45 minutes to pack up a lifetime as Pakistan's foreigner crackdown sends Afghans scrambling
TORKHAM, Afghanistan (AP) — The order was clear and indisputable, the timeline startling. You have 45 minutes to pack up and leave Pakistan forever.
Sher Khan, a 42-year-old Afghan, had returned home from his job in a brick factory. He stared at the plainclothes policeman on the doorstep, his mind reeling. How could he pack up his whole life and leave the country of his birth in under an hour?
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
28 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
China and Hong Kong national security authorities launch 1st publicly known joint operation
HONG KONG (AP) — China's national security authorities in Hong Kong and the city's police launched their first publicly known joint operation, raiding the homes of six people on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces to endanger national security. The police's statement on late Thursday did not disclose the identity of the six people suspected of breaking the 2020 Beijing-imposed national security law between November 2020 and June 2024. Beyond their homes, officers searched the office of the organization involved and seized exhibits such as bank documents and devices for further investigation, according to the statement. The six people were required to surrender their travel documents. Beijing's national security arm in Hong Kong also had requested assistance from the city's national security police, including in arranging interviews with the people in the case, the police said. But the local force did not elaborate details of their accusations and which organization it was, saying the investigation was still underway. Since the 2020 security law took effect, many leading activists have been prosecuted or jailed for national security offenses . Last week, prominent young activist Joshua Wong, who was already convicted and sentenced over a subversion case last year, was charged for the second time under the law. He faces up to life in prison over the fresh charge of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces to endanger national security. The Beijing and Hong Kong governments insist the law was necessary for returning stability to the city following massive anti-government protests in 2019. In May, Hong Kong enacted subsidiary legislation for a separate, homegrown national security law, which was passed last year. The subsidiary legislation requires public servants, if requested, to provide all necessary and reasonable assistance to Beijing's national security office in Hong Kong. Local public servants must offer such help if the office needs to ascertain whether a case involves a special circumstance that could allow it to have jurisdiction over the case. Over the past week, the Hong Kong authorities have stepped up their national security work as the fifth anniversary of the enactment of the Beijing-imposed law neared, including targeting a mobile game application which they accused of advocating armed revolution and promoting secessionist agendas.
Toronto Sun
42 minutes ago
- Toronto Sun
Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend sobs on stand while describing sex marathons
Published Jun 06, 2025 • Last updated 6 days ago • 4 minute read A view from the jury box is shown inside a federal courtroom similar to the room where the trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs' is being held in Federal District court in Manhattan on Friday, June 6, 2025 in New York. Photo by Jefferson Siegel / The New York Times via AP, Pool Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. NEW YORK (AP) — Sean 'Diddy' Combs ' recent ex-girlfriend broke down on the witness stand Friday describing their many drug-fueled sex marathons, saying the music mogul ignored her signals to stop and scolded her for crying after another encounter. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Testifying under the pseudonym 'Jane' for a second day, the woman recounted how Combs pushed her to continue sex acts with men while he watched even after she gave 'subtle cues' — saying she was tired and hungry, making faces and gestures — that she wanted to stop. Instead, she said, he told her to 'finish strong.' Asked why she didn't tell him outright, Jane sobbed, 'I just, I don't know.' Later, she said Combs would shut her down when she tried to talk about ending the encounters, which she called 'dark, sleazy.' Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to running his business empire as a racketeering enterprise that enabled and concealed the abuse of women over two decades. If convicted, he faces 15 years to life. The defence has asserted the sexual activities were all consensual and nothing Combs did amounted to a criminal enterprise. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Jane's account in the trial's fourth week has closely mirrored that of R&B singer Casandra 'Cassie' Ventura, another former girlfriend who testified Combs assaulted her and forced her into 'hundreds' of encounters with male sex workers dubbed ' freak-offs.' Jane called them 'hotel nights' and the men 'entertainers.' Prosecutor Maurene Comey sought to show that Combs used his wealth to manipulate women into submitting to his sexual demands and make them reliant on him and his needs. By September 2023, Jane said, Combs had been paying her rent for about five months. Asked what she feared would happen if she stopped doing hotel nights, Jane replied, 'That Sean would take the house away.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. After one such night, Jane said she cried and Combs told her 'Don't do that right now,' and 'I can't do this right now. I'm too high.' She testified she'd blacked out earlier from the drug ecstasy that Combs gave her. During another encounter, she tried to remain sober but vomited in a bathroom after having sex with two men in a row. Combs told her, 'That's good. You'll feel better now that you've thrown up. So let's go.' She then had sex with a third man, describing herself as 'repulsed.' Jane said she endured the encounters because she valued time alone with Combs afterward. 'I would really fight to block out how sad I was after,' she testified. In messages to him, she wrote: 'my heart is really in this and it's breaking.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Jane dated Combs from 2021 to 2024. On Thursday, she testified their relationship began as loving and passionate but soon veered into having her engage in sex with other men. The longest lasted three and a half days, while most went on for 24 to 30 hours. On Friday, she described texting Combs in 2023 to say she longed to return to the early days of their relationship before the sex marathons dominated their time together, in an effort to put an end to them. She told him she felt obligated to perform for him and regretted ever getting involved in the encounters. 'I don't want to keep feeling like that,' she wrote, urging Combs to 'talk like adults and figure out where we're going from here.' This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Combs responded: 'Girl, stop.' Jane said the encounters continued into the summer of 2024. She participated in one at Combs' Miami-area estate as late as August — just weeks before his arrest at a Manhattan hotel. Jurors on Friday heard an the first audio from inside one of those encounters. In the recording, Jane asked a man to wear a condom during her first hotel night, but Combs 'guilt tripped me out of it. It wasn't something he wanted to see.' Jane also said Combs had her act as his drug mule at least twice, nervously smuggling pills in her checked luggage on commercial flights from Los Angeles to Miami. She said he divvied up in the colourful pills into bottles, and she ended up using some of the drugs with him. To protect Jane's anonymity, the judge has barred courtroom observers from describing or sketching her appearance in a way that would reveal her identity. The Associated Press does not identify people who say they're victims of sexual abuse unless they choose to make their names public, as Cassie has done. