The trial of Harvey Weinstein is underway in New York and the courtroom will continue to hear testimony from his accusers. Weinstein faces life in prison on the New York charges and up to 28 years in a separate criminal case in Los Angeles County. Over 100 women have accused Weinstein of rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment and professional retaliation.
Actress Annabella Sciorra told a packed courtroom that the disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein barged into her New York City apartment one night in the early 1990s, where he held her down and raped her. She testified that he entered her residence, chased her around and pinned her to the bed during the alleged attack. She said she tried to run to the bathroom, but “he kept coming at me. I felt overpowered because he was very big,” Sciorra told jurors.
She said that she confronted Weinstein about the incident at a dinner in New York weeks after. She described his response as very menacing “That’s what all the nice Catholic girls say.” He then leaned into her and said “this remains between you and I.” She described the exchange “It was threatening, and I was afraid,” she said. She testified that the experience left her so scarred that she fell into a deep depression, started cutting herself and began drinking heavily. It was the first time one of Weinstein’s accusers has confronted him directly in court since his arrest in May of 2018 on charges of rape and criminal sexual acts.
The courtroom also heard the testimony of Mimi Haleyi, a former production assistant who has accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. Haleyi, who met Weinstein in 2004 and then had a series of dealings with him in 2006 before, during and after a stint as a production assistant on Project Runway, accuses Weinstein of sexually assaulting her on two separate occasions. Haleyi said she accepted an invitation from Weinstein to fly her out to California for the premiere of “Clerks 2” in July 2006 as her friend was expecting a baby in Los Angeles.
She testified that a driver escorted her to his apartment where they were “having normal conversation,” and then he suddenly “lunged at me, trying to kiss me,” she claimed. She said he backed her into a bedroom, where she fell onto a bed and he pushed her down. She said she told him “no,” that she didn’t “want this to happen,” and that she was on her period, all in attempts to “make him stop.” After deciding no one would hear her scream and that she couldn’t sprint for the elevator or get out of the apartment in any way, she said, she “checked out.”
Four more of Weinstein’s accusers are expected to testify during the trial, though the statute of limitations has expired for all but two of their claims. The remaining four will testify about their encounters with him to show a pattern of abuse. Mr. Weinstein is accused of five felony counts, including rape and predatory sexual assault. Weinstein has maintained that the encounters were consensual. The women, he said, engaged in transactional relationships meant to advance their own careers.
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State lawmakers have passed several bills designed to boost safety requirements for stretch-limo operators, after a deadly crash in upstate New York involving one of the vehicles killed 20 people. Family members of the victims of the 2018 crash flanked officials during Tuesday’s press conference in Albany and cheered the 10 proposals supported by leaders of the state Senate, Assembly and Gov. Cuomo.
The crash occurred in Schoharie at the junction of New York state routes 30 and 30A on the afternoon of October 6th 2018. The passengers were traveling to a surprise birthday party in a retrofitted 2001 Ford Excursion. Among them were four sisters and two recently married couples. All 18 people inside the vehicle, including the driver, and 2 bystanders in a nearby parking lot were killed.
The investigation of the accident revealed pre-existing problems with the limousine, the driver and the limousine company, Prestige Limousine Services. As a result of failing two inspections due to deficient brakes, which a repair shop allegedly falsified having repaired, and other issues, the state had ordered the vehicle out of service. Inspectors had placed an “inservicable” sticker across the windshield which was removed before the fatal trip. The vehicle was only certified for 10 seats, but had 18 installed. The driver also lacked the required endorsement to his license for carrying 15 or more passengers at a time.
After the New York State Police determined that the operator, Nauman Hussain, was aware of these issues yet continued to rent the vehicle, he was arrested on a charge of criminally negligent homicide and later indicted on 20 counts each of that charge and 2nd degree manslaughter. His trial is scheduled for March 2020.
