But an attorney for one of the suspects and the alleged captor’s mother said the mentally impaired woman was given a place to stay because she and her young daughter had no home and that the woman was free to move in an out whenever she wanted.

Authorities announced federal charges Tuesday against the three people the woman lived with in a blue-collar neighbourhood in Ashland, about 65 miles southwest of Cleveland. Beginning in early 2011, they forced the mother to co-operate with them by threats and physical abuse, they said.

The woman and her daughter were freed in October after police investigated an abuse allegation one of the suspects made against her, authorities said, and they are doing well.

“The victim in this case is slowly recovering,” U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach said.

Jordie Callahan, 26, Jessica Hunt, 31, and Daniel J. “DJ” Brown, 33, were charged with forced labour. Callahan also was charged with tampering with a witness in the investigation.

The suspects had an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Cleveland and were ordered jailed until a bond hearing on Monday.

Police first got involved when the woman was charged with shoplifting a candy bar and asked to be jailed because the three suspects “had been mean to her,” said Ashland police Lt. Joel Icenhour.

It wasn’t clear whether she had staged the candy bar theft to get police help.

Police checking into her “mean” claim went to the apartment after one of the suspects said it was the woman who was abusive. Authorities said the allegation was a ruse complete with a video staged by the suspects. They said the suspects forced the woman to act as if she were mistreating her child.

The 29-year-old woman was forced to do housework under the threat of harm to her and her child by her captors’ pet python or pit bulls, authorities allege, and a menagerie of snakes was put in the terrified 5-year-old’s face until she cried.

On several occasions, according to an FBI affidavit, the suspects injured the woman and ordered her to go to an emergency room for pain medication they would then take for themselves.

Andrew Hyde, who represented Callahan on related state kidnapping charges dismissed Tuesday as the federal case was announced, called the charges ludicrous and said the woman at the centre of the alleged forced-labour plot moved in and out as she pleased.

“There was never any forced labour, any forced co-habitation. She was never forced to do anything. She used this story to get out of trouble she was in” with regard to a child-abuse allegation, Hyde said.

Hyde said county social service workers placed the girl with her mother when the woman was living with the three suspects.

Callahan’s mother, Becky Callahan of Ashland, said in a phone interview that the allegations were “all lies.” She said that the alleged victim was friends with her son and Hunt, her son’s girlfriend, and that they tried to help the woman out by offering her a place to live because she didn’t have a home.

A federal court lawyer for Callahan declined comment. A second defence attorney, Ed Bryan, said Hunt will plead not guilty and said there are credibility issues with the mother.

There was no immediate response to phone and email messages left for the attorney representing Brown.

According to an FBI affidavit, the mother and child were denied food at times or given leftovers; on one occasion when they hadn’t eaten all day, the mother was given a plate of food and ordered to feed a pet dog.

The trio also looted the woman’s bank account and public assistance, according to the affidavit.

The woman told investigators the trio learned of her plan to try to escape and punished her by shaving her hair into a Mohawk and using a marker to write “slut,” ”tramp” and “whore” on her face and chest. She was forced to clean up the hair without a broom or dust pan, according to the affidavit.

The woman was forced to do house work and shop for her captors and clean up after their pets, authorities said.

The three kept the mother and daughter under surveillance with a baby monitor, according to the affidavit, and at one point, the woman was lured back with ice cream.

“They treated her with such cruelty that it is hard to comprehend,” Dettelbach said. “They tried to take away her human dignity.”

Defence attorney Hyde said police told the woman they would help if she felt she had been framed with an incriminating video. According to Hyde, she bought that argument and made up the enslavement allegation.

“I think the feds just failed to fully investigate this before they jumped to some conclusions,” Hyde said.

A woman in the Ashland neighbourhood said Tuesday she was surprised by the allegations, saying that Callahan sometimes helped her husband with yard work and other chores and that she never saw signs someone was being held captive in the house.

Tara Williams, 51, said she occasionally saw Callahan walking down an alley with a large yellow-and-white snake draped around his neck but never saw him threaten anyone with it. She said three pit bulls also lived in the apartment, along with a pot-bellied pig that once got loose.

The white, two-story house of three apartments, including the defendants’ apartment, is set back from the road with a “no trespassing” sign near the front.

Williams said she occasionally saw the presumed victim walking by quickly and sometimes underdressed for cold weather. The woman never spoke or looked at others, Williams said. Williams never saw a child, she said.

Like many in Ashland and around Ohio, Williams said she couldn’t help but think of the parallels to the case in Cleveland a little more than a month ago, in which three women were freed from a house where a man allegedly imprisoned them for a decade, raping them during that time and fathering a child with one of them.

Ariel Castro has pleaded not guilty to more than 300 counts against him, which include kidnapping, rape and felonious assault.

