US Business

Jury selection began Monday in the Los Angeles trial of disgraced Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, with five alleged victims expected to take the stand during the two-month case.

The 70-year-old “Pulp Fiction” producer is already serving 23 years in jail in New York after being convicted there of a series of sex crimes.

He now faces 11 more charges, including sexual battery by restraint, forcible rape and forcible oral copulation against women in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles hotels between 2004 and 2013.

If convicted, Weinstein — who has pleaded not guilty to all counts — could be sentenced to more than 100 additional years behind bars.

Weinstein, who uses a wheelchair, wore a dark blue suit with a light blue tie when he appeared in court.

The potentially lengthy task of selecting a jury got underway Monday with Judge Lisa Lench overseeing proceedings.

Widespread sexual abuse and harassment allegations against Weinstein exploded in October 2017, and his conviction in New York in 2020 was a landmark in the #MeToo movement.

In June, he lost a bid to have that sex crimes conviction overturned. He has also been separately charged by British prosecutors with the 1996 indecent assault of a woman in London.

In total, nearly 90 women, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Salma Hayek, have accused Weinstein of harassment or assault.

– Power players –

The Los Angeles Times on Monday quoted Weinstein attorney Mark Werksman as saying there would be testimony from well-known figures.

“Some of these victims, people will recognize them. Some of these women, you’ve seen them in movies, they’ve been in ad campaigns, a couple of them have achieved some success as actresses or models,” Werksman said, according to the paper.

The Times said one of the five accusers — all of whom will be known formally as “Jane Doe” — would be Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” her lawyer Elizabeth Fegan told the paper. 

“She intends to testify at his trial in order to seek some measure of justice for survivors, and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women.”

Siebel Newsom has previously written about Weinstein’s behavior in an essay published in 2017, but did not give details about the alleged assaults.

Weinstein says that all his sexual encounters were consensual, and his lawyer told reporters that the Los Angeles accusations “stem from many years ago” and cannot “be substantiated or corroborated by any forensic evidence” or “credible witnesses.”

The New York Film Festival this week will premiere “She Said,” a film about the 2017 newspaper investigation into Weinstein that sparked the demise of his movie empire.

Before the allegations against him emerged, the producer and his brother Bob were Hollywood’s ultimate power players.

They co-founded Miramax Films, a distribution company named after their mother Miriam and father Max, in 1979. It was sold to Disney in 1993.

Their hits included 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” for which Weinstein shared a best picture Oscar. Over the years, Weinstein’s films received more than 300 Oscar nominations and 81 statuettes.

Ukraine vowed Monday it would not be intimidated by a wave of deadly missile strikes from “terrorist state” Russia as Moscow stoked fears of further retaliation with threats of more “severe” attacks. 

The heaviest bombardment of Ukraine in months, which killed 11 and wounded more than 80, came in response to an explosion at the weekend that damaged a vital bridge from Russia to the Moscow-annexed Crimean peninsula.

“Ukraine cannot be intimidated. It can only be more united. Ukraine cannot be stopped,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a defiant video, vowing to make the “battlefield even more painful” for Russian troops.

Kyiv said Russian forces had fired more than 80 missiles on cities across the country — including the capital — and that Russia had used Iranian drones launched from neighbouring Belarus, spurring panic and damaging energy facilities.

“Let there be no doubt,” Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said in televised comments addressed to his security council, “if attempts at terrorist attacks continue, the response from Russia will be severe.”

Kyiv’s ambassador to the United Nations denounced Russia during an urgent General Assembly meeting to discuss Moscow’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

“Russia has proven once again, that this is a terrorist state that must be deterred in the strongest possible ways,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, speaking hours after the assault.

Ahead of the session, and with tensions at a boiling point, UN chief Antonio Guterres described Russia’s attacks as an “unacceptable escalation of the war,” his spokesman said.

US President Joe Biden said the strikes “demonstrate the utter brutality” of Putin’s “illegal war.”

Biden pledged to “continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defence systems” during a call with Zelensky, the White House said.

Zelensky described the call as “productive” in a tweet in which he asserted air defence as “the number 1 priority” for Ukraine. 

– ‘Killing civilians’ –

Ksenia Ryazantseva, a 39-year-old language teacher, told AFP she was awoken by the blasts.

“We saw the smoke, then the cars, and then we realised we didn’t have a window anymore,” she added. “There’s no military target or anything like that here. They’re just killing civilians”.

Zelensky said the strikes aimed to take down Ukrainian energy infrastructure and regional officials across the country confirmed widespread disruption.

Russia’s defence ministry meanwhile confirmed it had targeted Ukrainian energy, military command and communications facilities, claiming the strikes had been a success and “achieved their aims”.

Kuleba said the attacks had not been “provoked” and that the onslaught was Moscow’s response to a series of embarrassing military losses in eastern Ukraine.

“Putin is desperate because of battlefield defeats and uses missile terror to try to change the pace of war in his favour,” he wrote on social media. 

With Putin’s actions in the spotlight, UN debate will open on a draft resolution denouncing what has been widely seen in the West as Russia’s illegal seizure of Ukrainian land.

The decision to bring the annexation matter before the General Assembly, where the 193 UN members have one vote each — and no one wields veto power — was taken after Russia used its veto in a Security Council meeting September 30 to block a similar proposal.

Zelensky said he had spoken with the leaders of France and Germany and urged them to “increase pressure” on Russia.

– Black smoke –

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged “unwavering economic, humanitarian, and security assistance” to Ukraine as the national police service put the nationwide death toll from the Russian assault at 11.

Ukrainian officials said downtown Kyiv was hit and that a university, museums and the philharmonic building had been damaged.