“This has been a difficult journey for all the collective families that said, as everybody knows, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish,” said an emotional Kevin Cushing, who lost his 31-year-old son, Patrick Cushing, in the October 2018 crash in Schoharie County. “We can’t change the past but we can make a difference in the future,” Cushing said.
One of the key pieces of legislation requires all new stretch limos to have seat belts starting in 2021 and retrofitted vehicles by 2023. Multiple reports following the accident found that seat belts could have saved the lives of at least some of the passengers. Other changes include a bill mandating that riders in taxis, liveries and limos — in both the front and back seats —wear safety belts. This would apply to Uber, too. Additional bills set new requirements for drug and alcohol testing of hired drivers, criminal and financial penalties for illegal U-turns and a commercial GPS system. Another bill will implement a study on other safety measures, such as escape hatches.
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The family of Damon Grimes, a teenager who died in 2017 after a Michigan state trooper stunned him with a Taser has reached a $12 million settlement with the Michigan State Police. Fifteen-year-old Grimes was riding an ATV in a residential area of Detroit, when a police officer tased him for not pulling over fast enough. The teen then crashed into the back of a parked truck and died quickly after.
This is the Michigan State Police Department’s largest-ever settlement for a single incident. The Grimes family, including Damon’s mother Monique Grimes and his sisters Dezjanai and Dezanique Grimes, are to get about $8 million of the settlement. Most of the remaining $4 million is to go to the family’s lawyers at the Fieger law firm.
The family’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Bessner, fellow trooper Ethan Berger and Michigan State Police Sgt. Jacob Liss said “I’m very thankful that the attorney general recognized the grave injury that occurred in this case, and the intolerable circumstances, and therefore accepted responsibility and allowed justice to be done.” Fieger added Grimes’ family is “very pleased” with the settlement.
“The facts of this case are so horrendous, and it was difficult dealing with the bureaucracy of the state of Michigan and dealing with the police agencies, but having cut through all that, the attorney general did the right thing and settled the case, and didn’t subject the state to a trial that could have resulted in a much larger verdict,” Fieger said.
The now-former Michigan State Police trooper who used the taser, Mark Bessner, was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter. It is a violation of Michigan State Police policy to deploy a Taser from a moving vehicle. The State Police revised its chase policy for ATVs in the aftermath of Damon’s death and stopped doing chases in Detroit involving traffic or misdemeanor violations. That new policy was later adopted statewide.
The settlement will end a federal lawsuit filed by Damon’s family in U.S. District Court in Detroit against Bessner and two other troopers, Ethan Berger and Sgt. Jacob Liss, a supervisor. Berger, who was driving the patrol car when Bessner fired the Taser, has since resigned from the agency. A State Police internal affairs report in 2018 accused Berger and Liss of attempting to cover up details of the ATV incident, such as the use of the Taser. Neither were charged in relation to the incident. The Michigan State Police internal affairs investigation had been critical of Liss, the supervisor at the crash scene, for omitting key details from his incident report, but Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy did not pursue criminal charges.
Michigan State Police Lt. Mike Shaw said in a written statement: “The Michigan State Police extends its continued condolences to the Grimes family, friends and supporters. Damon Grimes’ death is a tragedy that could have been avoided if not for the criminal and unforgivable actions of a former Michigan State Police trooper.
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Newly released body-camera video shows a Sonoma County sheriff deputy fatally slamming a man’s head into his own car. The sheriff deputy, Charlie Blount, and his partner, Deputy Jason Little, apparently thought the driver, David Glen Ward, had stolen the car — which he in fact owned. Ward had been the victim of a carjacking days earlier and reported the car stolen.
He had somehow recovered the vehicle but hadn’t notified police yet. When the officers spotted the Honda Civic they attempted to pull the vehicle over thinking he was the perpetrator, which resulted in a police chase that lasted more than 5 minutes. Once Ward finally stopped, deputies can be heard shouting at Ward to put his hands up, with their guns drawn. Ward puts his hands up but repeatedly tries to put them back on the wheel before putting them up again.
