The promise seemed simple: a job, a fresh start, a way out. Instead, Maria* stepped off a boat onto a picture-perfect Trinidadian beach with hope in her heart and into a nightmare that would shadow her for years. On the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons, observed on 30 July, follow the journey of a woman who escaped.
Welcome to our live coverage of the third day of high-level international conference at UN Headquarters, aimed at advancing practical steps toward achieving a two-State solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Mandated by the General Assembly meeting features plenaries, working groups and interventions from senior UN officials and Member States. UN News app users can follow here.
Some 80,000 children are estimated to be at high risk of cholera in West and Central Africa as the rainy season begins across the region, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Wednesday.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — As schools across Indianapolis begin their new academic year, parents are encouraged to support teachers by providing essential classroom supplies.
Kate Baumgartner from Indianapolis Moms, and former teacher herself, emphasizes the importance of helping educators with items like tissues, sanitizing wipes, and hand soap to maintain cleanliness and prevent the spread of germs.
“What I like to do is before school starts, I’ll go on to the teacher’s Amazon wish list and just kind of send them little welcome gifts from my family,” Baumgartner said.
Baumgartner suggests checking teachers’ Amazon wish lists to help with classroom décor and supplies, as many of these items come out of teachers’ pockets. Basic supplies like pencils and glue sticks are always needed since students often forget or lack these essentials.
Celebrating classroom successes is also important, Baumgartner said, as many school districts lack budgets for parties and celebrations.
WISH-TV’s Gr8 Paper Push, in partnership with Teachers Treasures, is collecting school supplies to support local educators.
This story was formatted for WISHTV.com using AI-assisted tools. Our editorial team reviews and edits all content published to ensure it meets our journalistic standards for accuracy and fairness.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — If you’re feeling overwhelmed by credit card debt, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans are in the same boat, swiping cards to cover basic needs and struggling to keep up with growing balances. But financial experts say there are ways to regain control, and it starts with a few small but strategic steps.
Jennifer Paez knows the struggle firsthand.
“I started to feel the crunch when I started to use credit cards for just daily essentials,” she said.
Like many families, rising costs and shrinking income forced Jennifer to rely on credit cards just to stay afloat.
“I knew that that was a big red flag,” she admitted.
She’s not alone. Americans owe more than $1.18 trillion in credit card debt, with the average household balance hovering around $6,000. And with many cards carrying interest rates above 20%, making a meaningful dent can feel impossible.
Consumer Reports expert Lisa Gill says one of the first things to do is hit pause on using your cards, and start where it hurts most.
“Take any extra money and pay down the debt on the card with the highest interest rate,” Gill said. “Doing that helps you save more in the long run because you’re tackling the most expensive debt first.”
If your credit score is in decent shape, consider transferring your balance to a card that offers 0% interest for an introductory period, often 12 to 18 months. Just be sure to pay it off before the regular rate returns.
Another pro tip? Line up your payment due dates with your payday to keep things on track. Some credit card companies will even let you choose your due date. And setting up auto-pay ensures at least the minimum is covered, helping you dodge costly late fees.
If you’re still struggling, don’t be afraid to reach out to your credit card company and ask for help.
“The credit card company may temporarily lower your interest rate, reduce your minimum payment, or even waive certain fees, usually for a few months up to a year,” Gill explained.
You can also turn to a nonprofit credit counseling agency. These organizations work with creditors on your behalf and can often consolidate debt into one manageable monthly payment. That’s exactly what helped Jennifer get back on track.
“They offered me a lifeline in that aspect,” she said, referring to her experience with Money Management International.
And here’s one more habit that can go a long way: carve out a few minutes each week to review your finances. Take a look at what’s coming in, what’s going out, and what’s due. It’s a simple step that can help you avoid surprises, and make smarter money moves in the long run.
For more information, click here.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Operation Indy Animals has received a $50,000 grant to expand affordable spay and neuter services for pet owners in underserved areas of Indianapolis.
The funding, provided by the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust, will help OIA to provide spay/neuter surgeries, vaccinations, and microchipping for an estimated 144 dogs and 67 cats over the next year, helping to reduce pet overpopulation and ease the burden on local shelters.
“We are deeply grateful to the Nina Mason Pulliam Charitable Trust for their dedication to animal welfare,” said Darcie Kurtz, co-chair of Operation Indy Animals. “This funding allows us to reach more families and make a lasting impact on the lives of animals and the people who love them.”
Procedures can be scheduled through partners including FIDO Indy and Indy Neighborhood Cats at three veterinary clinics, including:
Those in need of assistance can visit OIA’s website for income eligibility information and application forms.
This story was formatted for WISHTV.com using AI-assisted tools. Our editorial team reviews and
edits all content published to ensure it meets our journalistic standards for accuracy and fairness.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A woman hit by a vehicle near Crown Hill Cemetery on Wednesday did not survive, Indianapolis police said.
