Nonprofit helps kids bond with rescued rabbits

Nigeria’s Chibok girls: Parents of kidnapped children heartbroken

Ten years after Boko Haram gunmen abducted his daughter from her school in the Nigerian town of Chibok, Yama Bullum feels as if he has lost her once again.

His daughter, Jinkai Yama, was one of 276 girls kidnapped from the secondary school in the early hours of 14 April 2014 by the Islamist fighters.

Fifty-seven of them escaped shortly afterwards. Then between 2016 and 2018 an additional 108 were either rescued by the military or released through negotiations.

Ninety-one others remain missing, but Ms Yama is one of 20 “Chibok girls” rescued over the last two years from Boko Haram hideouts in Sambisa Forest in north-eastern Borno state, the epicentre of the 15-year insurgency.

But her father has been outraged to discover that like some of other recently freed women, she has decided to remain married to one of the fighters who once held her captive.

These couples now reside in the city of Maiduguri – Borno’s capital, 125km (78 miles) north of the remote town of Chibok – in housing organised by the state’s governor Babagana Umaru Zulum.

“I am not happy with what the governor did. The girls managed to come out of the forest and the governor married them off again. Her mother is very angry,” Mr Bullum said.

L: Jinkai Yama in 2022 R: Jinkai Yama pictured as a teenager — L: Jinkai Yama pictured after her release R: When a teenager she was part of the cadettes brigade and in the church brass band [PRNigeria.com/BBC]

He found out when his daughter called him up to tell him last August – and handed over the phone asking him to talk to her husband, the former insurgent.

Until then, Mr Bullum had assumed she was with other freed Chibok captives and her three children in a special welfare programme.

Like a number of other Chibok parents, Mr Bullum is disturbed by what seems to be the Nigerian government’s approval of marriages between their rescued daughters and the men who abducted them.

Allowing the freed women to live with their former captors as wives, while their accommodation is provided by the government, is perceived by the parents as Governor Zulum sacrificing their daughters in the quest for stability in the region.

They see these marriages as a way to appease the former militants.

Most of the girls taken from the Chibok school were Christian.

""Some people in Chibok are saying: 'How is it possible after the rescue of the girls they are still remaining in the Muslim faith?'", Source: Yakubu Nkeki, Source description: Chairman of the Association of Parents of the Missing Girls from Chibok, Image: Yakubu Nkeki — “”Some people in Chibok are saying: ‘How is it possible after the rescue of the girls they are still remaining in the Muslim faith?'”, Source: Yakubu Nkeki, Source description: Chairman of the Association of Parents of the Missing Girls from Chibok, Image: Yakubu Nkeki

The recent news of the continued “marriages” has further upset parents whose children were forced to convert to Islam during captivity.

“Some people in Chibok are saying: ‘How is it possible after the rescue of the girls they are still remaining in the Muslim faith?'” said Yakubu Nkeki, chairman of the Chibok parents’ association.

The state appears to be grappling with the dilemma of respecting the girls’ wishes while fulfilling the desires of their parents.

“My only interest is that we don’t want these girls to go back to the bush again,” Borno Governor Zulum told me.

“Even before they came out [of the Sambisa Forest], some of them gave us conditions – that they will not come without their husbands.”

Mary Dauda pictured at Maimalari Barracks in Maiduguri, Nigeria - 21 June 2022 — Mary Dauda, pictured here just after she was found by the army, said she planned her escape with her militant husband [AFP]

One of these women, Aisha Graema, told me that she would not have left the forest if she could not be with the militant she married two years after being abducted from the Chibok school.

“We have been married for eight years,” said the mother of three.

“I first came out of the forest and then he followed me. There in the bush, we had no relative, no brother, no sister, that is why we decided to come out.

“He finished deradicalisation before we were allowed to stay together. The government welcomed us well, gave us food, shelter, everything.”

Another Chibok girl, Mary Dauda, explained to me that she would not have been able to escape from Sambisa without her husband, who helped her sneak away from the militants’ hideout.

“We had agreed that he would join me afterwards and present himself to the governor for rehabilitation,” said the 27-year-old.