In the video, Blount tries to pull Ward out of the vehicle but Ward says that his legs are in pain and Deputy Jason Little can be heard off-camera saying that his legs are stuck. Blount and Little both can be heard saying that Ward bit them. As the officers try to pull Ward from the vehicle, Deputy Blount grabs him by the hair and slams his head into the car’s frame. Deputy Little deploys the taser on Ward and Blount puts Ward in a “sleeper hold” to restrain him. The deputies then pull Ward’s limp body out of the car and handcuff him. They then call for medical assistance. Ward was declared dead at a local hospital later that day.
Later, Deputy Nick Jax can be heard telling the two officers that Ward was the owner of the vehicle. “Then why did he run?” Little asks. Jax responded that he didn’t know and there was no reason for him to respond that way. “Oh well,” Blount said.
Deputy Blount’s lawyer Harry Stern said “ Mr. Ward caused his own death by inexplicably taking a number of bizarre actions that confirmed in the deputies’ minds that he was an armed carjacker rather than the victim of that crime.”
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Several confidential military interviews with the Navy SEALs who accused Chief Edward Gallagher of war crimes were released to the public. Members of SEAL Team 7 Alpha Platoon described their platoon leader, retired Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher as “toxic” and “evil,” according to video recordings of the interviews. Navy SEAL Special Operations Cheif Edward Gallagher was found not guilty of murder and attempted murder by a military jury in San Diego.
Gallagher was accused of fatally stabbing a young wounded ISIS fighter, posing for a picture with the corpse and shooting two civilians from a sniper’s perch in Iraq in 2017. He was found guilty of the charge involving the photo with the corpse. Seven SEALS testified that Gallagher abruptly stabbed the boy just after he was treated by a medic without saying a word to any of them.
“The guy is freaking evil,” Special Operator First Class Craig Miller said of Gallagher during his interview with Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents. “You could tell he was perfectly O.K. with killing anybody that was moving,” Special Operator First Class Corey Scott said of his former platoon leader, the newspaper reported. “The guy was toxic,” Special Operator First Class Joshua Vriens told investigators, the report said.
In the videos, the platoon members accuse Gallagher of shooting at a 12-year-old, refer to Gallagher as a “psychopath,” and tell of rumors that Gallagher had targeted civilians and bragged about having killed women. “I think he just wants to kill anybody he can,” one said while another said “We can’t let this continue.” The testimony paints a chilling pattern of violence executed by their platoon chief.
In July, Gallagher was found not guilty by a military jury for the stabbing. He was, however, demoted after the jury convicted him of posing for a photo with the ISIS fighter’s corpse. The Navy Board also considered stripping Gallagher of his status as a Navy SEAL. But last month, President Trump intervened and restored Gallagher’s rank.
“They wanted to take his pin away and I said, ‘No, you’re not going to take it away,'” he said at the time. “These are tough people, and we’re going to protect our warfighters.” That move angered many in the Navy, including former Navy Secretary Richard Spencer, who was ousted after requesting the president not get involved in Gallagher’s case. “I don’t think he really understands the full definition of a warfighter. A warfighter is a profession of arms, and a profession of arms has standards that they have to be held to and they hold themselves to,” Spencer said.
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Amazon is facing backlash over its Ring home security camera and “smart home” product after a data leak exposed the personal information of over 3,000 users. The data breach included emails, passwords and other sensitive information that would allow hackers to access live camera footage from inside every room of people’s homes. This leak could potentially provide criminals and stalkers with access to view live video feeds from inside and around thousands of Ring customers’ homes, see archived videos, and get the precise location of all Ring devices attached to the compromised account by studying the orientation of the footage and location information attached to each camera.
Using the log-in email and password, an intruder could access a Ring customer’s home
address, telephone number, and payment information, including the kind of card they have, and its last four digits and security code. An intruder could also access live camera footage from all active Ring cameras associated with an account, as well as a 30- to 60-day video history, depending on the user’s cloud storage plan.
