Kenya

Victory was decided by a single stride Sunday morning during the 41st Los Angeles Marathon.

American Nathan Martin needed every foot of the 26.2-mile course to chase down leader Michael Kimani Kamau of Kenya, winning by 00.01 seconds an exciting finish that left spectators and athletes alike breathless. Martin posted a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes, 16.50 seconds and forced the closest finish in race history.

“In any race, I just want to give 100%,” said Martin, 36. “I saw an opportunity to race at the end and give one last push. All I wanted to do is push myself.”

Martin, who clocked a personal best 2:10:45 at the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth., Minn., in 2023, surged in front as he got to the finish line alongside Kamau, who immediately collapsed and was attended to by medical personnel before being carried off on a stretcher.

Kenyan Priscah Cherono waves her hands in the air as she wins the women’s elite race during the L.A. Marathon on Sunday.

(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

“I made an actual move five miles out … when I saw no one else was picking up the pace. I decided I needed to push,” Martin said. “At a mile and a half to go, I could see the leader and with 800 meters to go, I was thinking, ‘I’m catching him.’”

Ethiopian Enyew Nigat (2:14:23) was third, former University Florida runner Josh Izewski (2:14:43) was fourth and 2024 winner Dominic Ngeno of Kenya was fifth in 2:16:17.

Martin is the second straight American champion, following former Montana State University standout Matthew Richtman, whose time of 2:07:56 in 2025 was the second-fastest in race history and the fastest on the Stadium to the Stars course, which debuted five years ago.

Runners take part in the L.A. Marathon, moving through downtown on Sunday.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

This year’s race drew 27,000 runners, beginning at Dodger Stadium and ending on Santa Monica Boulevard at the Avenue of the Stars in Century City. Traditionally held on the third Sunday in March, this year’s race got moved up one week to avoid clashing with the Oscars, which will be held on March 15 at the Dolby Theatre along the race route.

Kenyan Priscah Cherono took the lead immediately in the women’s race and was already two minutes ahead of the chase pack by the ninth mile. The 45-year-old cruised to victory in 2:25:18.31, well ahead of runner-up Kellyn Taylor, who won the Austin Marathon in 2:33:29 on Feb. 15.

It is fitting that Cherono, on International Women’s Day, earned a $10,000 bonus for winning the Marathon Chase as the first runner, male or female, to cross the finish line. The women were given a 15-minute, 45-second head start and in the 16 Chase competitions to date a woman has won the race-within-a-race on 11 occasions.

Cherono, who won The Marathon Project on Dec. 21 in Chandler, Ariz., in a personal-best time of 2:25:17, was only three seconds off that pace Sunday and said afterward she knew she would win.

Runners compete in the L.A. Marathon, moving through downtown on Sunday.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

“I was feeling OK and I felt I could take it all the way,” said the mother of three who represented her country in the 5,000 meters at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “Normally I train alone, so I was happy running by myself.”

Taylor, a 39-year-old mother of four and a certified firefighter from Wisconsin, clocked 2:27:36:00 to earn the second-place medal, one spot in front of Antonina Kwambai, last year’s runner-up.

“I would’ve liked to have won, but my time is fair for this course,” Taylor said. “I did everything I could to stay in it, but [Cherono] went out really hard and ran a great race. We were hopeful she was gonna come back, but she didn’t.”

The men’s wheelchair winner was 25-year-old Miguel Jimenez Vergara, whose time of 1:42:13.28 was good enough to hold off Colombian and three-time winner Luis Francisco Sanclemente, who settled for second in 1:45:33.01. Canadian Josh Cassidy (1:45:53.60) was third.

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1. Shadows are cast on the road as L.A. Marathon runners move toward the finish line. 2. Spectators watch the L.A. Marathon and hold up signs cheering on participants. 3. Kenya’s Michael Kimani Kamau is tended to by personnel after falling at the finish line. 4. Priscah Cherono, of Kenya, celebrates with a crowd of supporters after finishing first in the L.A. Marathon women’s race. (Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)

“I did this last year and got second,” Jimenez Vergara said after maintaining a robust 3:54 per-mile pace. “I absolutely got my butt kicked last year on Mile 4, but that’s where I took the lead this time and I tried not to look back.”

Jimenez Vergara, who resides in San Diego, set a personal-best of 1:27.17 at the Grandma’s Marathon two years ago and is looking forward to making his Boston Marathon debut on Patriots’ Day in April.

Hannah Babalola, a former Nigerian now living in Chicago, won the women’s wheelchair division for the third year time in four years in 2:17:48.86.

The Los Angeles Marathon was first held in 1986, with Rick Sayre (2:12:19) and fellow American Nancy Ditz (2:36:17) taking the men’s and women’s Open titles. Markos Geneti set the men’s course record of 2:06:35 on the previous Stadium to the Sea course in 2011 and fellow Ethiopian Askale Marachi set the women’s mark of 2:24:11 on the same layout in 2019.

Arrest in town near the Ethiopian border follows Kenyan intelligence report revealing more than 1,000 citizens were trafficked for war.

Police in Kenya have arrested a man accused of being a member of a human trafficking scheme that lured Kenyans to Russia with false promises of work, only for them to end up fighting on the front lines of Ukrainian battlefields.

In a statement released late on Wednesday, Kenyan officials said Festus Arasa Omwamba was being detained in Moyale, a town in the country’s north bordering Ethiopia.

The 33-year-old “is believed to be a key player in a more extensive human trafficking syndicate that exploits vulnerable individuals by promising them legitimate employment opportunities in European countries”, read a statement from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations on X. “However, upon arrival, these unsuspecting victims find themselves trapped in illegal and perilous jobs, stripping them of their dignity and safety.”