Hajj Camp in Bulumkutu is the main rehabilitation camp for former Boko Haram fighters and their long-term captives, where they are taken directly after their rescue.

After going through weeks of rehabilitation there, the men are reintegrated into society under the government’s ongoing amnesty programme for repentant Boko Haram members. This has so far processed about 160,000 people, according to Mr Zulum.

"They are the ones that insisted that without their husbands, they will not stay in Maiduguri"", Source: Zuwaira Gambo, Source description: Borno state commissioner for women affairs and social development, Image: Zuwaira Gambo — “They are the ones that insisted that without their husbands, they will not stay in Maiduguri””, Source: Zuwaira Gambo, Source description: Borno state commissioner for women affairs and social development, Image: Zuwaira Gambo

The welfare of the 20 most recently freed Chibok girls falls under the remit of Zuwaira Gambo, the Borno state commissioner for women affairs and social development, who insists the women were in no way coerced into staying with their spouses.

“They are the ones that insisted that without their husbands, they will not stay in Maiduguri,” Ms Gambo said.

“I asked them: ‘How can you want to stay with this man who destroyed your life?’ and they told me: ‘You will not understand.'”

Rather than have the couples return to the forest, she said the authorities sought a different path.

The 20 women – along with 31 children – were moved to a secure facility in an affluent area of Maiduguri. Seven are with their Boko Haram husbands; some of the others are engaged to former fighters they met while in Bulumkutu.

Training is offered to the women in skills like tailoring and computer literacy.

They share a large mansion, surrounded by expansive grounds where they gather on mats beneath trees to chat while their children play in the sand.

Some of the freed Chibok girls with their children in their new accommodation in Maiduguri, Nigeria — The recently freed women share a large house in Maiduguri and often gather outside to socialise, along with their children [Yakubu Nkeki]

Each couple is provided with their own room.

The freed Chibok girls are not alone in wanting to stay with their Boko Haram husbands.

One 16-year-old told me back in 2016 that if she had had a gun, she would have shot the soldiers who came to rescue her from captivity.

Experts attribute this to several factors, including the sense of belonging fostered by being part of the insurgent group, indoctrination into its extremist beliefs, the development of romantic attachments over time and the formation of family bonds, particularly when they have children together.

Additionally, acts of kindness and care, such as showering them with gifts, by their captors may contribute to these feelings.

“These people took the time to convince them that what they had known before was the wrong way,” said Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who has worked with many freed captives taken in their formative years.

An aerial view of the burnt-out classrooms of a school in Chibok, Nigeria - March 2015 — The secondary school in Chibok was destroyed by the militants on the infamous night of 14 April 2014 [AFP]

But the situation of the Chibok girls stands out because of the government’s active support for them and their husbands staying together.

Governor Zulum believes this will encourage those still in Sambisa to come out of hiding.

The chair of the Association of Parents of the Missing Girls from Chibok says he finds himself torn between the grievances of the parents and the rights of the young women.

“The girls told me that they can’t do without their husbands,” Mr Nkeki told me.

“Me, myself, I am a freedom fighter and I want them to be free from the Sambisa Forest regardless of the situation they find themselves when they come out, whether Muslim or married or not.”

He recounted being urgently summoned to the childhood home of Saratu Dauda, one of the recently rescued Chibok girls, last year during a heated argument between her and her parents regarding her decision to remain married to her former captor.

“They said: ‘Come and hear what this girl is saying. You were calling for them to be released, yet look at how they are behaving’. I told them it was not her fault, that they have to be patient.”

Aisha Muhammed-Oyebode from the Bring Back Our Girls activist group and head of the Murtala Muhammed Foundation, which supports both the parents and the freed girls, believes that issues like this might have been avoided if the government had been better prepared with comprehensive plans for the girls upon their release.

A Bring Back Our Girls protest in Abuja, Nigeria - April 2014 — The Bring Back Our Girls campaign garnered global attention [Reuters]

“Not having a structure around these kinds of situations is what is causing this kind of chaos,” she said.

After the explosive family argument, Ms Dauda cut short her visit to Chibok and returned to Maiduguri. Her father is so upset that he has chosen to no longer participate in the parents’ association or any events commemorating the anniversary of the abductions this year.

