AS Nintendo revealed its next-gen Nintendo Switch 2 console, the company announced a series of hands-on events for fans across the world.

If you signed up for the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience events, you may have received an invitation to attend in your inbox.

Online sign-ups for the in-person events were open from January 17 to 26, 2025.

Apparently, the lucky fans who have been selected at random to attend are already getting their invites via email.

Many Nintendo players took to social media to share screenshots of the coveted confirmation emails.

If you applied for a ticket, make sure your spam folder too, as the invite may have landed there.

Fans who were not drawn still have a second chance to attend, as waitlists will be available starting January 29, at 4pm ET for events in the US, and “soon” for the London event.

Even those who were not selected are receiving an email about the waitlists, which will open on a “first come, first served” basis.

Unfortunately, walk-up tickets won’t be available for these events, so the waitlists are the only second chance fans will get to grab one.

The first Nintendo Switch 2 hands-on events are scheduled for early April 2025 and will run at least until early June.

The series kicks off with events in New York on April 4-6 and Los Angeles, on April 11-13.

The London Nintendo Switch 2 Experience is also scheduled for April 11-13, 2025, at the ExCel centre.

For more on the hands-on preview events, check out our Nintendo Switch 2 Experience explainer.

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An Albany man who showed a “disregard for life, health, and safety” when he attempted to cover up a hit and run that left a man with a skull fracture and a brain bleed has avoided immediate prison.

Tor ECKHOFF is a Norwegian Youtuber, known for its strange adventure winter videos, and he uploaded it to his channel ...

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AN 11-YEAR-OLD schoolboy raped a younger boy twice after luring him into the woods.

The victim said the abuse made him feel “confused about his sexuality and his body”.

PA:Press Association

Cardiff Crown Court[/caption]

Daniel Hancox, now 26, manipulated his young victim and forcibly performed sexual acts upon him which had “devastating consequences for his emotional wellbeing”.

The victim courageously came forward later in life, having suffered years of torment.

A sentencing hearing at Cardiff Crown Court on Tuesday heard the defendant showed the victim pornography in order to persuade the boy what he was doing was “normal”.

He raped the victim on two occasions on a discarded mattress in a wooded area, where he had taken him with a view to abusing him.

He also got the victim to touch his penis, performed oral sex upon him, and penetrated him with his finger.

Sentencing, Judge Paul Hobson said: “The effect of what you did to (the victim) has been profound. Your actions had devastating consequences for his emotional wellbeing over the years.”

As an adult, the victim attended the wooded area and found the same mattress which he removed.

He was later found by his parents and was described by his father, who said: “He was just rolling his head, he was past tears, he was gone.”

The victim reported the abuse to police and Hancox, of Station Road, Cefn Coed, Merthyr Tydfil, was arrested.

He faced trial and was convicted by a jury of two counts of raping a boy under 13, causing/inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, causing a child to watch a sexual act, three counts of engaging in non-penetrative sexual activity with a boy under 13.

The court heard he was of previous good character.

In a victim personal statement read to the court by prosecutor Laurence Jones, the victim said: “As a child, confusion was a big part of it for me.

“Growing up I was confused about my sexuality and body and questioned why it had happened and what was next for me…. It didn’t hit me as I thought it was normalised behaviour, I didn’t feel like it was wrong as I was unaware of what was going on.

“When it was explained about sex education, it brought back memories and I realised I didn’t agree to this as a willing participant and felt like I had been put in a submissive role.

“I was made by his actions to feel isolated. I subconsciously became aware of my surroundings and people around me and being submissive.

“I would let people walk all over me and didn’t feel like I had self belief. I feel like it stumped my childhood.

“I had trust issues growing up and didn’t understand my emotions and disassociated myself from reality. I started to realise I had become confused about my sexuality, it put me on a path I shouldn’t have been on and took away my innocence…. Going into adulthood, I really started to struggle with mental health and felt disgust and self hatred.

“I listened to bad thoughts in my head and sabotaged anything nice… I self harmed by not looking after myself and punishing myself.”

The victim said he was later diagnosed with anxiety and PTSD, and described himself being in “self-destruct mode”.

He added: “I felt (Hancox) reprogrammed my brain to think that way. What he did confused me sexually and gave me a personality crisis… I don’t feel a sense of closure but glad the truth is out there.

“I’m glad in the eyes of the law he can’t make me out to be a liar.”

In mitigation, Stephen Thomas said his client was only 11 years old at the time of the offences and had not reoffended since.

He said the defendant resided with his mother and he had “strong community and family ties”.

Judge Hobson said that had Hancox committed the offences as an adult, he could expect a lengthy sentence, in the region of 15 to 16 years imprisonment, but due to the fact he was 11 at the time, he must receive the sentence he would have been given had he been sentenced as an 11-year-old.

Hancox was sentenced to a two-year-community order and was ordered to carry out a 40 day rehabilitation activity requirement.