Ring has claimed that this attack was the result of credential stuffing, a technique where
attackers gather usernames and passwords compromised in another data breach and try them on other websites. “Ring has not had a data breach. Our security team has investigated these incidents and we have no evidence of an unauthorized intrusion or compromise of Ring’s systems or network,” the spokesperson said. “It is not uncommon for bad actors to harvest data from other company’s data breaches and create lists like this so that other bad actors can attempt to gain access to other services.”
The Ring spokesperson added that the company will notify customers who were affected and require them to reset their passwords. Ring does not alert users of attempted log-in from an unknown IP address, or tell users how many others are logged into an account at one time. Because of this, there is no obvious way to know whether any bad actors have logged into people’s compromised Ring accounts without their consent.
This data leak is the latest in a string of incidents involving compromised Ring accounts. The home surveillance camera company was acquired by Amazon in 2018 and has been targeted by hackers who used the cameras to harass children and families while documenting their actions on podcast livestreams. In November, cybersecurity company BitDefender published a white paper describing a now-resolved vulnerability that allowed hackers to physically intercept communications between Ring Video Doorbell Pros and a person’s Wi-Fi network.
The company has also received criticism when it was revealed that over 700 police departments in the US have signed contracts with Ring. These contracts give police access the company’s law enforcement portal, which allows police to request camera footage from residents without receiving a warrant. In exchange, Ring often gives police free cameras, and it offers police more free cameras if they convince enough people to download its neighborhood watch app, Neighbors. In October, a group of 30 civil rights groups published a joint letter demanding that law makers stop the police partnership, calling it a threat to civil rights and liberties.
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A former North Carolina school resource officer was fired after video surface showing him body slamming an 11 year old child went viral. The assault at Vance County Middle School was caught on surveillance video, which shows the school resource officer and a small boy walking down the hallway when the officer picks the boy up and throws him to the ground. The officer then picks the boy up again and slams him to the ground again. The officer, Warren Durham, was first placed on paid leave and was then fired as the disturbing video went viral.
District Attorney Mike Waters said Durham is also facing a misdemeanor assault and child abuse charges. The announcement came a day after the State Bureau of Investigation finished its probe into the incident. While the family wanted Warren Durham to face stiffer felony charges, Waters said state law left him no choice but to pursue misdemeanor charges against the ex-officer. “Despite the violent nature of this assault depicted in the video, the student did not suffer any fractured or broken bones, or sustain any injuries that could be defined under North Carolina law as serious bodily injury,” which are a prerequisite for filing felony charges, the district attorney said during a news conference.
Waters said he didn’t know what prompted the incident, but he echoed the sentiment of Vance County Sheriff Curtis Brame in saying that the cause wasn’t relevant. “Ï don’t think there’s any kind of training or anything like that that would lead someone to act in that way with an 11-year-old,” Waters said. The maximum sentence Durham will face is 120 days in jail. The video shows the Vance County Middle School resource officer walking down the hall with the student. He is then seen grabbing and slamming the child to the ground, then picking him up and doing it again before yanking the child up and continuing to walk down the hall.
The school alerted the sheriff’s office minutes after the incident. Durham had been with the department for two years and had had no prior incidents that raised concern.
The boy’s grandfather, Pastor John Miles said at a news conference that the family was
disappointed in the misdemeanor charges, but he thanked officials. “We wanted them to be felony charges,” he said. “But as the D.A. said, they went by the law book and they went by the guidelines.” Miles said previously that his grandson called his mother after the incident, and that an assistant principal at the school took him home. The boy’s
mother has said he has a bump on his head from the incident but was not hospitalized.
