McDonald's restaurant and major grocery chains failed to spot signs of modern slavery, BBC reports
CBSN
More than a dozen people trafficked from the Czech Republic into the U.K. were forced to work for several years in a McDonald's restaurant and a food factory supplying some of Britain's major supermarket chains, a BBC investigation has found, despite red flags that could have tipped off employers to the abuse.
A gang run by Czech brothers Ernest and Zdenek Drevenak forced 16 victims — many of whom had experienced homelessness or addiction — to work, seizing their income and controlling them with threats and violence, according to police.
The gang syphoned off most of the victims' wages, leaving them with a few pounds a day to live off in cramped accommodation, including an unheated trailer and a leaky shed, according to CBS News' partner network BBC.
Southern Gaza Strip — In a rare moment of access to the war-ravaged Palestinian territory, CBS News visited a critical aid distribution center on Wednesday just inside the Gaza Strip, near the Karem Shalom border crossing from Israel. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza after more than a year of the Israel-Hamas war remains dire.
Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday made a rare admission of failings by his powerful security agencies over the Ukraine-orchestrated killing of a senior general in Moscow. Lt. General Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian military's chemical and biological weapons unit, was killed by a bomb planted in a scooter in Moscow on Tuesday, the boldest assassination claimed by Kyiv since the start of the conflict.
A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Moscow — Former Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, famous for his tattoos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on Wednesday announced that he plans to leave Russia. The Ukrainian-Russian dancer was one of the most prominent stars who backed Russia's unilateral 2014 annexation of Crimea and its military assault on Ukraine. He was rewarded with prestigious state posts.