This includes the yearly gathering of parents of all the kidnapped schoolgirls, both free and missing, held at the school premises.

Ms Yama is also estranged from her family. Whenever they try to contact her, her husband answers her phone instead.

The 29-year-old has declined to respond to my questions about the situation, telling me that her relationship with her parents is no-one else’s business and how happy she is that her kidnapping led to her finding the “true religion”.

Her clearly distressed father said: “She doesn’t want to have anything to do with us at all.”

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a freelance Nigerian journalist and novelist based in Abuja and London.

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Mass shooting outside Indianapolis mall leaves 7 injured, all children and teens, police say

Seven minors were hospitalized with injuries late Saturday night after a mass shooting broke out in downtown Indianapolis, police said.

The children and teenagers, who were between the ages of 12 and 17 years old, each sustained gunshot wounds in the shooting, which happened just after 11 p.m. local time outside of the city’s Circle Centre Mall. CBS affiliate WTTV shared images from the scene.

No suspects have been arrested, but investigators believe more than one weapon was used to carry out the shooting, according to the Indianapolis Metro Police Department. A police report filed after the incident identified four boys and three girls as victims, all of whom were stable when Indianapolis Deputy Police Chief Tanya Terry gave preliminary details about the incident at a briefing early Sunday morning.

Police said they initially responded after patrol officers in the downtown area heard several shots being fired nearby. They found six minors, among a larger group of kids, suffering from injuries consistent with gunshot wounds. An emergency medical services crew transported all of them to a hospital for treatment. One of the victims’ conditions was critical at the time of transport, but the classification was updated and that person is now stable. The other five victims were stable when they were transported.

A seventh victim, who police determined had been shot during the same downtown incident, was treated as a walk-in at a different hospital. That person’s condition was listed as stable too, according to Indianapolis police.

The shooting came as Indianapolis continues to grapple with a steady rise in gun violence. A report by the Indianapolis Star last year found that homicides in the city, which were largely committed using firearms, had increased by 85% over the previous decade and a half.

Terry touched on that during Sunday’s briefing.

“Once again, we have a situation in which young people are resolving conflict with firearms, and it has to stop,” said the deputy police chief. Terry noted that the department has already put resources toward efforts “to address these juvenile crowds before they get started” and will continue to do that with the hopes of “preventing this kind of crime.”

The deputy chief also called on parents for help.

“We would ask for our parents to get involved in what their children are out doing, especially at these hours of the evening,” said Terry. “This was 11:30 at night, the evening right before Sunday, Easter. So if you don’t know where your 12-year-old is, I think that should be a priority for you.”

An investigation into the shooting is ongoing. Police requested that anyone with information contact Detective Albert Teaters at the department’s homicide office.

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Nonprofit helps kids bond with rescued rabbits

Nonprofit helps kids bond with rescued rabbits – CBS News

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Most rabbits adopted for Easter are given away, but a nonprofit is helping kids bond with the fuzzy animals. Itay Hod reports.

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Heavy rains in northwestern Pakistan kill 8 people, mostly children

Violent attacks continue in Pakistan

Violent attacks continue in Pakistan amid national election

02:25

Heavy rains killed eight people, mostly children, and injured 12 in Pakistan’s northwest, an official said Saturday.

Downpours in different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province caused rooms to collapse, crushing the people inside, according to Anwar Shahzad, a spokesperson for the local disaster management authority.

Shahzad said that three of the dead were siblings aged between 3 and 7 years old, from the same family. The casualties occurred in the past 24 hours, he added.

Pakistan has this year experienced a delay in winter rains, which started in February instead of November. Monsoon and winter rains cause damage in Pakistan every year.

PAKISTAN-LIFESTYLE — Fruit carts are pictured half submerged in a flooded street after rainfall in Karachi on February 4, 2024.

ASIF HASSAN/AFP via Getty Images

Earlier this month, around 30 people died in rain-related incidents in the northwest.

Across the border in Afghanistan, heavy rainfall on March 29 and 30 destroyed more than 1,500 acres of agricultural land, causing severe damage to hundreds of homes and critical infrastructure like bridges and roads in seven provinces, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Saturday.

