NEW YORK: A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury verdict ordering President-elect Donald Trump to pay $5 million for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
A New York jury found after a nine-day civil trial last year that the former president had sexually abused Carroll at a Manhattan department store in 1996.
Trump was ordered to pay $2 million for sexual abuse and another $3 million for defaming Carroll, a former advice columnist for Elle magazine.
Trump denied the allegations and appealed the verdict on the grounds that two other women who said Trump had sexually assaulted them too should not have been allowed to testify.
The three-judge panel of the Second US Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed.
“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings,” they said.
“Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial.”
Carroll was awarded $83 million by another jury in a separate case she brought against Trump.
He has appealed that verdict and Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said the Republican would lodge a further appeal against the $5 million damages awarded in the sexual abuse and defamation case.
“The American People have re-elected President Trump with an overwhelming mandate,” Cheung said in a statement.
“They demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoax, which will continue to be appealed,” he said.
Two federal cases brought against Trump by special counsel Jack Smith have been dismissed since he won the November 5 presidential election.
Trump was accused of mishandling classified documents after leaving the White House and seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election but Smith dropped the cases under a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Judge Juan Merchan recently rejected a bid by the president-elect to have his conviction thrown out but has postponed sentencing indefinitely.
Appeals court upholds verdict in Trump sexual abuse case
https://arab.news/cmc7t
Appeals court upholds verdict in Trump sexual abuse case
- Trump was ordered to pay $2 million for sexual abuse and another $3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carrol
Trump official says Harvard banned from federal grants
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s education secretary said Monday that Harvard will no longer receive federal grants, escalating an ongoing battle with the prestigious university as it challenges the funding cuts in court.
The Trump administration has for weeks locked horns with Harvard and other higher education institutions over claims they tolerate anti-Semitism on their campuses — threatening their budgets, tax-exempt status and enrollment of foreign students.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon, in a letter sent to Harvard’s president and posted online, said that the university “should no longer seek GRANTS from the federal government, since none will be provided.”
She alleged that Harvard has “failed to abide by its legal obligations, its ethical and fiduciary duties, its transparency responsibilities, and any semblance of academic rigor.”
Harvard — routinely ranked among the world’s top universities — has drawn Trump’s ire by refusing to comply with his demands that it accept government oversight of its admissions, hiring practices and political slant.
That prompted the Trump administration to in mid-April freeze $2.2 billion in federal funding, with a total of $9 billion under review.
McMahon, a former wrestling executive, said that her letter “marks the end of new grants for the University.”
Harvard is the wealthiest US university with an endowment valued at $53.2 billion in 2024.
The latest move comes as Trump and his White House crack down on US universities on several fronts, justified as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled anti-Semitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.
The administration has threatened funding freezes and other punishments, prompting concerns over declining academic freedom.
It has also moved to revoke visas and deport foreign students involved in the protests, accusing them of supporting Palestinian militant group Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel provoked the war.
Trump’s claims about diversity tap into long-standing conservative complaints that US university campuses are too liberal, shutting out right-wing voices and favoring minorities.
Ukraine’s drone attack on Moscow forces airports’ closure, officials say
Russian air defense units destroyed a swarm of Ukrainian drones targeting Moscow for the second night in a row, prompting the closure of the capital’s airports, Russian officials said early on Tuesday.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that at least 19 Ukrainian drones were destroyed on their approach to Moscow “from different directions.”
“At the sites where fragments fell, there was no destruction or casualties,” Sobyanin wrote on the Telegram messaging app. “Specialists from the emergency services are working at the sites where the incidents occurred.”
Some of the debris had landed on one of the key highways leading into the city, he said.
Russia’s aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Telegram it had halted flights at all four airports that serve Moscow. Airports in a number of regional cities were also closed.
On Tuesday, Russia’s air defense units destroyed four Ukrainian drones on their approach to Moscow, with no damage or injuries reported.
The war began more than three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, a move Moscow described as a special military operation. Since then, Kyiv has launched several drone attacks on Moscow. Its biggest attack in March killed three people.
There was no immediate comment from Kyiv about the latest drone attack. Ukraine says its drone attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure key to Moscow’s overall war efforts and are in response to Russia’s continued assault on Ukrainian territory, including residential areas and energy infrastructure.