The Vance County school district said the incident was “unacceptable and egregious.” “We are disappointed, embarrassed and most of all, want to express our apologies to our community that this occurred,” the district said in a statement Monday. “No student should ever experience this anywhere, especially not in our schools. We are better than this.” Vance County Schools plans to modify its agreement with the sheriff’s office, Superintendent Anthony Jackson said at a news conference. He did not go into detail about what the modifications meant, but said the district will review protocols and procedures and ensure it is using best practices.
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On December 10, 2019, 6 people were left dead in what authorities are calling a hate crime at a Kosher store in Jersey City, NJ. A day later, the shooters, both of whom were killed by police during the siege, were identified as David N. Anderson, 47, and his girlfriend Francine Graham, 50. Anderson and Graham were suspects in the murder of an Uber driver in Bayonne the weekend prior to the attack. Authorities say Anderson had made posts on social media that were anti-police and anti-Semitic. They also reveal a prior connection with the Black Hebrew Israelites, a group which has no connection to mainstream Judaism but has been reported to be anti-Semitic.
The first victim was Police Detective Joseph Seals, 39, a 15-year law enforcement veteran and a father of five. Detective Seals was meeting an informant when he encountered the two shooters at the Bayview Cemetery. Authorities believe that he approached the suspects, who were in a stolen U-Haul van that was related to the murder of the Uber driver the previous weekend. Seals was shot and killed. The suspects then fled in the stolen van and drove about one mile to the grocery store and opened fire upon exiting the vehicle.
Once inside the store, they fatally shot the owner, a worker, and a customer. Two other customers were able to escape. In the ensuing shootout, the assailants exchanged gunfire with the police for over an hour until being shot and killed. A BearCat vehicle rammed through the storefront 4 hours after the incident began- ending the siege. Two officers, one male and one female, were wounded in the shootout and were released from the hospital the same day. A wounded man escaped out the back door of the store. He was also treated and released the same day.
The victims of the shooting were identified as Leah Minda Ferencz, 33, a member of the Hasidic community and a mother of three who co-owned the store with her husband; Moshe Deutsch, 24, a Hasidic male customer in the store and Miguel Douglas Rodriguez, 49, who worked in the Kosher grocery store but was not Jewish. Police say the suspects targeted the store in what they believe was a premeditated antisemitic hate crime. The stolen van the suspects were driving was later found to contain a live pipe bomb. Media outlets have reported that a handwritten note, which authorities call “manifesto-style’, was found inside the van. It said “I do this because my creator makes me do this and I hate who he hates.”
Authorities say Anderson had viewed anti-Semitic materials online, and published reports, linking him to the Black Hebrew Israelites movement, whose adherents believe African Americans are the true descendants of the ancient Israelites. Authorities say the extent of his involvement in that group remains unclear, the law enforcement official said. The Black Hebrew Israelites has been described as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a legal advocacy group that tracks such movements.
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Uber says it received 5,981 reports of sexual assault in 2017 and 2018. Among those, there were 464 reports of rape. The report also noted there were 19 deaths caused by physical assault during 2017 and 2018. The report showed that about 92% of the victims of rape were riders and about 7% of the victims were drivers. Women and female-identifying individuals made up 89% of the victims with men and male-identifying individuals comprising about 8% of victims. Less than 1% of victims identified as gender minorities. The other four categories of sexual assault defined by Uber — including non-consensual kissing, non-consensual touching and attempted rape — did not detail whether the reporting parties were victims. Lyft said it would release its own safety report but it has not indicated when.
Uber also released “early estimates” for the first six months of 2019. It estimated that one out of every 6 million trips may result in an incident report concerning non-consensual sexual penetration, and one in every 900,000 trips may result in an incident report concerning non-consensual touching of a sexual body part. Based on these estimates, and Uber’s own estimate that it has 45 rides every second in the US alone, there were more than 100 reports of rape, and nearly 800 reports of non-consensual touching of a sexual body part, in the first half of 2019. The first half numbers are subject to change, due to factors such as auditing and late reporting.
