[Breitbart] Federal authorities in Nebraska carried out a series of raids, leading to the arrest of a group of Indian nationals who were allegedly engaged in an elaborate scheme involving sex, labor, and drug trafficking. In addition to multiple businesses owned by the suspected traffickers in Nebraska, the scheme also involved companies in Georgia and Texas.
In an announcement on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska Lesley A. Woods reported the arrest of five Indian nationals and the unsealing of a 65-page indictment alleging that the suspects operated a series of hotels, motels, and “Brow and Lash” salons that were allegedly used to traffic other illegal aliens. The aliens were allegedly forced to provide labor and sex to pay for rooms in the hotels where they were forced to live, the indictment obtained by Breitbart Texas alleges.
USA Woods announced the arrest of:
Kentakumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Ken Chaudhari, age 36, of Elkhorn, NE;
Rashmi Ajit Samani, a/k/a Falguni Samani, age 42, of Elkhorn, NE;
Amit Prahladbhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Amit, age 32, of Omaha;
Amit Babubhai Chaudhari, a/k/a Matt, age 33, of Omaha; and
Maheshkumar Chaudhari, a/k/a Mahesh, age 38, of Norfolk, NE.
Arrests took place at 14 business locations and two homes associated with the suspects, a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed. The indictment alleges the trafficking of illegal aliens, sex trafficking, and drug trafficking.
United States Attorney Lesley Woods said, “There is no evil greater than the evil that seeks to trap, oppress, and exploit human beings for profit or pleasure. Where that evil exists, Nebraska law enforcement working together at the federal, state, and local levels, as occurred in this case, will seek it, find it, root it out, and ensure every rescued victim has an opportunity to obtain justice and freedom from their captors.”
Investigators with the FBI and ICE Homeland Security Investigations rescued ten minors from an alleged labor trafficking conspiracy. The indictment describes a 12-year-old female who was forced to work as a housekeeper at one of the properties for long hours with little pay.
“Seventeen adult victims were also rescued from the same conspiracy,” the statement revealed. “The complaint affidavit details the allegedly exploitative conditions these victims were subjected to while being required to pay the defendants for their lodging at the hotels. The lodging accommodations were unclean, unsafe, and unhealthy.”
“On one occasion, a source working with the federal government entered a hotel room where immigrant victims were sleeping on the floor of the room with cockroaches crawling on the victims as they slept,” officials reported.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office also alleges a sex trafficking operation that included adults and minors. “Sex trafficking was not only allowed at the hotels according to complaint affidavit allegations, but also encouraged, protected from law enforcement detection, and sex trafficking victims at the hotels were subjected not only to the traditional perpetrators of a sex trafficking scheme but also to hotel management and employees victimizing them as well,” officials alleged.
Two Spanish-speaking minor females told investigators they were transported from out of state and forced to engage in commercial sex acts. They said they were also forced to perform sex acts on hotel employees to rent rooms or keep rooms already rented, the indictment reports.
A former employee allegedly told investigators he witnessed a woman being forced to perform oral sex on a front desk employee to keep from being kicked out of the property. She reportedly carried out the act but was kicked out anyway, he stated. He said he also observed an obviously underage Indian female who solicited him for sex. He said he took her to the room where her male relatives were staying and they asked if they could get a free room if she engaged in sex with him.
He said security cameras were moved to create a blind spot for rooms that were used for prostitution.
Another woman who stayed at one of the properties was shown a video of her being sexually assaulted in one of the rooms. The video appeared to be recorded by a secret camera installed in the bedroom furniture, the indictment states. The employees told her the video had been uploaded to a porn site
In addition, drug trafficking is alleged to have taken place on the properties and businesses involved in the scheme. The statement from prosecutors states:
Overdoses were a common problem, and at least one hotel had to keep Narcan at the front desk as a result. One source cited described a stairwell of one of the hotels as being littered with drug needles. Drug use was open and notorious in the parking lots according to eyewitnesses and to some online guest reviews.
Many of the illegal aliens, victimized by the alleged conspirators, entered the U.S. without inspection and were later apprehended and “paroled” into the U.S. during the Biden-era border crisis. The human trafficking included adults and minor children, the indictment reveals. Some of the migrants crossed the Mexican border into Arizona and told Border Patrol agents they would be residing at the defendants’ hotels and motels, officials stated.
One source told investigators he was directed to travel to North Carolina for the purpose of transporting a family, including two children, to Nebraska. During this incident, according to the indictment, a traffic stop took place and HSI investigators learned that the family entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and were “paroled” into the U.S. due to a lack of bed space in detention facilities. They were released with a Notice to Appear, a common practice under the Biden administration. The family told investigators they were traveling to Nebraska for a “vacation” and that someone else was paying for the trip.