The provinces most affected are northern Faryab, eastern Nangarhar, and central Daikundi.

It’s the third time that the northern region has experienced flooding in less than a month, with seven people killed and 384 families affected by heavy rains, the U.N. agency said.

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Georgia joins states seeking parental permission before children join social media

ATLANTA — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents’ explicit permission to create social media accounts.

Lawmakers on Friday gave final approval to Senate Bill 351, which also would ban social media use on school devices and internet services, require porn sites to verify users are 18 or over and mandate additional education by schools on social media and internet use. The House passed the measure 120-45 and the Senate approved it 48-7.

The bill, which Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte of Dallas called “transformative,” now goes to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.

A number of other states including Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas and Utah passed laws last year requiring parental consent for children to use social media. In Arkansas, a federal judge in August blocked enforcement of a law requiring parental consent for minors to create new social media accounts.

Some in Congress also are proposing parental consent for minors.

State Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, argued the state should do more to limit social media use by children, saying it’s causing harm.

“Every rose has a thorn, and that’s social media in this generation,” Hilton said. “It’s great for connectivity and activism, but it has reared its ugly head on mental health.”

But opponents warned the bill would cause problems. For example, Rep. David Wilkerson, a Powder Springs Democrat, said that the ban on use of social media in schools could ban teachers from showing educationally valuable YouTube videos.

“If we do pass this, we’ll be back fixing this next year, because there are too many issues with this bill,” Wilkerson said.

The bill says social media services would have to use “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify someone’s age by July 1, 2025.

Services would have to treat anyone who can’t be verified as a minor. Parents of children younger than 16 would have to consent to their children joining a service. Social medial companies would be limited in how they could customize ads for children younger than 16 and how much information they could collect on those children.

To comply with federal regulation, social media companies already ban kids under 13 from signing up to their platforms, but children have been shown to easily evade the bans.

Up to 95% of teens aged 13 to 17 report using a social media platform, with more than a third saying they use them “almost constantly,” the Pew Research Center found.

The Georgia bill also aims to shut down porn sites by requiring submission of a digitized identification card or some other government-issued identification. Companies could be held liable if minors were found to access the sites, and could face fines of up to $10,000.

“It will protect our children,” said Rep. Rick Jasperse, a Jasper Republican who argues age verification will lead porn sites to cut off access to Georgians. In March, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Texas law, leading Pornhub to cut off access to Texans.

The Free Speech Coalition, which represents adult film makers, says the bill would be ineffective because users could mask their location and because people would be forced to transmit sensitive information. They also argue it’s unconstitutional because there are less restrictive ways to keep children out and discriminate against certain types of speech. The coalition has sued multiple states over the laws.

The ban on school social media excludes email, news, gaming, online shopping, photograph editing and academic sites. The measure also requires a model program on the effects of social media and for students in grades 6-12, and requires existing anti-bullying programs to be updated.

The move comes after U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in May that social media hasn’t been proven to be safe for young people.

Murthy called on tech companies, parents and caregivers to take “immediate action to protect kids now” and asked tech companies to share data and increase transparency and for policymakers to regulate social media for safety the way they do car seats and baby formula.

Meta, the parent of Facebook and Instragram, announced in 2022 it was taking steps to verify ages. Meta says it provides “age-appropriate experiences” for teens 13-17 on Instagram, including preventing unwanted contact from unknown adults.

Dozens of U.S. states, including California and New York, also are suing Meta Platforms Inc., claiming the company harms young people and contributes to a youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms.

Florida recently passed a law banning social media accounts for children under 14 regardless of parental consent and require parental permission for 14- and 15-year-olds.

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South Korea’s birth rate is so low, one company offers staff a $75,000 incentive to have children

Seoul — South Korea’s overall birth rate hit a record low of 0.72 in 2023, and with that figure projected to fall even further in 2024, some Korean businesses have started offering remarkably generous incentives to convince their workers to become parents.

“The declining fertility rate leads to a decline in the workforce and purchasing power and slowing economic growth, which in turn directly affects the sustainability of corporate management, meaning companies need to actively address the issue,” Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) president Chul Chung said recently at a Korean-Japanese business seminar dedicated to the topic.