The ride hailing app has repeatedly been criticized for not taking passenger safety seriously, and for ignoring reports of rape and sexual assault by its drivers. The company incidents of sexual assault are rare, as the company averages more than 3 million trips each day. The report only covers Uber’s U.S. operations. Critics say Uber should be doing more, particularly with background checks, to weed out potentially dangerous drivers. Unlike many taxi companies, Uber and its main U.S. rival, Lyft, do not check drivers’ fingerprints against a national database. Uber says the FBI has acknowledged its database is incomplete and does not always include a final disposition. The company’s process includes a motor vehicle screening, a criminal background check and ongoing notifications about any new offenses. An added fingerprint check, which can’t be faked, could add precious time to the driver-approval process.
A U.S. House committee is looking at legislation that could reduce the number of sex assaults involving ride-hailing passengers and drivers by requiring fingerprint background checks, camera monitoring and front license plates for ride-hailing cars in states that don’t have them. This would help prevent fake ride-hailing drivers from picking up passengers by making it easier for passengers to check plate numbers against the ones provided by Uber and Lyft. There could be limits on what federal legislators can do because ride-hailing companies conduct interstate commerce, but that is new legal territory.
Uber has been making efforts to improve safety over the last two years, including an in-app emergency button, a ride-check feature that detects unexpected stops or crashes and the ability for riders or drivers to share their location with loved ones during a ride. The company outlined additional safety steps it will take in the report. Both Uber and Lyft are promising more safety initiatives to try to prevent sexual assault during ride-sharing trips by better educating drivers. In 2020, Uber plans to expand sexual misconduct and assault education for all U.S. drivers and is working with the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network or RAINN, the nation’s largest sexual violence organization, to design the program. Uber wants to share the names of drivers who have been banned from the platform with other ride-sharing companies. Lyft also is working with RAINN on a safety education program, which drivers are required to complete, according to Lyft’s web site. In October, Lyft teamed up with security company ADT to develop new safety features in nine markets for early 2020. Both companies offer in-app access to 911.
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In recent years, it’s become evident that oil giant Exxon was aware of the causes and consequences of climate change from at least the 1970s, but chose to deliberately mislead the public for decades. A newly resurfaced article now shows coal industry executives equally understood the science of catastrophic global warming as far back as 1966. According to a copy of the magazine Mining Congress Journal, leaders of the coal industry knew as early as the mid-1960s that burning fossil fuels causes climate change.
The head of a now defunct mining research company wrote that the combustion of fossil fuels was increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing global temperature increases. The recently discovered article now provides evidence that both the coal and oil industries have known about catastrophic climate change for decades, yet worked to cover up the evidence in order to continue burning fossil fuels.
James Garvey, the then-president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., which developed pollution control equipment, discussed the state of pollutants and their regulation in the coal industry at the time. While much of the paper is concerned with sulphur in coal, a small section early in the article is concerned with carbon dioxide (CO2) discharge. “There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” Garvey writes.
“If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the Earth will result. Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London.”
Garvey’s article isn’t the only one acknowledging the dangers of coal-produced pollution in the August 1966 issue. In a discussion piece following Garvey’s paper, combustion engineer James Jones from Peabody Coal (now called Peabody Energy, the largest private coal company in the world), does not address the global warming issue, but admits that air pollution standards to protect health have a place, saying the “Situation is Urgent”.
Jones wrote “We are in favor of cleaning up our air. We are, in effect, ‘buying time’. But we must use that time productively to find answers to the many unsolved problems.” In the decades to come, Peabody would become a huge industrial player in organized climate change denial. At the end of his article, Jones wondered: “What can an individual with a personal stake in the future of the coal industry do?” Among the answers he offered, “Be a ‘one-man’ public relations emissary for the coal industry,” Jones explained to his industry colleagues. “Tell your neighbours, friends, and the general public how important coal is to their every-day existence. Also tell them about the all-out cooperative efforts of the coal industry to reduce air pollution.”
The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States and shows no sign of weakening. It is often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities.
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