AFP

US actor Alec Baldwin said he does not believe anyone will be criminally charged over the fatal shooting on the set of Western film “Rust,” telling CNN he has hired a private investigator to assess culpability for the tragedy.

Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins died after being hit by a live round that came from a gun Baldwin was holding as he rehearsed on the New Mexico set of the low-budget movie last October.

A criminal investigation into the shooting is still ongoing, and prosecutors have not yet ruled out charges against those involved.

“I sincerely believe… (investigators are) going to say that this was an accident. It’s tragic,” said Baldwin in a rare interview about the episode, a portion of which was aired Friday.

Baldwin told CNN he had replayed the events leading up to the shooting over and over for the past 10 months.

While insisting he does not want to “condemn” Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, the film set’s armorer and props assistant, Baldwin pointed the finger of blame at her and assistant director Dave Halls, who handed him the gun moments before the shooting.

“Someone put a live bullet in the gun who should have known better,” Baldwin said. 

“That was (Gutierrez-Reed’s) job. Her job was to look at the ammunition and put in the dummy round or the blank round, and there wasn’t supposed to be any live rounds on the set.

“There are two people who didn’t do what they were supposed to do,” he added.

“I’m not sitting there saying I want them to, you know, go to prison, or I want their lives to be hell.

“I don’t want that, but I want everybody to know that those are the two people that are responsible for what happened.”

– Multiple lawsuits –

Baldwin, who was both the star and a producer of “Rust,” has been the subject of a number of civil lawsuits over the shooting, including from Hutchins’s family.

He has previously said he was told the gun contained no live ammunition, had been instructed by Hutchins to point the gun in her direction, and did not pull the trigger.

But a recent FBI forensic report concluded that the gun could not have been fired “without a pull of the trigger.”

Meanwhile, Gutierrez-Reed has sued the film’s ammunition supplier, accusing him of leaving real bullets among the dummy cartridges.

On Thursday, her lawyer criticized the FBI for failing to carry out DNA or fingerprint testing to establish who had handled the live rounds found on set.

“It is inconceivable that the sheriff would not seek answers to this fundamental question and it raises a serious problem with the entire investigation,” said a statement from Jason Bowles.

Following Baldwin’s latest interview, lawyers for both Gutierrez-Reed and Halls told CNN that the actor was trying to deflect blame away from himself.

Baldwin also used the CNN interview to address former US President Donald Trump’s public intimation that he could have killed Hutchins on purpose.

Trump last year told a podcast that Baldwin — who frequently impersonated and ridiculed the president on “Saturday Night Live” — was a “troubled guy,” suggesting that “maybe he loaded” the gun.

Baldwin told CNN he was consequently worried that some of Trump’s supporters would “come and kill me.”

“Here was Trump, who instructed people to commit acts of violence, and he was pointing the finger at me and saying I was responsible for the death,” said Baldwin.

“There is just this torrent of people attacking me who don’t know the facts.”

Prominent literary figures including Paul Auster and Gay Talese gathered Friday in Manhattan for a reading of Salman Rushdie’s works, in solidarity with the author seriously injured in a stabbing attack.

More than a dozen acclaimed writers, including friends and colleagues of Rushdie, spoke at the steps of the New York Public Library for the event, which organizers said the novelist had been invited to watch from the hospital.

One week ago Rushdie was about to be interviewed as part of a lecture series in upstate New York, when a man stormed the stage and stabbed the 75-year-old writer repeatedly in the neck and abdomen.

In Rushdie’s honor the American literary journalist Talese, sporting his signature fedora and three-piece suit, read an excerpt from “The Golden House” novel, while Irish writer Colum McCann read from the 1992 New Yorker essay “Out of Kansas.”

A.M. Homes — the American author whose own works including “The End of Alice” novel have triggered controversy over the years — read from Rushdie’s piece “On Censorship,” which was drawn from a lecture he gave in 2012.

“No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship,” she read. “Writers want to talk about creation, and censorship is anti-creation, negative energy, uncreation, the bringing into being of non-being.”

Rushdie spent years under police protection after Iranian leaders called for his killing over his portrayal of Islam and the Prophet Mohammed in his 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses.”

Hari Kunzru, the British novelist and journalist, read the opening of that book.

“Salman once wrote that the role of the writer is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep,” Kunzru said. “That’s why we’re here.”

– ‘A hero’ –

Rushdie’s suspected assailant, 24-year-old Hadi Matar from New Jersey, was wrestled to the ground by staff and audience members before being taken into police custody.

Matar answered to a grand jury indictment Thursday, pleading not guilty to attempted murder and assault charges.

Rushdie’s condition remains serious after emergency surgery but he has shown signs of improvement, and no longer requires assisted breathing.

“Not even a blade to the throat could stifle the voice of Salman Rushdie,” said Suzanne Nossel, head of the US branch of PEN, an international organization that defends free speech and which hosted the rally.