The suspect was in police custody, undergoing preparation for his “impending” court appearance, it added.

Quoting police spokesperson Michael Muchiri, NTV Kenya reported that Omwamba was arrested after arriving from Russia. He was detained for allegedly recruiting Kenyans into the Russian military, Muchiri said.

The arrest comes after Kenya’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) last week unveiled a report which said more than 1,000 Kenyans have been recruited “to fight in the Russia-Ukraine war”, with 89 currently on the front line, 39 hospitalised, and 28 missing in action.

A day after the NIS released its report, dozens of families protested in Nairobi, demanding the government take action against the network of officials and syndicates tricking locals into joining the war. Many are still awaiting news about their loved ones’ whereabouts and when they might return.

Meanwhile, other families are grieving the deaths of their sons and brothers.

The Russian embassy in Nairobi denies the allegations, calling them in a statement last week “misleading propaganda”. It added that it never issued visas to Kenyan citizens who sought to travel to Russia with the aim to fight in Ukraine. However, the embassy added that Moscow does not preclude citizens of foreign countries from voluntarily enlisting in its armed forces.

Kenya’s Foreign Minister Musalia Mudavadi said he would travel to Russia in March to engage directly with the authorities and secure a safe return of Kenyans believed to be stranded there.

Fraudulent ‘schemes’ to lure foreign fighters

Reports of African men being fraudulently recruited and wilfully duped for work abroad to end up on the front lines in Ukraine have also surfaced from South Africa, Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Africa.

Ukraine on Wednesday accused Russia of using deception to recruit more than 1,700 Africans to join its war effort as the conflict drags into a fifth year.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha made the allegation during a news conference in Kyiv with his visiting Ghanaian counterpart, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa. He accused Moscow of using fraudulent “schemes” to lure the foreign fighters.

A day earlier, South Africa’s presidency announced it had secured the return home of 11 of its nationals who were “lured” into fighting for Russia in Ukraine. The presidency had already repatriated four others.

Reporting from Washington  — When Jim Asher, formerly the investigative editor in the Washington bureau of the McClatchy newspaper chain, tweeted Thursday that a former longtime aide to Hillary and Bill Clinton had “told me in person #Obama born in #kenya,” he set off yet another in the seemingly endless side debates over who is to blame for which seamy aspect of contemporary politics.

Evidence on the question is ambiguous.

Asher’s account about his conversations with Sidney Blumenthal has become a hot issue among political activists since last week, when Donald Trump finally admitted the falseness of the so-called birther theories that he pushed for more than five years.

As part of their statement announcing his climb-down, Trump’s aides pushed another false narrative — that it was Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign that had started the questioning of where Obama was born and whether he met the constitutional test for being president.

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There is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign ever raised that question, and her campaign fired one aide in Iowa who did circulate an email raising the issue. Some supporters of Clinton’s, however, certainly did raise the issue with reporters during the final stretch of the 2008 Democratic primary.

Blumenthal, whose penchant for spinning dark hypotheses long ago earned him the nickname “grassy knoll” — a reference to Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories — did not work for the 2008 campaign. But he has been close to both Clintons since Bill Clinton’s first presidential bid in 1992, so he would be more than just a random, unhappy Clinton supporter.

As a result, Asher’s statement provided grist for the Trump campaign’s position.

Blumenthal has denied Asher’s account.

Asher, in a statement, said that “on the birther issue, I recall my conversation with Blumenthal clearly,” but “I have nothing in writing memorializing that conversation.”

The written records that do exist and the recollections of people involved at the time leave the question unsettled.

Asher, who subsequently was McClatchy’s Washington bureau chief for five years, met with Blumenthal one day in the spring of 2008 at the McClatchy office in Washington, Asher recalled.

Two emails from that period show that Blumenthal sent tips to Asher about potential Kenya-related stories critical of Obama. But they do not include anything involving Obama’s birth.

A March 17, 2008, email said:

“Jim: On Kenya, your person in the field might look into the impact there of Obama’s public comments about his father. I’m told by State Dept officials that Obama publicly derided his father on his visit there and that was regarded as embarrassing and crossing the line by Kenyans for whom respect for elders (especially the father, especially a Muslim father, in a patrilineal society) is considered sacrosanct. Sidney.”

A second email, Asher said, involved possible “connections between Obama and Raila Odinga, who had described himself as Obama’s cousin and would run for president of Kenya” and links between Odinga and “controversial Muslim groups.”

The “person in the field” at the time was McClatchy’s Nairobi-based correspondent, Shashank Bengali, who is now a foreign correspondent for The Times. He looked into Blumenthal’s tips at the time and found they did not check out.

“Asher assigned me to look into everything related to Obama in Kenya,” Bengali said in an email.

“One of the things I researched was the false rumor that he was born in Kenya,” he said, “but I don’t remember where that tip came from.”

Bengali said that although Asher passed along some tips specifically attributed to Blumenthal, he did not recall any conversations in which Blumenthal’s name was linked to the birthplace issue.

“I can’t recall if we specifically discussed the birther claim,” he wrote Monday in an email to Asher, who contacted him after The Times and other news organizations asked Asher about his contacts with Blumenthal.

David.Lauter@latimes.com

For more on Politics and Policy, follow me @DavidLauter

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UPDATES:

2:53 p.m.: This article was updated to add Asher’s subsequent title as bureau chief.

The article was first published at 2:30 p.m.