A 54-year-old woman from Nkowankowa, Limpopo, South Africa has been arrested after allegedly operating an illegal prison from her home yard.....TAP TO CONTINUE READING

The woman, who also owns a local tavern, is accused of detaining patrons and other community members without any legal authority.

According to police reports, the makeshift detention facility began operating on 2 December 2025. The woman is said to have locked up individuals who caused disturbances at her tavern, particularly those who became violent while drunk. She allegedly kept them confined until they sobered up or settled their unpaid bills.

Authorities further revealed that she detained at least 36 people, some for drinking at her tavern without paying, and others for outstanding debts.

Reports also indicate that the woman used the facility to detain men who allegedly assaulted women while drunk at her establishment.

Police have confirmed that investigations are ongoing.

Florida man threatened to decapitate ‘subhuman’ Rep. Ilhan Omar and ‘eat’ her kids after Charlie Kirk remark
Independent....TAP TO CONTINUE READING

First in The Independent: Myles McQuade, 30, pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting an interstate threat to injure, which could put him behind bars for up to five years

A 30-year-old Florida man is facing up to a half-decade in federal prison after confessing to posting violent threats on social media that promised to decapitate Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, murder her “monkey children,” then eat the kids “for protein,” according to plea agreement papers reviewed by The Independent.

VIDEO HERE

Myles M. McQuade, a Tampa resident, made the threats on X, the Elon Musk-owned social network formerly known as Twitter, one day after Omar criticized late right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk in an interview with a progressive news outlet. Her remarks sparked Republican outrage, leading to GOP legislators insisting Omar be stripped of her committee assignments.

“Go back to Somalia before its [sic] too late,” McQuade warned in one post, which is reproduced in his December 2 plea.

In another, McQuade addressed Omar as “you dirty subhuman [N-word].”

In both instances, McQuade’s plea, which was added to the public docket on December 4, says that the threat to kill Omar was “intended… to be a true threat of violence,” and that he “recognized that it would be viewed as a true threat of violence… not idle talk, a careless remark, or something said jokingly.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, is the only Somali-American member of Congress. She said she has faced a skyrocketing number of death threats in recent months, and a Florida man, 30-year-old Myles M. McQuade, has now pleaded guilty to threatening her life.

McQuade is an account executive at a tech company, according to his LinkedIn profile. The charges against him have not been previously reported.

Omar’s family fled war-torn Somalia when Omar was a child. They were granted asylum in 1995, and Omar became a U.S. citizen five years later, at the age of 17. The 43-year-old legislator, who has represented Minnesota’s 5th congressional district since 2019, is the first Somali-American member of Congress, and one of two Muslim women presently serving.

A member of “The Squad,” a group of far-left-leaning Democratic lawmakers, Omar has faced ongoing death threats from the MAGA faithful amid years of vitriolic attacks by President Trump, who last week during a televised cabinet meeting described Omar and her fellow Somali-Americans as “garbage,” and called for Omar to be “thrown the hell out of our country.”

“Those Somalians should be out of here,” Trump ranted, using an incorrect term for Somalis. “They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain. You have her – she’s always talking about ‘the constitution provides me with uhhhh,’” he continued, referring to Omar.

“Go back to your own country and figure out your constitution. All she does is complain about this country and without this country she would not be in very good shape. She probably wouldn’t be alive right now.”

In October, Omar told NBC News that she feared for her life due to a sharp spike in threats over her criticisms of Israel. GOP leaders did nothing to push back against the “toxic language” being used by party members, refusing to “hold extremists in their ranks accountable,” she said, noting that this kind of behavior in fact has “real-world consequences.”