Investigators learned the conspirators would charge up to $79,000 to transport migrants from India to the United States.
The conspirators also schemed to stage a fake robbery at a brow salon to enable one of the illegal aliens to apply for a U visa.
During the investigation, officials seized more than $565,0o0 in cash that was allegedly involved in money laundering. The government also filed suit to seize multiple properties involved in the scheme, prosecutors stated.
Posted by: Skidmark ||
08/13/2025 09:27 ||
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#1
Kids were involved; they need to go away for good.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
08/13/2025 11:47 Comments ||
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#2
So 'dot', not 'feather'.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/13/2025 12:28 Comments ||
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#3
^ First clue: operated a series of hotels, motels, and “Brow and Lash” salons
Posted by: Frank G ||
08/13/2025 13:00 Comments ||
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[FoxNews] Patrick White fired 200 rounds at CDC buildings before taking his own life Friday, officials said
The man accused of killing a police officer while shooting at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta on Friday had previously been reported to police for suicidal thoughts and launched the deadly attack with his father’s weapons to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines, authorities said Tuesday.
Patrick Joseph White, 30, is suspected of killing DeKalb County Police Department Officer David Rose, 33, shortly before 5 p.m., in an attack that saw him unload around 200 rounds into six CDC buildings. White's driver's license image was released publicly for the first time on Tuesday.
Rose, who previously served as a Marine in Afghanistan and joined the DeKalb County Police Department in September 2024, was responding to the scene and died from gunshot wounds.
Five firearms were recovered by law enforcement, mostly long guns, with more than 500 shell casings found at the scene, authorities said at a Tuesday press briefing.
Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Director Chris Hosey said law enforcement made contact with White about mental health warning signs.
"The shooter had no known criminal history. Evidence in this investigation indicates that the shooter had recently verbalized thoughts of suicide, which even led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks prior to the incident," Hosey said.
He said investigators are getting with the law enforcement that made those contacts to find out the details, but did not provide further information. White died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Hosey said.
White, who was from the Atlanta suburb of Kennesaw, had police called on him three different times about being suicidal in the past year, Fox Atlanta reported. In at least one of those calls, White's father told dispatchers that his son had gotten a gun from his father’s locker.
In a September 2024 call, White told police his health had declined after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine and that his deteriorating condition had led to suicidal ideation. Officers said White stated he was in pain and had back surgery a decade ago. He claimed taking a gun from his father’s locker was "only a cry for help."
After that incident, White was taken to Kennestone Hospital but refused mental health treatment on subsequent calls, per the report. Two other calls took place in April and July of this year.
Hosey said that for Friday’s attack, White broke into his father’s safe to get the guns, noting they had been locked away.
"All indications in our investigation was that they were secure and that he forced his way into the safe that contained the weapons," said Hosey, adding that the suspect did not have a key to the gun safe: "He broke into it," Hosey said.
Hosey said that during a search of his residence, authorities found documents expressing anger towards the COVID-19 vaccine. He said there were no direct threats made in the writing, but it was described as personal manifesto to "make the public aware" of his views.
"A search warrant executed at the residence of the shooter revealed written documentation that expressed the shooter's discontent with the COVID-19 vaccinations," Hosey said.
"I would describe it as more of a public awareness. There was no direct threat... but it was his making the public aware, in his words, of his discontent with the vaccines itself," Hosey said in response to a reporter’s follow-up question.
Hosey said the materials are being reviewed by certified behavioral profilers and shared with the FBI.
White had been stopped by CDC security guards before driving to a pharmacy across the street, where he opened fire from a sidewalk, authorities said. The bullets pierced "blast-resistant" windows across the campus, pinning employees down during the barrage. More than 500 shell casings have been recovered from the crime scene, the GBI said.
In the aftermath, officials at the CDC are assessing the security of the campus and making sure they notify officials of any new threats.
[NYPOST] Do Kwon, the South Korean cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion in 2022, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two charges of conspiracy to defraud and wire fraud.
Kwon, 33, who co-founded Singapore-based Terraform Labs and developed the TerraUSD and Luna currencies, entered the plea at a court hearing in New York before US District Judge Paul Engelmayer.
He had pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." in January to a nine-count indictment charging him with securities fraud, wire fraud, commodities fraud and money laundering conspiracy.