OpenAI abandons plan to become for-profit company
SAN FRANCISCO: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Monday that the company behind ChatGPT will continue to be run as a nonprofit, abandoning a contested plan to convert into a for-profit organization.
The structural issue had become a significant point of contention for the artificial intelligence (AI) pioneer, with major investors pushing for the change to better secure their returns.
AI safety advocates had expressed concerns about pursuing substantial profits from such powerful technology without the oversight of a nonprofit board of directors acting in society’s interest rather than for shareholder profits.
“OpenAI is not a normal company and never will be,” Altman wrote in an email to staff posted on the company’s website.
“We made the decision for the nonprofit to stay in control after hearing from civic leaders and having discussions with the offices of the Attorneys General of California and Delaware,” he added.
OpenAI was founded as a nonprofit in 2015 and later created a “capped” for-profit entity allowing limited profit-making to attract investors, with cloud computing giant Microsoft becoming the largest early backer.
This arrangement nearly collapsed in 2023 when the board unexpectedly fired Altman. Staff revolted, leading to Altman’s reinstatement while those responsible for his dismissal departed.
Alarmed by the instability, investors demanded OpenAI transition to a more traditional for-profit structure within two years.
Under its initial reform plan revealed last year, OpenAI would have become an outright for-profit public benefit corporation (PBC), reassuring investors considering the tens of billions of dollars necessary to fulfill the company’s ambitions.
Any status change, however, requires approval from state governments in California and Delaware, where the company is headquartered and registered, respectively.
The plan faced strong criticism from AI safety activists and co-founder Elon Musk, who sued the company he left in 2018, claiming the proposal violated its founding philosophy.
In the revised plan, OpenAI’s money-making arm will now be fully open to generate profits but, crucially, will remain under the nonprofit board’s supervision.
“We believe this sets us up to continue to make rapid, safe progress and to put great AI in the hands of everyone,” Altman said.
OpenAI’s major investors will likely have a say in this proposal, with Japanese investment giant SoftBank having made the change to being a for-profit a condition for their massive $30 billion investment announced on March 31.
In an official document, SoftBank stated its total investment could be reduced to $20 billion if OpenAI does not restructure into a for-profit entity by year-end.
The substantial cash injections are needed to cover OpenAI’s colossal computing requirements to build increasingly energy-intensive and complex AI models.
The company’s original vision did not contemplate “the needs for hundreds of billions of dollars of compute to train models and serve users,” Altman said.
SoftBank’s contribution in March represented the majority of the $40 billion raised in a funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at $300 billion, marking the largest capital-raising event ever for a startup.
The company, led by Altman, has become one of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups, propelled to prominence in 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, its generative AI chatbot.
Ukrainian forces attack substation in Kursk region, regional governor says
- Two teenagers were injured in the attack
- Russian war bloggers reported a new Ukrainian land-based incursion into the area backed by armored vehicles
MOSCOW: Ukrainian forces attacked a power substation in Russia’s western Kursk region, the regional governor said early on Tuesday after Russian war bloggers reported a new Ukrainian land-based incursion into the area backed by armored vehicles.
Officials on both sides of the border reported deaths from military activity and ordered evacuations of several settlements.
Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein’s report, posted on the Telegram messaging app, said Ukrainian forces had struck the substation in the town of Rylsk, about 50 km (30 miles) from the border, injuring two teenagers. Two transformers were damaged and power cut to the area.
“Dear residents, the enemy, in its agony, is continuing to launch strikes against our territory,” Khinshtein wrote.
Ukraine made a surprise incursion into Kursk in August 2024, hoping to shift the momentum in Russia’s full-scale invasion and draw Russian forces away from other sectors of the front in eastern Ukraine.
Russia’s top general said last month that Ukrainian troops had been ejected from Kursk, ending the biggest incursion into Russian territory since World War Two, and that Russia was carving out a buffer zone in the Ukrainian region of Sumy.
Kyiv has not acknowledged that its troops were forced out. President Volodymyr Zelensky says Kyiv’s forces continue to operate in Kursk and in the adjacent Russian region of Belgorod.