“Since assuming office, two men have pleaded guilty to threatening to kill me,” Omar told the outlet. “This is very real. I fear for my children and have to speak to them about remaining vigilant because you just never know.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar is the only Somali-American member of Congress, and one of two Muslim women serving in the legislative body. She has faced a recent uptick in violent threats, stoked in part by public animosity from the White House

On Sept. 11, Omar sat for an interview with Zeteo, during which she expressed concern that conservatives had “weaponized” the fatal September 10 shooting of Charlie Kirk to attack the left. While emphasizing that Kirk’s death was in fact tragic, Omar said those on the right had recast Kirk wrongly as a unifying presence, rather than a divisive figure who last year demanded she be deported.

“There are a lot of people who are out there talking about him [Kirk] just wanting to have a civil debate,” Omar told host Mehdi Hasan. “These people are full of s**t, and it’s important for us to call them out while we feel anger and sadness.”

At 12:33 a.m. on September 12, McQuade – who was vacationing in Orlando, according to his plea papers – logged onto X and posted a message aimed at a target identified in court documents as “U.S. CONGRESSWOMAN 1.”

“[U.S. CONGRESSWOMAN 1] I’m going to kill you, you dirty subhuman [N-word] and I’ll eat your monkey children for protein,” the post read. “Go back to Somalia before its [sic] too late.”

Eight minutes after that, McQuade followed up with a second X message, according to the plea documents.

“[N-word]. When this country falls I’m going to kill your children in front of you then cut your head off,” the post read.
(US District Court for the Middle District of Florida)

McQuade’s plea bargain says he was “motivated by U.S. CONGRESSWOMAN 1’s status as a Member of the U.S. House of Representatives and her official actions.”

As is customary for the Department of Justice, the filing does not include the victim’s name. However, the language used in court filings, in addition to McQuade’s messages, make clear she was the target. (Omar’s office did not respond to a request for comment; a Department of Justice spokesperson declined to share any additional detail.)

Shortly before 8 a.m. that morning, the U.S. Capitol Police “received a report of these threats… and began investigating,” the plea papers say. A team of Capitol Police special agents showed up at McQuade’s apartment that evening, in an attempt to question him, but he was out of town, the plea goes on.

“The agents attempted to contact McQuade by phone, but when they identified themselves, he disconnected the call,” it states.

The agents returned to McQuade’s apartment on Sept. 14, and “attempted an interview,” according to the plea, which does not provide further specifics.

President Trump last week described Rep. Ilhan Omar as ‘garbage,’ and called for her to be deported

Prosecutors charged McQuade in a bill of information filed December 2. He pleaded guilty the same day to one count of transmitting an interstate threat to injure.

The charge carries a maximum of five years behind bars, a $250,000 fine, and up to three years of supervised release.

Seamus Hughes, a senior research faculty member at University of Nebraska Omaha’s National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center, and an expert on violent extremism, is seeing more and more people like McQuade crossing his professional radar.

“With three weeks still to go, 2025 continues its record of the most federal arrests involving threats to public officials in at least a decade,” Hughes told The Independent. “The violent rhetoric touches on all levels of public service, be it the local election official, to a Minnesota congresswoman, to the president of the United States – the connective glue being a rising and concerning subset of Americans who see threatening murder as an acceptable outlet to express their political disagreements. It never is, it never should be, and hopefully… it never will be.”

McQuade is set to appear for a hearing in Tampa federal court on December 22.

Defense attorney Andrew Searle, who is representing McQuade, did not respond on Monday to a request for comment.

A wealthy American student who stabbed his girlfriend after she wrongly believed he had given her an STI has been found guilty of murd£r.....TAP TO CONTINUE READING

Joshua Michals was found guilty at the Old Bailey of murdering his girlfriend after claiming he k!lled her in self-defence.

Zhe Wang, 31, was found de@d in her bedroom, lying in a pool of blood on 20 March last year.

Her boyfriend Joshua Michals, 26, had called the emergency services saying there had been a “knife incident” at her flat in Hither Green, southeast London.

When police arrived, he said: ‘It’s not what it seems’.

Ms Wang was obsessed with germs and cleanliness and had accused Michals of giving her an infection after she developed a rash.

