Federal prosecutors raided the home of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein earlier this month, after charging him with sex trafficking. There, they say they discovered lewd photographs of girls as young as 14. Epstein is a convicted felon who was sentenced in 2008 for sex crimes involving a minor.

The spike in interest around Epstein’s allegations could create an opportunity for discussing just how prevalent child sexual abuse is. Estimates vary, but not widely – somewhere between 8% and 12% of children in the US have experienced sexual abuse.

Part of the difficulty of reaching a reliable estimate is that various surveys define child sexual abuse differently. In 2013, Catherine Townsend sifted through dozens of studies for Darkness to Light, a US not-for-profit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse. Townsend used several criteria for inclusion such as:

·         Child sexual abuse includes any sexual act between an adult and a young child, regardless of whether force or coercion is used.

·         Child sexual abuse includes both contact and non-contact sexual acts.

·         Child sexual abuse includes forced or coerced sexual acts between two children when there is an age or power differential. This can include unwanted or forcible peer abuse.

The overview of all the research looked at six different surveys published between 2000 and 2011 and found that the rate was significantly different between genders: about one in seven girls and one in 25 boys are sexually abused before they turn 18.

Overall, the research suggests that around one in 10 children are sexually abused.

Source: The Guardian

The United Nations has warned that a new wave of terror attacks may occur before the end of this year, as tens of thousands of foreigners, who had traveled abroad to join the Daesh or other terrorist groups, are said to be still alive.

Specialist monitors at the UN Security Council said in a report that despite recent decrease in attacks across the globe, terrorism continues to pose a significant threat to the world as up to 30,000 foreigners who traveled to the Iraq or Syria for joining the Daesh might still be alive.

Extremists from across Europe joined Daesh in droves in 2014, when the Takfiri terror group launched its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and Syria.

European countries estimated that as many as 6,000 people traveled to the two Arab countries back then. About a third were killed, while another third remain detained in the region or have moved elsewhere.

“Their future prospects will be of international concern for the foreseeable future,” the report said. “Some may join al-Qaeda or other terrorist brands that may emerge.”

Europe has so far been unwilling to take back citizens who traveled to join Daesh, saying they pose a security threat to the European Union member states.

This has prompted US President Donald Trump to threaten the EU on Thursday that he may release over 10,000 European Daesh members, captured in Syria and Iraq, to return to the place where they came from.

Trump for several times asked European leaders to act more decisively and take back their nationals. Back in February, he posted a tweet calling on Europe to take them back or Washington would be “forced to release them.”

The US said it has arrested around 850 foreigners on terror charges in the last few years.

Back in January, France said it was considering the repatriation of 130 men and women to be tried, but a month later no progress appeared to have been made. French officials also said last year that they were working on plans to return children born to foreign fighters.

Earlier this year, Germany said that a third of its estimated 1,000 nationals who are believed to have joined Daesh in Iraq and Syria since 2013, have returned to their homeland. Many of those have since been prosecuted or placed into rehabilitation programs, Berlin said.

Source: Presstv

A fresh round of sanctions were imposed on Moscow Saturday by the United States over the 2018 poisoning of former double-agent Sergei Skripal in the United Kingdom.

Russian agents have been blamed for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury in March last year using the Soviet-developed nerve agent Novichok.

Washington said Saturday it will oppose “the extension of any loan or financial or technical assistance to Russia” by international financial institutions and put limits on US banks from financing Russian sovereign debt, US State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

The US will also limit the export of goods and technology to Russia, Ortagus added.

Chemical weapons

The Salisbury attack, the first offensive use of chemical weapons in Europe since World War II, caused an international outcry and prompted a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by Western nations.

Moscow denies involvement in the poisoning and has offered numerous and varied alternative explanations and counter-accusations.

Skripal, a former officer with Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was found guilty in 2006 of “high treason” before being traded in a spy exchange between Moscow, London and Washington.

In January the European Union imposed chemical weapons sanctions on nine Russian and Syrian officials, including the chief of the powerful GRU.

(AFP)