He was also made subject to sex offender notification requirements for five years and a restraining order indefinitely.

SLEEPING in a freezing shed, made waterproof using a blue tarpaulin held down by gym weights, a group of migrants lived in squalor while earning thousands of pounds for their traffickers.

It was a far cry from the life they had been promised when they were lured to the UK by Zdenek Drevenak, 47, his brother Ernest Drevenak, 46, and four other gang members, all from the Czech Republic.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary

Roman Landa was one of the slave gang victims that was forced to work in McDonald’s[/caption]

Cambridgeshire Constabulary

Some of the victims were forced to live in a freezing cold shed in north London[/caption]

Cambridgeshire Constabulary

The shed some slaves lived in only had a tarpaulin over it to keep it waterproof[/caption]

Over the course of seven years from 2012, at least 16 people from the country were turned in modern slaves in Britain, with no money or passports to escape their traffickers, who ruled over them using horrendous violence and threats.

Homeless drug addicts were among the vulnerable victims preyed upon, forced to work up to 100 hours a week at businesses including a McDonald’s drive-thru in Cambridgeshire.

Meanwhile, the gang leaders themselves were making hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from the slave labour, splashing the cash on Versace gear and brazenly sharing snaps of £20 notes hanging from their Christmas tree.

Now, after a tip-off from Czech police in 2019 brought the evil trafficking operation crashing down, victims have spoken out about their terrifying ordeal.

Roman Landa was lured to Britain in 2016 and told how he was forced to work “at least 12 hours a day, six days a week” by the flashy crime ring.

“I am glad they’re finally in jail, but that won’t get back the years they took from me,” the 45-year-old told The Sunday Times.

“They are pigs and they don’t care about anyone but themselves. All they care about is money, money, money.”

Roman and five others all worked at the same McDonald’s franchise, near Cuxton in Cambridgeshire, where their employers failed to notice all their wages were being paid into the same bank account that didn’t belong to any of them.

It is estimated that about 80 per cent of the chain’s restaurants are run by franchisees, who pay the company a small fraction of their annual turnover in rents.

In the four years Roman was working for Zdenek and the gang, he is estimated to have earned them £90,000, while only being handed little more than petrol money in return.

Other victims – when not hunkering down in the freezing sheds or static caravans provided as ‘accommodation’ by the traffickers – were forced to work at the fast food restaurant, pitta bread factories or in a north London car wash.

The shed, which was cramped and not properly waterproof, was in the garden of gang leader Zdenek’s north London property.

During a police raid, cops found a Versace dinner set – including knives and forks that cost £100 each – inside the home.

It is thought the criminals had earned around £400,000 a year from their victims, who were subjected to extreme violence captured in disturbing CCTV footage.

Zdenek used the cash he gained from his victims to fund holidays to Turkey, Germany and the Czech Republic, with the group splurging out on designer gear and high-end cars.

Each of the slaves had their passports taken and locked away, while access to money was restricted to keep them compliant.

They said they would kill me if I tried to escape

Roman Landa, victim

In 2023, the gang was found guilty of crimes including holding a person in slavery or servitude, arranging or facilitating travel of another person with a view to exploitation, and fraud by false representation.

Leader Zdenek, from Karlovy Vary, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. His brother, Ernest Drevenak, was given 12-and-a-half years.

Ernest’s girlfriend, Veronika Bubencikova, 46, was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years. Fellow gang members Jiri Cernohous, 49, and Martin Slovjak, 47, were sentenced to nine and four years respectively.

Zdenek’s girlfriend, Monika Daducova, 44, is awaiting sentencing. All will serve their time in the UK.

Trafficking route

Facebook

Brothers Zdenek and Ernest Drevenak were the leaders of the trafficking gang[/caption]

Cambridgeshire Constabulary

The callous criminals decorated their tree with £20 notes on Christmas trees[/caption]

Facebook

Members of the gang splashed the cash earned by their slaves on foreign holidays[/caption]

Victims were identified in the Czech Republic by ‘spotters’. One of the towns they scouted was spa resort Karlovy Vary, where Roman was approached back in 2016.

At the time, he was homeless and suffering from a drug addiction – making him the perfect target for the scout, who would earn as little as £40 for each person they identified to the gang.

Roman told The Sunday Times: “I had nothing to look forward to except a cold winter on the streets.

“I thought anything would be better than that, so I said yes. I could get off the streets, earn some money, get a roof over my head. It seemed like a good opportunity.”

He was taken to Pilsen, in western Czech Republic, and put on a bus to the UK where he was met by Ernest. He was then taken to Caldecote, Cambridgeshire and shown a room in a house that he would share with five others.

The family who did this to us is big, and we’re afraid of bumping into one of them one day. I think I’ll always be afraid of that

Roman Landa

It was then that his passport was taken away. He was later made to sleep in a mobile home on a site in Caldecote, near the McDonald’s where he was made to work.