Accused of misleading investors in 2021 about TerraUSD — a so-called stablecoin designed to maintain a value of $1 — Kwon pleaded guilty to the two counts under an agreement with the Manhattan US Attorney's office, which brought the charges.
He faces up to 25 years in prison when Engelmayer sentences him on Dec. 11, though prosecutor Kimberly Ravener said the government had agreed to advocate for a prison term of no more than 12 years provided he accepts responsibility for his crimes.
Kwon is one of several cryptocurrency moguls to face federal charges after a slump in digital token prices in 2022 prompted the collapse of a number of companies.
Prosecutors alleged that when TerraUSD slipped below its $1 peg in May 2021, he told investors a computer algorithm known as ''Terra Protocol'' had restored the coin's value.
Instead, they said, he arranged for a high-frequency trading firm to secretly buy millions of dollars of the token to artificially prop up its price.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/13/2025 00:00 ||
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[NYPOST] The maniac arrested for allegedly opening fire in the parking lot of a Target in Texas, killing two adults and a child, was identified Tuesday — as cops released his bruised and bloodied mugshot.
Ethan Nieneker, 32, is accused of gunning down the victims in Austin on Monday afternoon before making a dramatic getaway that involved two stolen cars and a police chase.
Nieneker, whom cops had earlier described as having a ''mental health history,'' ended up being detained with the help of a Taser on the other side of the city.
His mugshot showed blood oozing from a gash beside one of his eyes, as well as several scratches across his face.
Nieneker is being held in the Travis County Jail on a slew of murder charges.
He already has a lengthy rap sheet in Travis and Williamson counties — including for assault — family violence, criminal mischief, DWI and possession, Fox7 Austin reported.
The deadly saga unfolded when Nieneker allegedly stormed the Target parking lot just north of Austin around 2:15 p.m. Monday, cops said.
An adult and the child were pronounced dead at the scene, while the second adult died at the hospital, according to police.
A fourth victim, who suffered unrelated injuries, was treated at the scene.
Nieneker is accused of fleeing in one of the slain victims' cars and crashing it soon after.
He allegedly hijacked another vehicle from a Volkswagen dealership before he ended up being detained some 20 miles away in the city's south end, cops said.
Police haven't released any details on the victims.
Investigators are also still probing a motive for the bloodshed and are planning to hold a news conference later Tuesday to provide an update.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/13/2025 00:00 ||
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The remains of British meteorologist Dennis "Tink" Bell, who disappeared without a trace in 1959 during an expedition, have been found in Antarctica. This was reported on August 12 by the British publication LADbible.
Bell, who worked for the Falkland Islands Dependent Areas Survey (now the British Antarctic Survey), went with colleagues and two dog teams to climb the glacier when he disappeared on 26 July 1959.
According to reports, Bell, 25, was riding ahead of the group, trying to encourage the tired dogs, when he fell into a crevasse. An attempt to rescue him with a rope was unsuccessful: the rope was tied to his belt instead of his body, causing him to become stuck in a narrow space, the belt snapped, and he fell deeper. His cries were no longer heard after that, and searches were unsuccessful.
In 2025, a team from the Polish Antarctic station named after Henryk Arctowski on the same island discovered the body of the explorer along with more than 200 personal items - radio equipment, a flashlight, ski poles and a watch with an Erguel engraving.
The remains were returned to the Falkland Islands by the research vessel BAS Sir David Attenborough and then flown to London. DNA testing confirmed the identity of the deceased, matching samples with those of his brother David Bell and sister Valerie Kelly.
"We were shocked and amazed when we learned that our brother was found after 66 years," said the brother of the deceased meteorologist.
[RealRawNews] White Hats Kill Ukrainian Assassin in Alaska Days Ahead of Trump-Putin Meeting
White Hats on Sunday killed a Ukrainian assassin in Wasilla, Alaska, five days before President Trump is scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin at a currently undisclosed venue in The Last Frontier.
At approximately 10:00 p.m., soldiers from the 10th Special Forces Group stormed a bungalow on Front Street, near Lake Lucille, and shot dead 42-year-old Stefan Orestovych, a resident of Kyiv and former employee of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. He was also a trained sniper, having spent a decade with the Ukrainian army’s Special Operations Forces. US Special Forces had to kill him, a White Hat source told Real Raw News, for he had pulled a pistol on them as they charged through the doorway.
After neutralizing the threat, the soldiers found two Sig P229 pistols, a scoped and suppressor-fitted Daniel Defense DDM4 AR-style rifle, and the expertly forged passport Orestovych had used to enter the US via Anchorage. White Hats are currently tracing the firearms’ origin, and believe he must have gotten them domestically after arriving in the US on August 5.