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Sheeran reported for this story from Cleveland.

That was the repeated message Tuesday night in Sao Paulo, where upward of 50,000 people massed in front of the city’s main cathedral. While mostly peaceful, the demonstration followed the rhythm of protests that drew 240,000 people across Brazil the previous night, with small bands of radicals splitting off to fight with police and break into stores.

Mass protests have been mushrooming across Brazil since demonstrations called last week by a group angry over the high cost of a woeful public transport system and a recent 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares in Sao Paulo, Rio and elsewhere.

The local governments in at least four cities have now agreed to reverse those hikes, and city and federal politicians have shown signs that the Sao Paulo fare could also be rolled back. It’s not clear that will calm the country, though, because the protests have released a seething litany of discontent from Brazilians over life’s struggles.

Yet, beyond complaints about the cost for bus and subway rides, protesters haven’t produced a laundry list of concrete demands. Demonstrators mainly are expressing deep anger and discontentment — not just with the ruling government, but with the entire governing system. A common chant at the rallies has been “No parties!”

“What I hope comes from these protests is that the governing class comes to understand that we’re the ones in charge, not them, and the politicians must learn to respect us,” said Yasmine Gomes, a 22-year-old squeezed into the plaza in central Sao Paulo where Tuesday night’s protest began.

President Dilma Rousseff, a former leftist guerrilla who was imprisoned and tortured during Brazil’s 1964-85 dictatorship, hailed the protests for raising questions and strengthening Brazil’s democracy. “Brazil today woke up stronger,” she said in a statement.

Yet Rousseff offered no actions that her government might take to address complaints, even though her administration is a prime target of demonstrators’ frustrations.

The protests have brought troubling questions about security in the country, which is playing host this week to soccer’s Confederations Cup and will welcome Pope Francis in July for a visit to Rio de Janeiro and rural Sao Paulo.

Brazil’s media has scrambled to cover the sprawling protests — coverage that in some cases raised the ire of protesters, in particular that of the powerful Globo TV network. Whenever what appears to be a Globo helicopter swoops over a demonstration, protesters hiss, raise their fists and chant slogans against the network for what they say was its failure to widely show images of a violent police crackdown on protesters last week in Sao Paulo.

Brazilian demonstrations in recent years generally had tended to attract small numbers of politicized participants, but the latest mobilizations have united huge crowds around a central complaint: The government provides woeful public services even as the economy is modernizing and growing.

The Brazilian Tax Planning Institute think-tank found that the country’s tax burden in 2011 stood at 36 per cent of gross domestic product, ranking it 12th among the 30 countries with the world’s highest tax burdens.

Yet public services such as schools are in sorry shape. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found in a 2009 educational survey that literacy and math skills of Brazilian 15-year-olds ranked 53rd out of 65 countries, behind nations such as Bulgaria, Mexico, Turkey, Trinidad and Tobago, and Romania.

Many protesting in Brazil’s streets hail from the country’s growing middle class, which government figures show has ballooned by some 40 million over the past decade amid a commodities-driven economic boom.

They say they’ve lost patience with endemic problems such as government corruption and inefficiency. They’re also slamming Brazil’s government for spending billions of dollars to host next year’s World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics while leaving other needs unmet.

A November report from the government raised to $13.3 billion the projected cost of stadiums, airport renovations and other projects for the World Cup. City, state and other local governments are spending more than $12 billion on projects for the Olympics in Rio. Nearly $500 million was spent to renovate Maracana stadium in Rio for the World Cup even though the venue already went through a significant face-lift before the 2007 Pan American Games.

Attorney Agatha Rossi de Paula, who attended the latest protest in Sao Paulo along with her mother, called Brazil’s fiscal priorities “an embarrassment.”

“We just want what we paid in taxes back, through health care, education and transportation,” said the 34-year-old attorney. “We want the police to protect us, to help the people on the streets who have ended up with no job and no money.”

Although a single group set the protests in motion with its demonstrations last week calling for lowered transit fares, the mass gatherings are showing no evidence of any central leadership, with people using social media to call for marches and rallies. Groups of Brazilians also staged small protests Tuesday in other countries, including Mexico, Portugal, Spain and Denmark.

A cyber-attack knocked the government’s official World Cup site offline Tuesday, and the Twitter feed for Brazil’s Anonymous hackers group posted links to a host of other government websites whose content had been replaced by a screen calling on citizens to come out to the streets.

Tuesday night’s march in Sao Paulo started out peacefully but turned nasty outside City Hall when a small group lashed out at police and tried to invade the building.

Different groups of protesters faced off, one chanting “peace, peace” while trying to form a human cordon to protect the building, the other trying to clamber up metal poles to get inside. At one point, one person tried to seize a metal barrier from another who was trying to use it to smash the building’s windows and doors.