“Salman spoke for scores of writers who’ve been persecuted and tormented, and did not want their ordeals to subsume their identities or to drown out their imaginations.”

Prior to her reading English writer Tina Brown addressed Rushdie directly, saying “you never asked for the role of a hero.”

“You just wanted to be left alone to write,” she continued. “But in the tenacity with which you’ve defended free speech, you are a hero and have paid a terrible price.”

– ‘Hold up the sky’ –

Writer and historian Amanda Foreman said Friday’s turnout “shows people are not afraid.”

“No matter what, we and they, we are all willing to stand up for what we are believing,” she told AFP.

Among the attendees was Raymond Lotta, an author and spokesperson for the Harlem shop Revolution Books, who told AFP the stabbing of Rushdie was “an attack on critical thinking, on dissent, on creativity.”

Rushdie, who was born in India in 1947, moved to New York two decades ago and became a US citizen in 2016.

In an interview given to Germany’s Stern magazine days before last Friday’s attack, he had described how his life had resumed a degree of normality following his relocation from Britain.

“Dearest Salman, and dearest family of Salman, this past week so many of us realized we’d been counting on you to hold up the sky,” said author Kiran Desai at the rally, before reading a passage of Rushdie’s “Quichotte.” 

“I hope you know that you can count on us too. We’re here for you, and we’re here for the long haul.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed that independent inspectors can travel to the Moscow-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the French presidency said Friday, as fears grow over fighting near the site.

The apparent resolution of a dispute over whether inspectors travel via Ukraine or Russia came as a US defence official said Ukraine’s forces had brought the Russian advance to a halt.

“You are seeing a complete and total lack of progress by the Russians on the battlefield,” the official said, speaking on grounds of anonymity.

According to French President Emmanuel Macron’s office, Putin had “reconsidered” his demand that the International Atomic Energy Agency travel through Russia to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site.

The UN nuclear watchdog’s chief, Rafael Grossi “welcomed recent statements indicating that both Ukraine and Russia supported the IAEA’s aim to send a mission to” the plant.

Meanwhile, UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Moscow’s forces occupying Zaporizhzhia not to disconnect the facility from the grid and potentially cut supplies to millions of Ukrainians.

A flare-up in fighting around the Russian-controlled nuclear power station — with both sides blaming each other for attacks — has raised the spectre of a disaster worse than in Chernobyl.

The Kremlin said that Putin and Macron agreed that the IAEA should carry out inspections “as soon as possible” to “assess the real situation on the ground”.

Putin also “stressed that the systematic shelling by the Ukrainian military of the territory of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant creates the danger of a large-scale catastrophe,” the Kremlin added.

– Guterres in Odessa –

The warning came just a day after Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres, meeting in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, sounded the alarm over the fighting, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the United Nations to secure the site.

“This summer may go down in the history of various European countries as one of the most tragic of all time,” Zelensky said in his Friday evening address.

“No instruction at any nuclear power plant in the world provides a procedure in case a terrorist state turns a nuclear power plant into a target.”

During his visit to the southern port of Odessa on Friday, the UN secretary general said that “obviously, the electricity from Zaporizhzhia is Ukrainian electricity. This principle must be fully respected”.

“Naturally, its energy must be used by the Ukrainian people,” he told AFP in separate comments. 

On Thursday, Moscow said Kyiv was preparing a “provocation” at the site that would see Russia “accused of creating a man-made disaster at the plant”. 

Kyiv, however, insisted that Moscow was planning the provocation, and said Russia’s occupying forces had ordered most staff to stay home Friday.

Guterres visited Odessa as part of an effort to make more Ukrainian grain available to poor countries struggling with soaring food prices, after a landmark deal with Russia last month to allow its export.

The deal, the only significant agreement between Russia and Ukraine since Moscow invaded in February, has so far seen 25 boats carrying some 600,000 tonnes of agricultural products depart from three designated ports, Kyiv has said.

Guterres is expected to head to Turkey after Odessa to visit the Joint Coordination Centre, the body tasked with overseeing the accord.

The grain deal has held, but brought little respite along the sprawling front lines after nearly six months of fighting between US-supplied Ukrainian forces and the Russian military.

The United States on Friday announced a new $775 million arms package, including more precision-guided missiles for Himars systems that enable Ukraine to strike Russian targets far behind the front lines.

The primary tool of Moscow’s forces has been artillery barrages, and recent bombardments over the eastern Donetsk region — which has been partially controlled by Russian proxies since 2014 — left several dead.

The Ukrainian head of the region, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said on social media Friday that Russian strikes had killed five people and wounded 10 more in three settlements.

Strikes early Friday in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, left one person dead and damaged a school and a private business, the head of the region said.

A member of the notorious Islamic State kidnap-and-murder cell known as the “Beatles” was sentenced to life in prison by a US court on Friday for the deaths of four American hostages in Syria.