Jin Sung Yoo, a senior research fellow at KERI, said the main reason for South Korea’s worryingly low birth rate was the “effect on career progression” associated with having children.

Many solutions were discussed at the seminar, and some eye-opening incentives have been announced in recent weeks.

The Lotte Group, a massive cross-industry conglomerate, said it had found success through “various in-house family-friendly policies.” The company said the existing program had helped push the internal birth rate among employees up to 2.05 during 2022, no small feat when the national average was 0.81.

Ok-keun Cho, head of corporate culture at the Lotte Group, said starting this year, the company would also be offering employees with three or more children a 7-9 seat family vehicle, free of charge.

The most generous parenthood incentive, however, is likely the one for workers at the construction and housing group Booyoung, which has been offering employees a $75,000 bonus for each new child they parent.

So far, the company says 66 employees have taken advantage — at a cost to Booyoung of about $5 million.

Company chairman Lee Joong Keun said he sees it as an investment in the nation’s future, warning that if the birth rate continues to fall, “Korea will face a crisis of national existence 20 years from now, including a decline in the economically productive population and a shortage of defense personnel to ensure national security and maintain order.”

Why U.S. births are decreasing

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Under South Korea’s rules, $75,000 is the largest handout a parent can receive without having to pay additional tax on the month. But Booyoung’s boss said he wanted to go even further, announcing that he would work to help provide employees who become the parent of a third child with “housing with no tax burden on tenants and no maintenance responsibilities.”

The construction company chief said he was hoping to get the South Korean government to agree to provide the land necessary for his plans.

Meanwhile, city officials have said that Seoul’s local government plans to invest more than $1.3 billion during 2024 in the Birth Encouragement Project, an upgrade to an existing incentive policy.

The project has been largely focused on helping South Korean’s maintain their careers around family planning, but it’s been expanded to make more people eligible for the benefits, and those benefits now include infertility treatment and more childcare services.

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Italy expands controversial program to take mafia children from their families before they become criminals

Rome — Italy has not only renewed but decided to expand a controversial program to remove children from their mafia families to break the cycle of criminal behavior being passed down to new generations.

The “Free to Choose” project has been in place in the Calabria region — the base of the powerful ‘Ndragheta crime syndicate — since 2012. Now, it will be extended to the Sicily and the Campania regions, respectively home to the notorious Cosa Nostra and Camorra mafias.

The aim of the program is to remove children from the mob culture they were born into and break the generational cycle of crime, giving the children a chance to live a normal life.

Authorities can only remove a child if they can prove to a court that they’re physically or mentally endangered by their family’s criminality. Police and social workers then swoop in without warning and take the child away. The families have no say in the matter.

'Day Of Remembrance' Demonstration For Mafia Victims — People take part in a demonstration on Italy’s National Day of Remembrance and Commitment to Remembering the Victims of the Mafia, March 21, 2024 in Rome.

Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty

So far, 150 children have been removed from their families and placed in foster care in secret locations around the country. Thirty mothers have chosen to join their children, with seven also agreeing to act as witnesses for state prosecutors.

“This is a historic moment in the fight against the mafia,” Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said at the signing of the document extending the program, which was attended by five government ministers and the Italian Bishops Conference. “The fight against the mafias is also fought by opening new paths to generations capable of freely deciding which future to live.”

Roberto di Bella, who founded the program, said at the signing ceremony that during his 25 years as a juvenile court judge in Calabria, he found himself trying fathers, and then their sons.

“We tried boys for trying to kill their mothers who wanted to separate from their mafia husbands,” he said. With the Free to Choose program, he said, “we set out to change life trajectories that would otherwise have been inevitable.”

“There are children being taught to shoot at eight years old. There are children dealing crack at eight years old,” said Chiara Colosimo, head of the Italian parliament’s anti-mafia commission.

Di Bella said he’d been contacted by some mothers asking for help in saving their children from mob indoctrination. He said he’d even received letters from several mafia bosses thanking him for giving their children a chance at a different life.

