.”
Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority, had also said it was looking into whether there was any police involvement or a “failure to act to prevent” the killings.
Kenyan police are often accused by rights groups of carrying out unlawful killings or running hit squads, but few have faced justice.


Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
Updated 7 min 6 sec ago
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Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
  • Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze
  • The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department
MANILA: Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky Sunday as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.
Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.
There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.
The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.
Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.
“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.
“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”
Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.
“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.

Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
Updated 5 sec ago
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Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital

Fire rips through slum area in Philippine capital
  • Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were destroyed in the blaze

MANILA: Raging orange flames and thick black smoke billowed into the sky Sunday as fire ripped through hundreds of houses in a closely built slum area of the Philippine capital Manila.

Manila Fire District said around 1,000 houses were burned in the blaze that is thought to have started on the second floor of one of the homes.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Drone footage shared online by the city’s disaster agency showed houses in Isla Puting Bato village of Manila razed to the ground.

The structures housed around 2,000 families, according to the fire department.

Village resident Leonila Abiertas, 65, lost almost all her possessions, but managed to save her late husband’s ashes.

“I only got the urn with the ashes of my husband,” a crying Abiertas said.

“I really don’t know how I can start my life again after this fire.”

Fire and disaster services deployed 36 trucks and four fire boats while the country’s airforce sent in two helicopters to help extinguish the fire.

“That area is fire-prone since most of the houses there are made of light materials,” firefighter Geanelli Nunez said.


Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief

Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief
Updated 24 November 2024
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Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief

Turkiye’s Erdogan to discuss Ukraine war with NATO chief

ANKARA: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan will discuss the latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday during his visit to Ankara, a Turkish official said on Sunday.
Russia struck Ukraine with a new hypersonic medium-range ballistic missile on Thursday in response to Kyiv’s use of US and British missiles against Russia, marking an escalation in the war that began when Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022.
NATO member Turkiye, which has condemned the Russian invasion, says it supports Ukraine’s territorial integrity and it has provided Kyiv with military support.
But Turkiye, a Black Sea neighbor of both Russia and Ukraine, also opposes Western sanctions against Moscow, with which it shares important defense, energy and tourism ties.
On Wednesday, Erdogan opposed a US decision to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles to attack inside Russia, saying it would further inflame the conflict, according to a readout shared by his office.
Moscow says that by giving the green light for Ukraine to fire Western missiles deep inside Russia, the US and its allies are entering into direct conflict with Russia. On Tuesday, Putin approved policy changes that lowered the threshold for Russia to use nuclear weapons in response to an attack with conventional weapons.
During their talks on Monday, Erdogan and Rutte will also discuss the removal of defense procurement obstacles between NATO allies and the military alliance’s joint fight against terrorism, the Turkish official said.


Blasts heard in Ukraine’s Kyiv, witnesses report

Blasts heard in Ukraine’s Kyiv, witnesses report
Updated 24 November 2024
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Blasts heard in Ukraine’s Kyiv, witnesses report

Blasts heard in Ukraine’s Kyiv, witnesses report

KYIV: Explosions were heard early on Sunday in Kyiv, Reuters’ witnesses and local media in the Ukrainian capital reported.
The blasts sounded like air defense units in operation, Reuters’ witnesses reported. There was no immediate official comment from Ukraine’s military. Kyiv and its surrounding region and most of northeast Ukraine were under air raid alerts, starting at around 0100 GMT.

Meanwhile, Russia’s air defense systems destroyed 34 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 27 over the Kursk region bordering Ukraine, Russia’s defense ministry said in a post on its Telegram messaging app on Sunday.
The ministry, in its post, did not mention an earlier statement by the Kursk governor that air defense units had destroyed two “Ukrainian missiles” overnight over the region. 


Developing nations slam ‘paltry’ $300 billion climate deal

Developing nations slam ‘paltry’ $300 billion climate deal
Updated 24 November 2024
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Developing nations slam ‘paltry’ $300 billion climate deal

Developing nations slam ‘paltry’ $300 billion climate deal
  • Developing countries say finance pact “optical illusion” and “lack of goodwill” from rich countries amid heated negotiations
  • Agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies

BAKU: The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low.
After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan.
But the applause had barely subsided when India delivered a full-throated rejection of the “abysmally poor” deal, kicking off a firestorm of criticism from across the developing world.
“It’s a paltry sum,” thundered India’s delegate Chandni Raina.
“This document is little more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face.”
Sierra Leone’s climate minister Jiwoh Abdulai said it showed a “lack of goodwill” from rich countries to stand by the world’s poorest as they confront rising seas and harsher droughts.
Nigeria’s envoy Nkiruka Maduekwe put it more bluntly: “This is an insult.”
Some countries had accused Azerbaijan, an oil and gas exporter, of lacking the will to meet the moment in a year defined by costly disasters and on track to become the hottest on record.
But at protests throughout COP29, developed nations — major economies like the European Union, United States and Japan — were accused of negotiating in bad faith, making a fair deal impossible.
Developing nations arrived in the Caspian Sea city of Baku hoping to secure a massive financial boost from rich countries many times above their existing pledge of $100 billion a year.
Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands, said she would return home with only “small portion” of what she fought for, but not empty-handed.
“It isn’t nearly enough, but it’s a start,” said Stege, whose atoll nation homeland faces an existential threat from creeping sea levels.
Nations had struggled at COP29 to reconcile long-standing divisions over how much developed nations most accountable for historic climate change should provide to poorer countries least responsible but most impacted by Earth’s rapid warming.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged the final deal was imperfect and said “no country got everything they wanted.”
“This is no time for victory laps,” he said.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he had “hoped for a more ambitious outcome” and appealed to governments to see it as a starting point.
Developed countries only put the $300 billion figure on the table on Saturday after COP29 went into extra time and diplomats worked through the night to improve an earlier spurned offer.
Bleary-eyed diplomats, huddled anxiously in groups, were still polishing the final phrasing on the plenary floor in the dying hours before the deal passed.
UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband hailed “a critical eleventh hour deal at the eleventh hour for the climate.”
At points, the talks appeared on the brink of collapse.
Delegates stormed out of meetings, fired shots across the bow, and threatened to walk away from the negotiating table should rich nations not cough up more cash.
In the end — despite repeating that “no deal is better than a bad deal” — developing nations did not stand in the way of an agreement.
US President Joe Biden cast the agreement reached in Baku as a “historic outcome.”
EU climate envoy Wopke Hoekstra said it would be remembered as “the start of a new era for climate finance.”
The agreement commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies, cut emissions and prepare for worse disasters.
It falls short of the $390 billion that economists commissioned by the United Nations had deemed a fair share contribution by developed nations.
“This COP has been a disaster for the developing world,” said Mohamed Adow, the Kenyan director of Power Shift Africa, a think tank.
“It’s a betrayal of both people and planet, by wealthy countries who claim to take climate change seriously.”
The United States and EU pushed to have newly wealthy emerging economies like China — the world’s largest emitter — chip in.
Wealthy nations said it was politically unrealistic to expect more in direct government funding at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and economic belt-tightening.
Donald Trump, a skeptic of both climate change and foreign assistance, was elected just days before COP29 began and his victory cast a pall over the UN talks.
Other countries, particularly in the EU — the largest contributor of climate finance — saw right-wing backlashes against the green agenda, not fertile conditions for raising big sums of public money.
The final deal “encourages” developing countries to make contributions on a voluntary basis, reflecting no change for China, which already provides climate finance on its own terms.
The deal also posits a larger overall target of $1.3 trillion per year to cope with rising temperatures and disasters, but most would come from private sources.