World

I spent a chunk of my 20s living elsewhere. London, Berlin and Glasgow – genuinely hard, complex and sometimes troubled cities. They had their fair share of blokes out looking for trouble, but like most big cities you always felt safe, despite the edgy undercurrent.

You’d go out at night and there would be drunks and arguments, but the overwhelming impression was of people enjoying themselves.

Like most expats, I read emails, articles and third-hand accounts of my home city of Melbourne, which apparently had gone to the dogs — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Roman Catholic monks in Switzerland have placed job advertisements in newspapers as part of a recruitment drive — via redwolf.newsvine.com

An 11-year-old country Victorian girl who was abused for years has had a baby.

Police last night confirmed they charged a 30-year-old man in September with 18 offences relating to rape, sexual penetration of a child under 16 and assault with intent to rape — via redwolf.newsvine.com

The Somali gang members, with nicknames like Fatboy, Forehead and Pinky, passed the girls around like chattel for sex with other gang members or with paying customers. One girl they sold for liquor. Another they pimped for a blunt. Sometimes, they picked the girls up from school, to have sex in apartments or abandoned garages or even in a restroom stall in a suburban shopping mall.

Twenty-nine people, mostly from the Twin Cities, are accused of running an interstate human trafficking ring that sold Somali girls — one as young as 12 — into prostitution. In a federal indictment made public in Nashville on Monday, officials accused gang members of running a decade-long prostitution business that included credit card fraud and burglary totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their alleged crimes crossed state lines, as investigators say girls were driven from the Twin Cities to Nashville and Columbus, Ohio. Another victim was allegedly sexually assaulted in Seattle — via redwolf.newsvine.com