But the scheme has also drawn criticism, with some arguing that even mobsters have the right to be fathers.

A crackdown, and Italy’s evolving mafia landscape

Italy has waged a concerted law enforcement crackdown on organized crime in recent years, and it has led not only to hundreds of arrests and prosecutions, but a shift in the entire mafia landscape.

In September, Matteo Messina Denaro, a convicted mastermind of some of the most heinous murders carried out by Cosa Nostra and considered Italy’s No. 1 fugitive, died in a prison hospital just a few months after being captured. He’d spent decades on the run.

Italian police capture mafia boss after 30 years on the run

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A long-ignored crime syndicate based in southern Italy’s Puglia region, known as the Fourth Mafia, has emerged in recent years as the country’s most violent mafia.

One of the leaders of the group, based in the town of Foggia, escaped from a maximum security prison in 2023 by tying bed sheets together, but was captured in France in February.

The clans based in and around Foggia — though less sophisticated than the ‘Ndrangheta, the Camorra or the Cosa Nostra crime syndicates — are said to rely on extortion, bombings and threats to extort residents.

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Children’s author Kouri Richins tried before to kill her husband, new counts allege

A Utah woman who authorities say fatally poisoned her husband in 2022, then published a children’s book about grief, now faces another attempted murder charge for allegedly drugging him weeks earlier, on Valentine’s Day.

Kouri Richins, 33, is accused of killing her husband with a lethal dose of fentanyl at their home in a small mountain town near Park City in March 2022. New charging documents filed Monday by Summit County prosecutors allege that it wasn’t her first attempt on his life.

They detail the perilous months preceding Eric Richins’ death, painting a picture of a paranoid man walking on eggshells around his wife as she made secret financial arrangements and bought illicit drugs that were later found in his system.

Prosecutors have said previously that Kouri Richins, who is being held without bail, may have tried to poison her husband the month before his death, but they didn’t file the additional charges until this week.

Eric and Kouri Richins in an undated photo.

Skye Lazaro

The chilling case of a once-beloved author accused of profiting off her own violent crime has captivated true-crime enthusiasts in the year since she was arrested for her husband’s murder. She had self-published “Are You With Me?” — an illustrated storybook about a father with angel wings watching over his young son after dying.

Once lauded as a heartwarming must-read for any child who’s lost a loved one, the book has since become a powerful tool for prosecutors arguing that Kouri Richins carried out a calculated murder plot and attempted to cover it up.

The mother of three repeatedly called her husband’s death unexpected while promoting her book and was commended by many for helping her sons and other young children process the death of a parent.

Her attorney, Skye Lazaro, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the new charges. Lazaro has argued in early hearings that the evidence against her client was dubious and circumstantial.

Details on possible prior murder try

One bite of his favorite sandwich — left with a note in the front seat of his truck on Valentine’s Day — made Eric Richins, 39, break out in hives and black out, prosecutors allege in the new documents.

His wife had bought the sandwich from a local diner in the city of Kamas the same week she also purchased several dozen fentanyl pills, according to witness statements and deleted text messages that were recovered by police.

The state’s star witness, a housekeeper who claims to have sold her the drugs, told law enforcement that she gave Kouri Richins the pills a couple days before Valentine’s Day. Later that month, Richins allegedly told the housekeeper that the pills she provided weren’t strong enough and asked her to procure stronger fentanyl, according to the new charging documents.

In witness testimony, two friends of Eric Richins recount phone conversations from the day prosecutors are now saying he was first poisoned by his wife of nine years. After injecting himself with his son’s EpiPen and chugging a bottle of Benadryl, he woke from deep sleep and and told a friend, “I think my wife tried to poison me.”

His friends say they noticed fear in his voice as Richins, who had no known allergies, told them that he felt like he was going to die and that his wife might be to blame. Opioids, including fentanyl, can cause severe allergic reactions, including hives.

Details on Eric Richins’ death

A month later, Kouri Richins called 911 in the middle of the night to report that she had found her husband “cold to the touch” at the foot of their bed, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead, and a medical examiner later found five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system.

“One or two pills might be accidental. Twenty — or five times the lethal dose — is not accidental. That is someone who wants Eric dead,” Summit County Chief Prosecutor Patricia Cassell said.