According to our source, it was Putin who told President Trump that he had high confidence that a skilled and notorious assassin had successfully reached Alaska. The FSB, Russia’s counterintelligence agency, had somehow determined that Orestovych would be staying in Wasilla ahead of the Trump-Putin conference. It’s unclear whether Orestovych knew the location of the meeting, as both the White House and the Kremlin have kept that information a closely guarded secret. As Orestovych is dead and can’t be questioned, who he planned to kill is also unknown. Trump? Putin? Both?
On August 7, Special Forces met with Secret Service agents in Anchorage to forge plans to find the would-be assassin. The Secret Service, our source said, fanned across Wasilla, a relatively small city with a population of only 3,000 permanent residents, and asked locals if any unusual strangers had shown up in town over the last few days. For an assassin, Orestovych wasn’t exceptionally discreet. Employees at two local eateries told the Secret Service that a middle-aged male, thin and about six feet three, with a thick Eastern European accent, had eaten at their establishments and was staying at a small cabin near Lake Lucille.
Following the clues, the Secret Service scoped out the cabin and ran the plates of the KIA Soul parked on a gravel driveway. It was a rental from Enterprise Rent-a-Car at Anchorage International Airport, and the renter had acquired it using forged credentials—an international driver’s license and a foreign Mastercard with matching names. Our source would not disclose Orestovych’s alias.
Convinced they had located the mark, Secret Service and Special Forces debated which entity would apprehend Orestovych. Apparently, they ruffled each other’s feathers, each wanting the honor of catching him. President Trump, our source said, cast the deciding vote; Special Forces would breach the cabin and subdue Orestovych, then hand him over to the Secret Service.
Meanwhile, President Trump contacted Putin to inform him he had found Orestovych, whose arrest was imminent.
Over the next two days, the soldiers and the Secret Service tracked Orestovych’s movements, as they had to be sure he had no accomplice looming in the shadows. He left the cabin only twice each day, an hour each time, to eat breakfast and dinner at either Nonna’s Osteria or Everett’s café. He would sit alone in a corner, avoiding conversation.
On Sunday, Special Forces decided the time had come to arrest Orestovych. Four soldiers would enter through the front door, while another eight would encircle the cabin in case Orestovych tried leaping out a window to escape.
The encounter began with one soldier smashing a window and tossing a CS canister into the living room where Orestovych was sitting on a chair and reading a magazine. But the grenade, alas, was a dud. Orestovych sprang to his feet as the soldiers kicked open the door and ordered him to drop to his knees and interlace his hands atop his head. Instead of complying, Orestovych reached for a pistol in his waistband and was promptly greeted by a flurry of bullets that pierced his body from head to toe.
Afterward, Special Forces and the Secret Service argued, the latter insisting that if they had taken the lead, Orestovych would still be alive to be questioned.
Possibly. Soldiers have different priorities and training than the Secret Service, which combines protection and policing.
Update: Orestovych rented the cabin from a local and paid in cash. That individual does not want to be indentified.
#1
The writing's a little flowery. But the grenade, alas, was a dud.
Doesn't the 10th SFG have a EUCOM AOR?
10th Mountain trains at Ft. Wainwright, a 1 hr flight away.
The encounter began with one soldier smashing a window and tossing a CS canister into the living room where Orestovych was sitting on a chair and reading a magazine.
I kinda think a flashbang over CS if they were going for immediate incapacitation, entry and capture.
[ZERO] The first half of 2025’s best-selling cars in the U.S. confirms America’s long-standing love affair with trucks and SUVs.
Pickup models from Ford, Chevrolet, and Ram continue to dominate the top ranks, while compact SUVs from Toyota and Honda also make strong showings. Sedans, once the default choice for many households, are now largely absent from the bestseller list.
This ranking, via Visual Capitalist's Niccolo Conte, showcases the 20 best-selling vehicles in the U.S. from January through June 2025 using data from Cox Automotive and Automotive News via Kelley Blue Book.
For whatever reason I seem to have a lot more White FORD Super Duty P/U's riding my rear bumper, despite me doing the usual 10+ over. Then its Mercedes Vans and BMW & Toyota cars are next in that order.
Such systems may use a radar, laser sensor or a camera setup allowing the vehicle to brake when it detects the car is approaching another vehicle ahead ...
The technology enhances passenger safety and convenience as well as increasing road capacity by maintaining optimal separation between vehicles and reducing driver errors.
Link goes to advisorperspectives.com. CONSUMER PRICE INDEX - JULY 2025
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in July, after rising 0.3 percent in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 2.7 percent before seasonal adjustment.