Russian bloggers had earlier reported that Ukrainian forces firing missiles had smashed through the border, crossing minefields with special vehicles.
“The enemy blew up bridges with rockets at night and launched an attack with armored groups in the morning,” Russian war blogger “RVvoenkor” said on Telegram.
“The mine clearance vehicles began to make passages in the minefields, followed by armored vehicles with troops. There is a heavy battle going on at the border.”
Popular Russian military blog Rybar said Ukrainian units were trying to advance near two settlements in Kursk region over the border — Tyotkino and Glushkovo.
The head of Glushkovo district, Pavel Zolotaryov, wrote on Telegram that residents of several localities were being evacuated to safer areas.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, with Moscow calling it a special military operation.
DRONE ATTACKS INCREASE
“Over the past 24 hours, there has been an increase in attacks by enemy drones,” Zolotaryov wrote. “There have been instances of people being killed or wounded, of houses and sites of civil infrastructure being destroyed.”
The Ukrainian incursion into Kursk was reported by other Russian bloggers, including “the archangel of special forces” and Russian state television war correspondent Alexander Sladkov.
Ukrainian officials did not comment on any advances.
But Ukraine’s Prosecutor’s Office said Russian forces had subjected two settlements in the border Sumy region — Bilopillya and Vorozhba — to artillery fire and guided bomb attacks, killing three residents and injuring four.
Earlier, local authorities in Sumy region had urged residents to evacuate their homes in the area, about 10 km (six miles) across the border from Tyotkino in Kursk region.
The Ukrainian military said on Monday that its forces struck a Russian drone command unit near Tyotkino on Sunday.
Trump’s Alcatraz prison restoration plan gets cold reception from tourists
- Site known as ‘The Rock’ draws 1.2 million tourists a year
- US closed prison in 1963 due costs of operating on an island
SAN FRANCISCO: US President Donald Trump’s plan to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison was summarily rejected on Monday by some visitors to the tourist site in San Francisco Bay.
Trump revealed a plan over the weekend to rebuild and expand the notorious island prison, a historic landmark known as “The Rock” and operated by the US government’s National Park Service. It’s “just an idea I’ve had,” he said.
“We need law and order in this country. So we’re going to look at it,” he added on Monday.
Once nearly impossible to leave, the island can be difficult to get to because of competition for tickets. Alcatraz prison held fewer than 300 inmates at a time before it was closed in 1963 and draws roughly 1.2 million tourists a year.
US Bureau of Prisons Director William Marshall said on Monday he would vigorously pursue the president’s agenda and was looking at next steps.
“It’s a waste of money,” said visitor Ben Stripe from Santa Ana, California. “After walking around and seeing this place and the condition it’s in, it is just way too expensive to refurbish.” he said.
“It’s not feasible to have somebody still live here,” agreed Cindy Lacomb from Phoenix, Arizona, who imagined replacing all the metal in the cells and rebuilding the crumbling concrete.
The sprawling site is in disrepair, with peeling paint and rusting locks and cell bars. Signs reading “Area closed for your safety” block off access to many parts of the grounds. Chemical toilets sit next to permanent restrooms closed off for repair.
The former home of Al Capone and other notable inmates was known for tough treatment, including pitch-black isolation cells. It was billed as America’s most secure prison given the island location, frigid waters and strong currents.
It was closed because of high operating costs. The island also was claimed by Native American activists in 1969, an act of civil disobedience acknowledged by the National Park Service.
Mike Forbes, visiting from Pittsburgh, said it should remain a part of history. “I’m a former prison guard and rehabilitation is real. Punishment is best left in the past,” Forbes said.
No successful escapes were ever officially recorded from Alcatraz, though five prisoners were listed as “missing and presumed drowned.”
Today a “Supermax” facility located in Florence, Colorado, about 115 miles (185 km) south of Denver, is nicknamed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.” No one has ever escaped from that 375-inmate facility since it opened in 1994.
Congress in fiscal year 2024 cut the Bureau of Prisons infrastructure budget by 38 percent and prison officials have previously reported a $3 billion maintenance backlog. The Bureau of Prisons last year said it would close aging prisons, as it struggled with funding cuts.