She alleges that Richins slipped the synthetic opioid into a Moscow mule cocktail she made for her husband amid marital disputes and fights over a multimillion-dollar mansion she purchased as an investment.

Eric Richins’ family believes Kouri Richins spiked his drink the night he died, according to “48 Hours.”

Possible motive?

Years before her husband’s death, Kouri Richins opened numerous life insurance policies on Eric Richins without his knowledge, with benefits totaling nearly $2 million, prosecutors allege.

Kouri Richins was also charged Monday with mortgage fraud and insurance fraud for allegedly forging loan applications and fraudulently claiming insurance benefits after his death.

Prosecutors argue she was in financial distress when her husband died and say she mistakenly believed she would inherit his estate under terms of their prenuptial agreement. Newly released documents indicated she had a negative bank account balance, owed lenders more than $1.8 million and was being sued by a creditor.

Charging documents indicate Eric Richins met with a divorce attorney and an estate planner in October 2020, a month after he discovered that his wife made some major financial decisions without his knowledge. The couple’s prenuptial agreement only allowed Kouri Richins to profit off her husband’s successful stone masonry business if he died while they were still married.

Utah law prohibits anyone convicted of murder from profiting financially off their crime.

Maternal murder accomplice?

The case took another turn when a newly released court affidavit revealed last week that investigators believe Kouri Richins’ mother might also have been involved in his death.

A Summit County Sheriff’s investigator wrote in the affidavit it is “possible” that Lisa Darden was “involved in planning and orchestrating” Eric Richins’ death.

Investigators discovered Darden had been living with a female romantic partner who died suddenly in 2006. An autopsy determined the woman died of an overdose of oxycodone, the affidavit said. The woman struggled with drug abuse, but at the time of her death she wasn’t in recovery, which the investigator said would “likely rule out the possibility of an accidental overdose.” Darden had become the recipient of the partner’s estate shortly before her death, the affidavit said.

The affidavit also said conversations “have been found on Kouri’s phone showing disdain for Eric on Lisa’s part.”

“Based on Lisa Darden’s proximity to her partner’s suspicious overdose death, and her relationship with Kouri, it is possible she was involved in planning and orchestrating Eric’s death,” the affidavit states.

No charges have been filed against Lisa Darden.

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Girl Scouts quietly welcome hundreds of young migrant girls

Kids caught in the middle of political battle between N.Y., Texas over asylum seeker crisis

02:23

Once a week in a midtown Manhattan hotel, dozens of Girl Scouts gather in a spare room made homey by string lights and children’s drawings. They earn badges, go on field trips to the Statue of Liberty, and learn how to navigate the subway in a city most have just begun to call home.

They are the newest members of New York City’s largest Girl Scout troop. And they live in an emergency shelter where 170,000 asylum seekers and migrants, including tens of thousands of children, have arrived from the southern border since the spring of 2022.

As government officials debate how to handle the influx of new arrivals, the Girl Scouts — whose Troop 6000 has served kids who live in the shelter system since 2017 — are quietly welcoming hundreds of the city’s youngest new residents with the support of donations. Most of the girls have fled dire conditions in South and Central America and endured an arduous journey to the U.S.

What is Troop 6000?

Launched by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York in 2017, Girl Scouts Troop 6000 is a program for girls living in the New York City Shelter System. There were 21,774 families living in the city’s homeless shelters in December 2023, according to data from the Coalition for the Homeless. Of those, 33,399 were children.

Last year, Troop 6000 opened its newest branch at a hotel-turned-shelter in Midtown Manhattan, one of several city-funded relief centers for migrants. Though hundreds of families sleep at the shelter every night, the Girl Scouts is the only children’s program offered.

Charter bus company to temporarily stop bringing migrants to NYC

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Unflagging support amid anti-immigrant sentiment

Last January, the Girl Scouts expanded its Troop 6000 program to serve more than 100 young arrivals living in New York City Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Center, according to a statement at the time. The group began recruiting at the shelter and rolled out a bilingual curriculum to help scouts learn more about New York City through its monuments, subway system, and political borders.