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Combs' lawyers have tried to sow doubt among jurors about the credibility of the prosecution's witnesses. In opening arguments, lawyer Teny Geragos acknowledged Combs had a 'bad temper' and violent outbursts, but argued his sexual habits were part of a consensual swinger lifestyle. The defence painted Cassie, for example, as an eager participant in the freak-offs. When Cassie was on the stand, Combs' lawyers had her read texts and emails in which she expressed willingness to engage in the encounters. Before Jane testified on Thursday, the defence cross-examined Bryana 'Bana' Bongolan, a friend of Cassie and a graphic designer who is suing Combs. Bongolan testified that in 2016, Combs held her over the edge of a balcony at a Los Angeles high-rise for 10 to 15 seconds, an episode she said traumatized her and left her with lasting night terrors. Defense attorney Nicole Westmoreland challenged Bongolan's credibility, suggesting she lied or exaggerated. The lawyer noted Combs was on tour for much of September 2016, including East Coast shows around the time of the balcony incident. Bongolan later testified she didn't recall the exact date of the incident, but had no doubt it occurred. Toronto & GTA Toronto & GTA Toronto Blue Jays World Editorial Cartoons
Winnipeg Free Press
an hour ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Tennessee judge to hear arguments about releasing Kilmar Abrego Garcia from pretrial detention
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee judge is scheduled to hear arguments Friday about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia can be released from jail pending the outcome of a trial on human smuggling charges. In a motion asking U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes to order Abrego Garcia detained, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee Rob McGuire described him as both a danger to the community and a flight risk. Abrego Garcia's attorneys disagree. They point out that he was already wrongly detained in a notorious Salvadoran prison thanks to government error, and argue that due process and 'basic fairness' require him to be set free. Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador who had been living in the United States for more than a decade before he was wrongfully deported in March. The expulsion violated a 2019 U.S. immigration judge's order that shielded him from deportation to his native country because he likely faced gang persecution there. His case quickly became a rallying point for opposition to President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda. While the Trump administration described the mistaken removal as 'an administrative error,' officials have continued to justify it by insisting that Abrego Garcia was a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys have denied the allegations, saying he is simply a construction worker and family man. The motion for detention pretrial accuses Abrego Garcia of trafficking people, drugs and firearms and of abusing the women he transported, among other claims. It states that human smuggling was Abrego Garcia's actual job, not construction. It even accuses him of taking part in a murder in El Salvador. However, none of those allegations are part of the charges against him, and at Abrego Garcia's initial appearance June 6, Judge Holmes warned prosecutors that she can not detain someone based solely on allegations. One of Abrego Garcia's attorneys last week called the claims 'preposterous,' characterizing them as a desperate attempt by the Trump administration to justify the mistaken deportation three months after the fact. 'There's no way a jury is going to see the evidence and agree that this sheet metal worker is the leader of an international MS-13 smuggling conspiracy,' private attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said last week. In a Wednesday court filing, Abrego Garcia's public defenders argued the government is not even entitled to a detention hearing — much less actual detention — because the charges against their client are not serious enough. Although the maximum sentence for smuggling one person is 10 years, and Abrego Garcia is accused of transporting hundreds of people over nearly a decade, his defense attorneys point out that there is no minimum sentence. The average sentence for human smuggling in 2024 was just 15 months, according to court filings. Ohio State University law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández said he would not be surprised if the judge releases Abrego Garcia because he's too well-known to pose a flight risk. 'The thought that this is somebody who can disappear or who might violate the law without anyone noticing seems farfetched,' García Hernández said. But even if Abrego Garcia is released on the criminal charges, Immigration and Customs Enforcement might immediately move to detain and deport him, García Hernández said. Most people in ICE custody who are facing criminal charges are deported, he said, and the idea that ICE would take Abrego Garcia to his court proceedings in Tennessee is 'next to unheard of.' 'This is an unusual situation in that most criminal defendants are not household names in the Oval Office,' García Hernández said. 'I would hope the folks in the Trump administration have thought this through.' The decision to charge Abrego Garcia criminally prompted the resignation of Ben Schrader, who was chief of the criminal division at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. He posted about his departure on social media on the day of the indictment, writing, 'It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.' He did not directly address the indictment and declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press. However, a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel matter confirmed the connection. Although Abrego Garcia lives in Maryland, he is being charged in Tennessee based on a May 2022 traffic stop for speeding in the state. The Tennessee Highway Patrol body camera video of the encounter that was released to the public last month shows a calm exchange between officers and Abrego Garcia. It also shows the officers discussing among themselves their suspicions of human smuggling before sending him on his way. One of the officers says, 'He's hauling these people for money.' Another says Abrego Garcia had $1,400 in an envelope. Abrego Garcia was not charged with any offense at the traffic stop. Attorney Sandoval-Moshenberg said in a statement after the video's release that he saw no evidence of a crime in the footage. Meanwhile, the lawsuit over Abrego Garcia's mistaken deportation isn't over. Abrego Garcia's attorneys have asked a federal judge in Maryland to impose fines against the administration for contempt, arguing that it flagrantly ignored court orders for several weeks to return him. The Trump administration said it will ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that it followed the judge's order to return him to the U.S. —- Finley reported from Norfolk, Virginia.