Around 5:30 a.m., Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers responded to a report of a pedestrian struck at 38th Street and Boulevard Place.
Officers arrived and found the woman in the road. She was taken to a hospital in critical condition but died of her injuries, according to IMPD Public Information Officer Thompson.
Investigators think the woman was walking in the road, not using the crosswalk, when she was hit.
“We believe the driver tried to avoid this collision at all costs, striking a pole. It was just too late,” Thompson said at the scene.
The man driving the vehicle stayed at the scene and spoke with police.
“Think what that driver is going to have to go through, thinking about this loss of life and something that they were involved in,” Thompson said. “You also think about this victim. It’s just tragic. There’s got to be family out there thinking about this loved one.”
Thompson says it’s important to be aware when you’re on the road, whether you’re walking, riding a bike, or driving.
“We’ve continued to speak on being careful and, as a driver and as a pedestrian, it’s all parties. Bicyclists, bikers, everybody has to do their part and keep their heads up.”
Drivers should avoid the area of 38th Street and Boulevard Place until police have wrapped up their investigation.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Literal waves of water and figurative waves of fear have dominated the early morning hours on July’s penultimate day. A massive earthquake and the tsunami warnings it has spun off lead today’s edition of the Daybreak Drive-IN, Indiana’s first and fastest morning news podcast. Subscribe to have news, sports, and weather delivered to your device every weekday morning before 5am.
(MIRROR INDY) — A woman has filed a police report alleging that Nick Roberts, a Democrat on the City-County Council, held her against her will and groped her while they were on a second date in Fishers.
“I tried pushing him away multiple times. I had my hands on his shoulders. I’m not the strongest girl, but I was using all of my might to push him off,” the woman, 18, told Mirror Indy. “I was telling him, ‘Hey, stop. I don’t like this,’ but his grip would just get tighter and tighter.”
Roberts, 24, told Mirror Indy that he went on two dates with the woman but denied groping her and holding her against her will.
“Anyone that knows anything about me, I very much believe in consent,” said Roberts, who was elected to represent the northeast side in 2023 at the age of 23. “If somebody was resisting in the slightest way, I would never push back on that.”
Mirror Indy agreed not to publicly identify the woman because the newsroom does not typically name people who say they have been victims of sexual assault.
Roberts has not been charged with a crime. Fishers Police Department Major Mike Janes confirmed to Mirror Indy that someone reported an incident involving Roberts on July 12. Janes declined to provide any specific information beyond that, saying it could compromise an ongoing investigation.
The allegations come just weeks after IndyStar reported that Keith Graves, an eastside Democrat on the council, was accused of physical and sexual assault. Graves stepped down as chair of the Education Committee following the news.
The news also comes as Democrats on the council consider making widespread changes to the city’s human resources policies in response to Mayor Joe Hogsett’s handling of harassment claims against Thomas Cook, his former top aide.
Roberts, who became the second-youngest person to serve on the City-County Council, has been described by some political observers as an up-and-comer in the Indiana Democratic Party.
Roberts also is the director of community relations for the Lawrence Township Trustee’s Office and does freelance work on data analytics, according to his LinkedIn profile and campaign website.
Council President Vop Osili and Majority Leader Maggie Lewis, both Democrats, did not respond to Mirror Indy’s requests for comment on Monday, July 28.
The woman, who met Roberts on the dating app Hinge, said their first date together at a coffee shop in Carmel “went really well.”
Before they parted ways, she said he gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek. When she texted him later that day to thank him for the gesture, he said, “It was my pleasure :)” and “You can get another (and maybe more) next time,” according to text messages reviewed by Mirror Indy.
She said the remark left her feeling uncomfortable.
Roberts said he interpreted her next text message, though, to be consent. She wrote, “I hope so, I’d like that :)”.
Roberts told Mirror Indy he interpreted that remark to mean that she had given him consent to kiss her on the second date.
The woman, though, said she thought Roberts was referring to giving her another kiss on the cheek.
“I’m not used to flirting. I’ve been homeschooled all of my life,” she told Mirror Indy. “This is all new to me.”
The woman said she was walking with Roberts along the Nickel Plate Trail on the evening of Saturday, July 12, when Roberts pulled her off onto a side trail and said, “Let’s have a proper kiss.”
She said Roberts then held her and began kissing her and grabbing her breasts and buttocks.
She said she tried to pull away, but the more she resisted, the tighter his grip became. She believes the only reason he let go was because someone walked by along the main trail.
“I don’t know if they saw, but he saw them, and so he sort of loosened his grip on me, and I was able to step away,” she said.
She said Roberts tried again to get her to return to the side trail, but she told him she needed to get back to her car, and he eventually agreed.
“I was very clearly uncomfortable,” she said. “I just wanted to get home. I was freaking out. I was shaking. My brain wasn’t thinking straight.”