“It was very cold and there was no heating or water,” Roman told the newspaper. “We did at least all have a bed, and sometimes I was allowed to have a shower at Ernest’s house. But outside of work we did nothing. We kept to ourselves.”

Despite the horrifying conditions, fear of what might happen kept Roman and others stuck.

He said: “It wasn’t easy just to run away.

“They had taken my passport and locked it inside a safe. I didn’t speak English and was afraid to go to the police. They said they would kill me if I tried to escape.”

His job at the franchised fast food chain in Caldecote was secured by Ernest Drevenak’s girlfriend, Veronika, who did the application and then went to the interview with him as a translator.

Roman , who didn’t speak English, and the interviewer, who didn’t speak Czech, had no idea if Veronika was interpreting correctly. Roman didn’t even get to see any of the paperwork when he was hired.

Stolen earnings

The company didn’t spot any red flags when his wages, along with five others, were all being paid into the bank account of Ernest Drevenak.

Later, Roman was told to set up an account where the wages were paid into, before being quickly transferred into the account of one of the crime gang members.

The McDonald’s also didn’t raise any concerns that all six of the workers, who spoke little English, were all living at the same address and volunteering for unusually long hours.

At one point, Roman was offered a promotion at McDonald’s, which he wanted to turn down as he wouldn’t benefit from the extra money. When Drevenak found out, he was forced to take it.

Cops told how Roman and others were kept in “invisible handcuffs” by their captors and lived in fear of violent repercussions.

Supplied

Many of the victims worked 12 hours, six days a week, at this McDonald’s[/caption]

East Anglia Press

This house was where several of the slaves were kept in squalid conditions[/caption]

East Anglia Press

Multiple slaves were confined to one room in the house where Ernest lived[/caption]

Vile conditions

When business at the McDonald’s in Cambridgeshire began to slow, some of the slaves were moved from Ernest’s home in Caldecote to Zdenek’s in Enfield, north London.

Once in the UK’s capital, they secured jobs at pitta bread factories in Tottenham and Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, owned by the now-defunct Speciality Flatbreads.

The company supplied bread to major supermarkets including Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Co-op, Waitrose and M&S.

All of the supermarkets stopped doing business with the factory in the wake of the scandal. Sainsbury’s had already cut ties with it in 2016.

Cambridgeshire Constabulary

CCTV shown in court showed one of the gang members stamping on a slave’s head[/caption]

BBC

Slaves kept in Enfield were kept in squalid, freezing conditions[/caption]

Conditions for the slaves at Durants Road in Enfield were horrendous. They were monitored by CCTV and kept separate to stop them talking among themselves.

Describing the conditions, Detective Constable James Kelly of the Met’s modern slavery unit said: “Up to four of the victims were living in a shell of a shed in the backyard.

“There was no heating, no running water, no toilet. The roof was leaking, so the OCG (organised crime gang) just threw a crude blue tarpaulin over it, weighed down by gym weights.”

Inside the house, one of the women was kept as a domestic servant and forced to clean the house while the gang enjoyed the cash earned by her fellow victims.

Another woman was beaten with a television cable when she refused to work as a prostitute. Another recalled being manipulated like “a piece on a chess board”.

In another horrifying testimony, one victim described being shot in the leg, and was told by the gang when they took her to hospital that the NHS would amputate her leg, leading her to discharge herself. The bullet still affects her daily life.

Despite being relieved to have been rescued, Roman was worried that he wouldn’t be seen as a victim because of the money that passed through his bank account.

He is currently living in a shelter in the UK with one of the other former slaves. They had to move when their location was accidentally given to the defence lawyers in a court meeting.

“The family who did this to us is big, and we’re afraid of bumping into one of them one day,” Roman said.

“I think I’ll always be afraid of that. So I’m free, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have peace of mind.”

A McDonald’s spokesperson told The Sun: “The victims in these cases were cruelly exploited by the criminal perpetrators of these shocking offences.

“McDonald’s commends the bravery the victims showed during the legal proceedings in bringing the criminals to justice.

“Despite the victims having built relationships with colleagues and regularly spoken to the restaurant’s Business Manager in their native language, it was only through close co-operation with the police to assist in the comprehensive and lengthy criminal investigation that the franchisee was exposed to the full depth of these horrific, complex and sophisticated crimes.

“Together with our franchisees, we have taken action to strengthen the ability of our people and systems to detect and deter potential risks.

“In addition, this year, we have begun a partnership with Unseen, a leading expert organisation that specialises in addressing modern slavery issues and helping businesses in mitigating any risks of modern slavery in their operations and supply chains.

“We care deeply about the welfare of every single one of the 168,000 people working at McDonald’s and franchisee owned restaurants across the UK and Ireland.

“With our franchisees, we will play our part alongside government, NGOs and wider society to help combat the evils of modern slavery.”

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