One year later, with nearly 200 members and five parents as troop leaders, the shelter is the largest of Troop 6000’s roughly two dozen sites across the city and the only one exclusively for asylum-seekers.

Not everybody is happy about the evolution of Troop 6000. With anti-immigrant rhetoric on the rise and a contentious election ahead, some donors see the Girl Scouts as wading too readily into politically controversial waters. That hasn’t fazed the group — or their small army of philanthropic supporters. Amid city budget cuts and a growing need for services, they are among dozens of charities that say their support for all New Yorkers, including newcomers, is more important than ever.

“There are some donors who would prefer their dollars go elsewhere,” said Meridith Maskara, CEO of the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. “I am constantly being asked: Don’t you find this a little too political?”

But Troop 6000 has also found plenty of sympathetic supporters, “If it has to do with young girls in New York City, then it’s not political,” Maskara said. “It’s our job.”

With few other after-school opportunities available, the girls are “so hungry for more” ways to get involved, said Giselle Burgess, senior director of the Girl Scouts of New York’s Troop 6000.

New York City, charities feeling the crunch

New York City has spent billions on the asylum seekers while buckling under the pressure of an existing housing and affordability crisis. That’s left little time to court and coordinate the city’s major philanthropies.

“It’s very hard to take a step back when you’re drinking out of a fire hose,” said Beatriz de la Torre, chief philanthropy officer at Trinity Church Wall Street, which gave the Girl Scouts a $100,000 emergency grant — plus $150,000 in annual support — to help expand Troop 6000.

With or without government directives, she said, charities are feeling the crunch: Food banks need more food. Legal clinics need more lawyers.

Since asylum-seekers began arriving to the city, around 30 local grant makers, including Trinity Church and Brooklyn Org, have met at least biweekly to discuss the increased demands on their grantees.

Together, they’ve provided over $25 million for charities serving asylum seekers, from free legal assistance to resources for navigating the public school system.

“It’s hard for the government to be that nimble — that’s a great place for nonprofits and philanthropy,” said Eve Stotland, senior program officer at New York Community Trust, which convenes the Working Group for New York’s Newcomers, and itself has distributed over $2.7 million in grants for recent immigrants.

“These are our neighbors,” said Stotland. “If a funder’s goal is to make New York City a better place for everyone, that includes newcomers.”

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One in five German children affected by poverty in 2022

One in five children in Germany was affected by poverty in 2022, according to a report by the German welfare association Paritätische Wohlfahrtsverband.

At 21.8% of all children and young people, this was a “sad record,” Ulrich Schneider, managing director of the association, explained at the presentation of the poverty report in Berlin on Tuesday.

A total of 14.2 million people in Germany were poor in 2022 – a rate of 16.8%. That is 100,000 more people than in 2021 and almost 1 million more than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, said Schneider.

Compared to 2006, the number has risen by 2.7 million. According to the association, this was the year in which the upward poverty trend began.

In its analysis, the association refers to the Federal Statistical Office’s microcensus. Reliable figures for 2023 will not be available until next year; the data for 2022 are the most recent, according to the association.

There are no signs of a trend reversal in the figures for 2023, Schneider explained.

According to the microcensus, those who are considered “poor” are categorized according to household type and net disposable income.

A single household without children reaches the poverty threshold at less than €1,186 ($1,288) in disposable income per month, while single parents with a child under the age of 14 are considered poor if they have less than €1,542 per month.

According to the report, the group of single parents and households with three or more children are particularly “income-poor.”

Added to this are the unemployed, people with low educational qualifications and those with a migration background, who are disproportionately affected.

At 17.8%, women have a higher poverty rate than men.

Chief Executive of the Joint overall association "Paritatischer Gesamtverband" Ulrich Schneider presents the report on poverty trends during the Federal Press Conference under the motto "Poverty in Inflation" of the Joint overall association. Fabian Sommer/dpa — Chief Executive of the Joint overall association “Paritatischer Gesamtverband” Ulrich Schneider presents the report on poverty trends during the Federal Press Conference under the motto “Poverty in Inflation” of the Joint overall association. Fabian Sommer/dpa

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