Roberts denies the woman’s account of what happened.
He said the pair did walk onto a side trail, but that they only shared a brief kiss and that he put his hands on her hips for a few seconds.
“There’s really nothing that gave me any indication that she was uncomfortable at all,” Roberts said. “Had she done anything, I would have stopped immediately.”
Roberts shared his comments during a 30-minute interview with Mirror Indy on July 23. He was accompanied by an attorney who encouraged him to answer the interview questions.
Roberts speculated that the woman is lying about what happened because, he recalled, the woman told him that her stepmother did not like that they were going out together.
“I know her stepmom had a personal vendetta against me,” Roberts said. “She did not like that (her stepdaughter) was going on a date with me because of my politics, unfortunately.”
The woman told Mirror Indy, though, that she never discussed her or her stepmother’s politics on the date.
“I hate that he’s trying to make me (out) as a liar,” she said. “It’s very frustrating. I don’t see what he thinks I would get out of this.”
When the woman got back to her car, she called her dad to tell him what happened. When she returned home to her stepmother’s house that night, her stepmom remembers seeing her daughter “shaking and scared.”
“You could tell it was very traumatic for her,” her stepmom told Mirror Indy. “I said, ‘There’s nothing you could’ve done that could justify that after you made it clear you didn’t want it.’”
Mirror Indy is not publicly identifying the woman’s stepmother, either, because doing so could identify the 18-year-old woman.
They decided they would file a police report, though her stepmom isn’t confident that any criminal charges will be filed.
“Nothing ever comes of this when you file a police report because it’s all ‘he said, she said,’ and the system is set up to fail women,” she said.
The stepmom also posted a photo of Roberts, along with a paragraph about her daughter’s experience, in a private Facebook group “to let other moms know,” she told Mirror Indy.
Roberts replied to the post, saying the comments were untrue. He later messaged the woman to say he was “really sorry for kissing on the date” if she wasn’t comfortable with that.
Fishers police officers showed up to his house a few hours after the Facebook post was made, Roberts said. He said he answered their questions.
Karen Celestino-Horseman, Roberts’ attorney, said she encouraged police to look for any trail camera footage.
It’s unclear if there are any cameras nearby, though, and Fishers police have declined to answer Mirror Indy’s questions about the case.
The woman said she’s telling her story to make sure what happened to her doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“I want this to be a warning to other women,” she said.
Roberts has largely remained silent on the issue of sexual harassment since the council voted to investigate the Hogsett administration’s handling of harassment accusations against Cook.
Roberts posted a video on June 10, though, the day after a former Hogsett campaign worker was thrown out of a council meeting while trying to describe her experiences. Roberts said: “There’s still a lot of work to be done” when it comes to improving the city’s human resources policies.
“There needs to be an independent system that people feel like they can trust 100%, and also too for elected officials, I think there needs to be reporting systems against elected officials so there’s true accountability,” the councilor said in the video.
The council’s investigation, which was conducted by the Fisher Phillips law firm, recommended that councilors make legislative changes to the city’s human resources division to make it independent of the mayor’s administration.
Democrats on the council are expected to release public information about their policy proposals in the coming weeks.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Peter Blanchard covers local government. Reach him at 317-605-4836 or peter.blanchard@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on X @peterlblanchard.
TOKYO (AP) — One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck Russia’s Far East early Wednesday, sending tsunami waves into Japan, Hawaii and the U.S. West Coast. No substantial damage has been reported so far, but authorities warned people away from shorelines and said the risk could last more than a day.
Ports on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia near the 8.8 magnitude quake’s epicenter flooded as residents fled inland, and frothy, white waves washed up to the shore in northern Japan. Cars jammed streets and highways in Hawaii’s capital, with standstill traffic even in areas away from the shoreline.
People went to evacuation centers in affected areas of Japan, with memories fresh of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused reactor meltdowns at a nuclear power plant. No abnormalities in operations at Japan’s nuclear plants were reported Wednesday.
Russian authorities said several people were injured, without giving a figure. In Japan, at least one person was injured.
A tsunami height of 3-4 meters (10 to 13 feet) was recorded in Kamchatka, 60 centimeters (2 feet) on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, and up to 1.4 feet (under 30 centimeters) above tide levels were observed in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Hours after the quake, Hawaii downgraded its tsunami warning to an advisory, while Japan’s Meteorological Agency also lowered its alert to an advisory in the Pacific coast south of Fukushima. The alert still in place farther north.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Logan, the Adjutant General of the State of Hawaii Department of Defense, said an advisory means there is the potential for strong currents and dangerous waves, as well as flooding on beaches or in harbors.