El Shafee Elsheikh, 34, was given eight concurrent life sentences with no possibility of parole after being convicted in April of hostage-taking, conspiracy to murder US citizens and supporting a terrorist organization.

Judge T.S. Ellis, handing down the sentence in a US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, said Elsheikh’s conduct “can only be described as horrific, barbaric, brutal, callous and, of course, criminal.”

Elsheikh, wearing large glasses, a black Covid face mask and a dark green prison jumpsuit with “Alexandria Inmate” on the back, did not visibly react and declined an opportunity to speak to the court.

The trial of the former British national, which featured emotional testimony from former hostages and parents of the murdered Americans, was the most significant prosecution of an IS militant in the United States.

Diane Foley, mother of murdered hostage James Foley, addressed Elsheikh and the court and noted Friday was the eighth anniversary of her son’s “gruesome beheading.”

“You have been held accountable for your depravity,” Foley told Elsheikh. “You have lost your country, your citizenship, your freedom and your family.

“Love is much stronger than hatred,” she added. “I pity you, Elsheikh, for choosing hatred.”

The jury deliberated for less than six hours at the end of a two-week trial before finding Elsheikh guilty for his role in the deaths of four Americans — journalists Foley and Steven Sotloff and aid workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.

Elsheikh and another former “Beatle,” Alexanda Kotey, were captured by a Kurdish militia in Syria in January 2018 and handed over to US forces in Iraq.

They were flown to the United States in 2020 to face trial.

Kotey, 38, pleaded guilty in September 2021 and was sentenced to life in prison in April.

– ‘Barbaric and sadistic’ –

Another alleged “Beatle,” Aine Davis, 38, has been deported to Britain from Turkey and remanded in custody on terrorism charges.

The fourth in the group, executioner Mohammed Emwazi, was killed by a US drone in Syria in November 2015.

The hostage-takers, who grew up and were radicalized in London, were nicknamed the “Beatles” by their captives because of their distinctive British accents.

Active in Syria from 2012 to 2015, they abducted more than two dozen journalists and relief workers from the United States and other countries.

Ten former European and Syrian hostages testified at Elsheikh’s trial accusing the “Beatles” of months of brutal treatment including beatings, electric shocks, waterboarding and mock executions.

“This prosecution unmasked the barbaric and sadistic IS Beatles,” assistant US attorney Raj Parekh said at Friday’s sentencing.

“Elsheikh remains defiantly remorseless and unrepentant,” Parekh added. 

Foley, Sotloff and Kassig were beheaded by Emwazi, and videos of their deaths were released by IS for propaganda purposes.

Mueller was initially held by the “Beatles” but was later turned over to IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who reportedly raped her repeatedly.

IS announced Mueller’s death in February 2015. The group said she was killed in a Jordanian airstrike, a claim disputed by US authorities.

Baghdadi died during a US special forces raid in 2019.

Carl Mueller, Kayla’s father, welcomed the life sentence for Elsheikh, saying “I think the punishment fits the crime.”

“He will spend the rest of his life in a cell,” he said.

Zachary Deubler, a lawyer for Elsheikh, asked Judge Ellis to recommend to the Bureau of Prisons that Elsheikh not be sent to the prison in Florence, Colorado, known as “Supermax.”

The judge declined to do so.  

Deubler also said Elsheikh intends to appeal the verdict on the grounds of “ineffective counsel.”

Richard Smith, head of the London police counterterrorism unit, welcomed the sentence and said “Elsheikh and Kotey thought they were beyond the reach of the law, but they were wrong.”

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said the case should serve as a warning that “those who kill or injure our citizens cannot hide forever.

“The FBI and our partners throughout the US government will work relentlessly to bring them to justice,” Abbate said.

US rangers have found a human foot floating in a hot pool in Yellowstone national park, the park service said Friday, warning visitors to stay away from thermal waters.

The partial foot was inside a shoe in the Abyss Pool, one of the deepest hot springs in the park, whose temperature is around 140 Fahrenheit (60 Celsius).

“An investigation by Yellowstone National Park law enforcement officers is ongoing,” the park said.

“Evidence from the investigation thus far suggests that an incident involving one individual likely occurred on the morning of July 31, 2022, at Abyss Pool.

“Currently, the park believes there was no foul play.”

Accidents are not unheard of in the thermal pools that dot the country’s oldest national park.

In 2016 a young man died after slipping off a boardwalk and falling into a hot spring at the Norris Geyser Basin.

Last year two people had to be treated after being scalded by waters in the park.

“Visitors are reminded to stay on boardwalks and trails in thermal areas and exercise extreme caution around thermal features,” the park service said. 

“The ground in hydrothermal areas is fragile and thin, and there is scalding water just below the surface.”

Yellowstone, which welcomed more than 4.8 million visitors last year, spreads across 3,500 square miles (9,000 square kilometers) of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

It is home to thousands of geothermal features — hot springs, mudpots, steam vents and about half the world’s active geysers, including Old Faithful.