The air was thick with police pepper spray and smoke after demonstrators set a TV satellite truck and a police lookout booth on fire.

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Associated Press writers Jenny Barchfield in Rio de Janeiro, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia and Jill Langlois in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.

His 26-hour whirlwind visit to the German capital caps three days of international summitry for the president and marks his return to a place where he once summoned a throng of 200,000 to share his ambitious vision for American leadership.

That was 2008, when Obama was running for president and those who supported him at home and abroad saw the young mixed-race American as a unifying and transformational figure who signified hope and change.

Five years later, Obama comes to deliver a highly anticipated speech to a country that’s a bit more sober about his aspirations and the extent of his successes, yet still eager to receive his attention at a time that many here feel that Europe, and Germany in particular, are no longer U.S. priorities. A Pew Research Center poll of Germans found that while their views of the U.S. have slipped since Obama’s first year in office, he has managed to retain his popularity, with 88 per cent of those surveyed approving of his foreign policies.

Obama also has an arc of history to fulfil.

Fifty years ago next week, President John F. Kennedy addressed a crowd of 450,000 in that then-divided city to denounce the Soviet bloc and famously declare “Ich bin ein Berliner,” German for “I am a Berliner.” Since then, presidents from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton have used Berlin speeches to articulate broad themes about freedom and international alliances.

Obama, fresh from a two-day summit of the Group of Eight industrial economies, will speak at the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol of Germany’s division and later reunification. It is a venue that German Chancellor Angela Merkel denied him in 2008, saying only sitting presidents were granted such an honour.

The past context — and the weight of it — are not lost on the White House.

“This is a place where U.S. presidents have gone to talk about the role of the free world essentially,” said Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes. “He is seeking to summon the energy and legacy of what’s been done in the past and apply it to the issues that we face today.”

Rhodes said Obama will make the case that even though the Berlin Wall came down 23 years ago and the threat of nuclear war has dissipated, the type of activism apparent during the Cold War needs to be applied to such current challenges as climate change, counterterrorism and the push for democratic values beyond the United States and Europe.

A senior administration official said Obama will also renew his call to reduce the world’s nuclear stockpiles, including a proposed one-third reduction in U.S. and Russian arsenals. He is not expected to outline a timeline for this renewed push. The official insisted on anonymity in order to preview the issue before the president’s speech.

Obama will also hold a joint news conference with Merkel.

The visit was attracting widespread attention in Germany. People waved and snapped photos as Obama sped by after his arrival and a thick cluster awaited the motorcade as it passed the Brandenburg Gate. An evening news show in Berlin devoted itself to the president’s visit, highlighting “Das Biest,” or “The Beast,” as the president’s armoured limousine is called.

There have been a few small protests, including one directed against the National Security Agency’s surveillance of foreign communications, where about 50 people waved placards taunting, “Yes, we scan.”

Merkel has said she was surprised at the scope of the spying that was revealed and said the U.S. must clarify what information is monitored. But she also said U.S. intelligence was key to foiling a large-scale terror plot and acknowledged her country is “dependent” on co-operating with American spy services.

For Merkel, the visit presents an opportunity to bolster her domestic standing ahead of a general election in September.

The U.S. and the Germans have clashed on economic issues, with Obama pressing for Europe to prime the economy with government stimulus measures, while Merkel has insisted on pressing debt-ridden countries to stabilize their fiscal situations first.

But the two sides have found common ground on a trans-Atlantic trade pact between the European Union and the U.S. At the just-completed G-8 summit, the leaders agreed to hold the first talks next month in the U.S.

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Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Robert Reid and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said on Wednesday that the militants fired two rockets into the Bagram Air Base late on Tuesday.

American officials confirmed the base had come under attack by indirect fire — likely a mortar or rocket — and that four U.S. troops were killed.

The attack underscores the challenges ahead after the Taliban and the U.S. announced they would hold talks in Qatar to try and negotiate a solution to the violence. President Barack Obama has cautioned this would be neither quick nor easy.

Prosecutor Gaspar Armando Garcia Torres says Walter Lee Williams, 65, is wanted on charges of sexual exploitation of children and travelling abroad for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts with children.

Garcia said Williams was captured late Tuesday while drinking coffee near a park in the Caribbean beach town.

A federal arrest warrant was issued for Williams in Los Angeles in April, according to the FBI website.

Garcia said he didn’t know how long Williams had been in Playa del Carmen.

Adrian Ernest Bayley, 41, was sentenced by the Victoria state Supreme Court in Melbourne, and cannot be considered for parole for 35 years.