He went to her flat to discuss it with her and k!lled her in a murderous rage.

The students had been seeing each other for six months but had slept together only once.

Ms Wang was studying an MA in Creative Writing and Education at Goldsmiths, University of London, and hoped to become a teacher, while Michals was doing an MA in filmmaking.

She met Michals while collecting her student ID card, and the pair began a relationship.

Ms Wang told him she wanted a life partner, but he did not see the relationship as anything serious.

The pair only had sex once, in February 2024, because of Ms Wang’s high standards of cleanliness.

Ms Wang had insisted on seeing Michals’ STI test results before the encounter.

She had taken the morning-after pill and became concerned about a rash on her body which may have been a side affect.

Ms Wang told Michals she would rather die than get an infection and demanded he take another test.

When Michals refused, she accused him of ruining her life and threatened to ask the university for help.

On the day of the killing, Michals took food round to Ms Wang’s flat to make a charcuterie board to try and console her.

But a row broke out and he stabbed her twice to the face and strangled her before leaving the flat.

He claimed that when he arrived at the flat he went to the toilet and when he came out Ms Wang was holding a knife and said she looked “crazy”, “demented” and “possessed”.

Michals said he wrestled the knife from her but she came up behind him and he stabbed her with the knife leaving it in her face.

He claimed he then leant on her neck trying to restrain her until she stopped moving.

Ms Wang might have survived but Michals spoke to his father and obtained details of solicitors before he called an ambulance later that night.

She was found face up on her bedroom floor with two stab wounds to the face and lying in a pool of blood by police.

It was heard at court that she was alive for 30 to 60 minutes after the attack.

He denied murder but was convicted of the charge by an Old Bailey jury on Monday.

Chicago-born Michals claimed Ms Wang came at him with a knife, and he killed her accidentally while trying to protect himself.

His defence was privately funded by his parents – his father David is a vice president of sales strategy for a company in Chicago – they travelled from the US to watch the trial.

Judge Richard Marks, the Common Serjeant of London, said he will sentence on a date to be fixed which is convenient for Ms Wang’s family and Michals’ parents.

Michals, wearing a blue jumper with a white shirt underneath, leant on the glass of the dock in front of him and clutched his chest as he was convicted by the jury before placing his head in his hands.

His parents looked to their son with vacant, pained expressions from the public gallery.

Prosecutor Henrietta Paget, KC, earlier said: “This case concerns the k!lling of a young woman by a man she’d only been seeing a few short months.

“This was a brutal and savage attack. She was killed in her own bedroom.”

Michals told the court he was not looking for a life partner in Ms Wang, and it did not worry him that she told him she was.

He said he did not tell her he only wanted something casual and said she would disinfect his sofa before sitting on it and clean his flat when she came to see him.

Ms Wang became frustrated that Michals was not making time for her and took the relationship more seriously than he did.

In February 2023 they agreed to have sex and Ms Wang sent him instructions on how to enter her flat, wash himself and the condom before coming to the bedroom where she would await him.

He said he went to her flat where she had left the front door open for him and followed the instructions before going into her room where they had sex.

Ms Wang became concerned about having an STI because of a rash she found, but Michals told her she would be fine.

After the horror incident, Michals put the knife, Ms Wang’s phone and the food he had brought in a bin bag and dumped it in the communal bins outside the flat before taking an Uber home.

Asked why he didn’t call emergency services earlier Michals said: “I wasn’t ready for it and I didn’t see the rush.”

Michals deleted his WhatsApp conversations with Ms Wang from his phone but police recovered them.

Describing Ms Wang, the prosecutor said: ‘She was a quiet and gentle person. Her tutor described her as funny, very organised, and well turned out.

“She was a talented writer and keen to talk about her writing- wanting to complete a PHD and return to China.”

“She was a reflective, insightful person interested in mindfulness and meditation.”