The impact of the tsunami could last for hours or perhaps more than a day, said Dave Snider, tsunami warning coordinator with the National Tsunami Warning Center in Alaska
“A tsunami is not just one wave,” he said. “It’s a series of powerful waves over a long period of time. Tsunamis cross the ocean at hundreds of miles an hour — as fast as a jet airplane — in deep water. But when they get close to the shore, they slow down and start to pile up. And that’s where that inundation problem becomes a little bit more possible there.”
“In this case, because of the Earth basically sending out these huge ripples of water across the ocean, they’re going to be moving back and forth for quite a while,” which is why some communities may feel effects longer, he said.
Hawaii Gov. Josh Green said data from Midway Atoll, which is between Japan and Hawaii, measured waves from peak to trough of 6 feet (1.8 meters). He said waves hitting Hawaii could be bigger or smaller and it was too early to tell how large they would be. A tsunami of that size would be akin to a 3-foot (90-centimeter) wave riding on top of surf, he said.
“This is a longitudinal wave with great force driving through the shoreline and into land,” he said at a news conference.
Green said Black Hawk helicopters have been activated and high-water vehicles were ready to go in case authorities need to rescue people. “But please do not put yourself in harm’s way,” he said.
The Oregon Department of Emergency Management said on Facebook that small tsunami waves were expected along the coast starting around 11:40 p.m. local time, with wave heights between 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters). It urged people to stay away from beaches, harbors and marinas and to remain in a safe location away from the coast until the advisory is lifted.
“This is not a major tsunami, but dangerous currents and strong waves may pose a risk to those near the water,” the department said.
Much of the West Coast, spanning California, Washington state, and the Canadian province of British Columbia, was also under a tsunami advisory.
A tsunami of less than 30 centimeters (under 1 foot) was forecast to hit parts of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The province’s emergency preparedness agency said waves were expected to reach remote Langara Island around 10:05 p.m. Tuesday and Tofino around 11:30 p.m. The agency said “multiple waves over time” were expected.
The quake at 8:25 a.m. Japan time had a preliminary magnitude of 8.0, Japanese and U.S. seismologists said. The U.S. Geological Survey later updated its strength to 8.8 magnitude and a depth of 20.7 kilometers (13 miles).
The quake was centered about 119 kilometers (74 miles) east-southeast from the Russian city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, which has a population of 180,000, on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Multiple aftershocks as strong as 6.9 magnitude followed.
Severokurilsk Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov said the port in the city was flooded by tsunami waves, washing fishing boats into the sea. He said that no major damage was recorded.
Power supplies have been shut and the authorities were checking the power network after the flooding.
The earthquake appeared to be the strongest anywhere in the world since the 9.0 magnitude earthquake off northeastern Japan in March 2011 that caused a massive tsunami that set off meltdowns at a nuclear power plant. Only a few stronger earthquakes have ever been measured around the world.
The tsunami alert disrupted transportation in Japan, with ferries, trains and airports in the affected area suspending or delaying some operations.
A tsunami of 60 centimeters (2 feet) was recorded at Hamanaka town in Hokkaido and Kuji port in Iwate, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency. Several areas reported smaller waves including 20 centimeters (8 inches) in Tokyo Bay five hours after the quake.
In Japan’s northern coastal town of Matsushima, dozens of residents took refuge at an evacuation center, where water bottles were distributed and an air conditioner was running. One person told NHK she came to the facility without hesitation based on the lesson from the 2011 tsunami.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi warned evacuees that they may not be able to return home by the end of the day, as the tsunami waves could remain high.
Japanese nuclear power plants reported no abnormalities. The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi plant damaged by the 2011 tsunami said about 4,000 workers are taking shelter on higher ground at the plant complex while monitoring remotely to ensure safety.
Philippine authorities advised people to stay away from the beach and coastal areas. “It may not be the largest of waves, but these can continue for hours and expose people swimming in the waters to danger,” Teresito Bacolcol of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology told The Associated Press.
Mexico’s navy warned that tsunami waves will start reaching the northern coast in Ensenada, near California, at around 02:22 a.m. Wednesday local time, and waves could progress along the Pacific coast to Chiapas state, around 07:15 a.m. local time.
New Zealand authorities warned of “strong and unusual currents and unpredictable surges” along all coastlines of the South Pacific island nation. The emergency management agency said people should move out of the water, off beaches and away from harbors, marinas, rivers and estuaries.
People were urged to stay away from coastlines until any wave surges passed late Wednesday in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Federated States of Micronesia and Solomon Islands.
Some tiny and low-lying Pacific island chains are among the world’s most imperiled by tsunamis and rising seas due to climate change.
Earlier in July, five powerful quakes — the largest with a magnitude of 7.4 — struck in the sea near Kamchatka. The largest quake was at a depth of 20 kilometers and was 144 kilometers (89 miles) east of the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.
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This story has corrected the wave height forecast in Oregon to between 1 and 2 feet, not 1 and 3 feet.