He pleaded guilty to raping and strangling Jill Meagher as she walked home from a bar after an evening out with work colleagues on Sept. 22 last year in Melbourne. The court heard that Meagher rejected a colleague’s offer to escort her home.

Bayley accosted her on a busy street and dragged her into a lane only a few hundred meters (yards) from her home. He was caught on closed circuit TV approaching her.

The crime caused outrage in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city, where a week later 30,000 people took to the streets near the lane where she was strangled to rally against violence toward women.

The 29-year-old Meagher was born in the Irish port city of Drogheda and worked in an administrative position for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Her husband Tom Meagher told the court his faith in mankind had been destroyed.

“I think of the waste of a brilliant mind and a beautiful soul at the hands of a grotesque and soulless human being,” he said in his victim impact statement.

“I am half a person because of this crime,” he added.

Prosecutor Gavin Silbert had urged that Bayley be denied any possibility of parole. Justice Justice Geoffrey Nettle said he would have accepted Silbert’s plea had Bayley not pleaded guilty.

“It was a savage violent rape of the worst kind,” Nettle said in passing sentence. “Your killing of the deceased ranks among the worst kind conceivable.”

Bayley had been free on parole after serving eight years for raping five women when he killed Meagher. That prison sentence had been his second for sex crimes.

After the sentencing, the victim’s father George McKeon read a brief statement on behalf of the family outside court in which he thanked police and prosecutors.

“Jill was brutally raped and murdered and she is never coming back,” McKeon said. “Justice has now been done.”

The case of Rosalia, the fifth of seven children of a poor family in a slum outside La Paz, has been closely watched by Bolivians. It also drew the attention of the Boston Children’s Hospital, which offered to send a plane and two specialists to pick up the girl, officials in Bolivia said.

On May 24, the girl went to a store with her mother to make some purchases when she was attacked by the storeowner’s dog. The Rottweiler grabbed her by the head and ripped off a part of her scalp. It also left deep wounds on her face, back and buttocks, according to the doctors who treated her.

Her mother, Regina Pillco, said she couldn’t get Rosalia out of the dog’s jaws because she was carrying a newborn on her back.

The girl’s father, Agustin Apaza, is formally unemployed and earns money calling out buses in the public transportation system. He will accompany Rosalia to Boston.

Rosalia was unconscious and wrapped in bandages until last Wednesday, when she woke up, asked for her mother and began crying.

On Tuesday, Dr. Alfredo Rodriguez, head of intensive care at the Bolivian children’s hospital, said Rosalia is out of the most critical stage and is ready to fly to Boston.

“She is breathing by herself, she no longer needs to be intubated, and she is in condition of travel,” Rodriguez said. “The wound to her right (cheek) is extensive; she has lost tissue and it reaches the bone. The girl needs plastic surgery to live in normal conditions.”

Authorities in Bolivia say they expect the plane from the Boston hospital to arrive Thursday to pick up Rosalia. Permission for the plane to land in Bolivia is being arranged, said Concepcion Saenz, the official at the Children’s Defenders office handling the paperwork.

Officials at the Boston hospital would not confirm the details about the flight, saying patient privacy laws prevented them from addressing such questions.

The case has aroused passions in this South American country, with a ruling party lawmaker calling for a law to prohibit ownership of breeds considered dangerous, and pet owners in some cities marching to protest the initiative.

The slum where the family lives is a poor, high-crime part of Bolivia, and people sometimes keep attack dogs on chains to scare thieves away from their homes and businesses.

BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith says he learned from a family member that the 33-year-old died early Tuesday.

Hastings wrote about politics for the popular news site and has written books dealing with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He won a Polk Award for magazine reporting for his Rolling Stone cover story “The Runaway General.”

The story was credited with ending Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s career after it revealed the military’s candid criticisms of the Obama administration.

There was a car crash early Tuesday in the Hancock Park neighbourhood of Los Angeles that killed a man, but coroner’s officials could not confirm whether Hastings was the victim.

Video of the rapper from his music video shoot for the song “God Bless Amerika” hit the Web on Monday. In it, he appears to be stepping on top of the flag. But he said in a Facebook post Tuesday the flag on the ground will not appear in the clip.

He writes it was never his intention “to desecrate the flag of the United States of America.”

He says the flag will reveal a group of people behind him in the video.

The rapper says in the statement his environment helped shape the way he views America, and his song and video represent the people he grew up with.

Officials said Tuesday the four were killed by indirect fire, likely a mortar or rocket, but they had no other details.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details on the deaths.

The attack comes as U.S. and allied forces formally handed over control of the country’s security to the Afghan army and police in a ceremony in Kabul. The transition to Afghan-led security means U.S. and other foreign combat troops will not be directly carrying the fight to the insurgency, but they will advise and back up the Afghan forces as needed with air support and medical evacuations.