The index for shelter rose 0.2 percent in July and was the primary factor in the all items monthly increase. The food index was unchanged over the month as the food away from home index rose 0.3 percent while the food at home index fell 0.1 percent. In contrast, the index for energy fell 1.1 percent in July as the index for gasoline decreased 2.2 percent over the month.
The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in July, following a 0.2-percent increase in June. Indexes that increased over the month include medical care, airline fares, recreation, household furnishings and operations, and used cars and trucks. The indexes for lodging away from home and communication were among the few major indexes that decreased in July.
The all items index rose 2.7 percent for the 12 months ending July, after rising 2.7 percent over the 12 months ending June. The all items less food and energy index rose 3.1 percent over the last 12 months. The energy index decreased 1.6 percent for the 12 months ending July. The food index increased 2.9 percent over the last year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- A Federal funds rate cut is now likely in mid Sept based on this report and the current trends in T bonds.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/13/2025 00:00 ||
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[ArsTechnica] In recent months, the AI industry has started moving toward so-called simulated reasoning models that use a "chain of thought" process to work through tricky problems in multiple logical steps. At the same time, recent research has cast doubt on whether those models have even a basic understanding of general logical concepts or an accurate grasp of their own "thought process."
Similar research shows that these "reasoning" models can often produce incoherent, logically unsound answers when questions include irrelevant clauses or deviate even slightly from common templates found in their training data.
In a recent pre-print paper, researchers from the University of Arizona summarize this existing work as "suggest[ing] that LLMs are not principled reasoners but rather sophisticated simulators of reasoning-like text." To pull on that thread, the researchers created a carefully controlled LLM environment in an attempt to measure just how well chain-of-thought reasoning works when presented with "out of domain" logical problems that don't match the specific logical patterns found in their training data.
The results suggest that the seemingly large performance leaps made by chain-of-thought models are "largely a brittle mirage" that "become[s] fragile and prone to failure even under moderate distribution shifts," the researchers write. "Rather than demonstrating a true understanding of text, CoT reasoning under task transformations appears to reflect a replication of patterns learned during training."
#2
AI brings a gargantuan productivity increase in fields related to esthetics. Commercial art, illustrations for ad campaigns, commercial jingles etc is AI's strength.
But AI is unreliable when it comes to facts.
If thoroughly checking AI output for accuracy and suitability is easy then AI is an appropriate tool with a disruptive impact.
If thoroughly checking AI output is hard, perhaps harder than creating on original work using other tools AI will decrease productivity.
The standard SF trope that an AI would resemble an unemotional, fact oriented, rational human mind has turned out not to be true.
AI is more like a simulation of a excentric gifted artist's mind during a fever dream, a product of complex computational activity without consciousness.
#4
LLMs are not what researchers call Artificial General Intelligence. Efforts toward that incorporate multiple agents with different computational inputs and algorithms - think, a self-directing robot with many sensors of different kinds, a shared internal netowrk of inferences from those different modules etc. In other words, how human brains / minds work.
LLMs and the generative approach to making new sentences etc. from patterns learned via LLMs, are not AGI. The AI label stuck because language is key for humans - key, but not the whole story by any means.
Posted by: Robin Burk ||
08/13/2025 7:27 Comments ||
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#6
The one thing that no AI is capable of is answering the "Why" question.
There has to be self awareness to motivate an independent activity to accomplish a goal. Anyone know of any such thing?
That's what all the algorithms and programs do. The hardest thing in programming is deciding what you (the customer) wants to accomplish and why. Lots of discussion about those.
Anybody who knows any differently can feel free to correct me but, to the best of my knowledge, AI is merely the latest buzzword for software and it's only as good as the people who program it.
Software is a tool that can do a lot of wonderful things for us. Software can solve a lot of problems when all of the variables are known or can be calculated with the variables that are known. But the world, the universe, is a vast and complex organism and we simply don't know all the variables yet. At some time in the future we will hopefully know more than we do now. But for now, software (call it AI if you must) should be taking baby steps that are subject to rigorous testing, sticking to situations where the variables are known.
I remain extremely skeptical of anybody's claim that their software can do my thinking for me.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
08/13/2025 14:08 Comments ||
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#8
I remain extremely skeptical of anybody's claim that their software can do my thinking for me.
There are a lot of people in the world who avoid thinking as far as possible.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[NYPOST] The maniac arrested for allegedly opening fire in the parking lot of a Target in Texas, killing two adults and a child, was identified Tuesday — as cops released his bruised and bloodied mugshot.