An AFP journalist in Kyiv said a projectile landed near a playground and saw smoke rising from a large crater at the impact site. Trees and benches were charred by the blast and a number of ambulances were at the scene.

In the western city of Lviv, mayor Andriy Sadovyi said electricity and hot water services were disrupted after critical infrastructure was bombarded.

AFP photographers there saw plumes of black smoke rising above the town’s skyline.

Moldova, west of Ukraine, said several Russian cruise missiles targeting Ukraine had crossed its airspace, and that it had summoned Moscow’s envoy to demand an explanation.

The ex-Soviet country, which is a candidate to join the European Union, has a small breakaway region, Transnistria, which is armed and supported by Russia.

– Crimean bridge attack –

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin, meanwhile claimed that Ukraine was preparing an attack on his country.

He said Russia and Belarus would “deploy” troops together, without specifying where.

The autocratic leader also accused Ukraine, alongside neighbouring Poland and Lithuania, of training Belarusian militants to carry out attacks at home.

The strikes across Ukraine came a day after Moscow blamed Kyiv for the blast that damaged a bridge linking Crimea to Russia, leaving three people dead.

The blast that hit the bridge — a symbol of the Kremlin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea — sparked celebrations by Ukrainians, although officials in Kyiv have made no direct claim of responsibility.

The 19-kilometre (12-mile) bridge is also a vital supply link between Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula.

The websites for a number of major US airports were briefly knocked offline Monday after a cyberattack promoted by a pro-Russian hacking group.

The disruptions affected airport websites in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and St Louis, and were carried out via distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, which involve taking a website offline by flooding it with traffic.

The airport websites were targeted after the pro-Russian hacking group known as “KillNet” published a list of sites and encouraged its followers to attack them.

The DDoS attacks only affected the public-facing websites of the airports, which supply flight and services information and do not have any impact on operations.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport said its website is “up and running after an incident early this morning that made it inaccessible to the public.”

“An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway,” it said. “At no time were operations at the airport impacted.”

Most of the airport websites targeted appeared to be functioning normally after being temporarily shut down.

KillNet claimed responsibility last week for attacks on a number of US state government websites, and it has taken aim at other countries opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said it was “aware of reports of DDoS attacks targeting multiple US airport websites.”

“We are coordinating with potentially impacted entities and offering assistance as needed,” a CISA spokesperson said.

Jury selection began Monday in the Los Angeles trial of disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, with five alleged victims expected to take the stand during the two-month case.

The 70-year-old “Pulp Fiction” producer is already serving 23 years in jail in New York after being convicted there of a series of sex crimes.

He now faces 11 more charges, including sexual battery by restraint, forcible rape and forcible oral copulation against women in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles hotels between 2004 and 2013.

If convicted, Weinstein — who has pleaded not guilty to all counts — could be sentenced to more than 100 additional years behind bars.

A crowd of journalists gathered Monday outside the downtown Los Angeles court where the one-time Hollywood power player had been ordered to appear.

Widespread sexual abuse and harassment allegations against Weinstein exploded in October 2017, and his conviction in New York in 2020 was a landmark in the #MeToo movement.

In June, he lost a bid to have that sex crimes conviction overturned. He has also been separately charged by British prosecutors with the 1996 indecent assault of a woman in London.

In total, nearly 90 women, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Salma Hayek, have accused Weinstein of harassment or assault.

– Power players –

The Los Angeles Times on Monday quoted Weinstein attorney Mark Werksman as saying there would be testimony from well-known figures.

“Some of these victims, people will recognize them. Some of these women, you’ve seen them in movies, they’ve been in ad campaigns, a couple of them have achieved some success as actresses or models,” Werksman said, according to the paper.

The Times said one of the five accusers — all of whom will be known formally as “Jane Doe” — would be Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Like many other women, my client was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein at a purported business meeting that turned out to be a trap,” her lawyer Elizabeth Fegan told the paper. 

“She intends to testify at his trial in order to seek some measure of justice for survivors, and as part of her life’s work to improve the lives of women.”

Siebel Newsom has previously written about Weinstein’s behavior in an essay published in 2017, but did not give details about the alleged assaults.

Weinstein says that all his sexual encounters were consensual, and his lawyer told reporters that the Los Angeles accusations “stem from many years ago” and cannot “be substantiated or corroborated by any forensic evidence” or “credible witnesses.”

The New York Film Festival this week will premiere “She Said,” a film about the 2017 newspaper investigation into Weinstein that sparked the demise of his movie empire.

Before the allegations against him emerged, the producer and his brother Bob were Hollywood’s ultimate power players.

They co-founded Miramax Films, a distribution company named after their mother Miriam and father Max, in 1979. It was sold to Disney in 1993.

Their hits included 1998’s “Shakespeare in Love,” for which Weinstein shared a best picture Oscar. Over the years, Weinstein’s films received more than 300 Oscar nominations and 81 statuettes.

The websites for a number of major US airports were briefly taken offline Monday after a cyberattack promoted by a pro-Russian hacking group.

The distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks hit the airport websites of several major US cities including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and St Louis.

A DDOS attack involves knocking a website offline by flooding it with traffic.

The airport websites were targeted after the pro-Russian hacking group known as “KillNet” published a list of sites and encouraged its followers to attack them.

The DDOS attacks only affected the public-facing websites of the airports, which supply flight and services information and do not have any impact on operations.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport said its website is “up and running after an incident early this morning that made it inaccessible to the public.”

“An investigation into the cause of the incident is underway,” it said. “At no time were operations at the airport impacted.”

Most of the airport websites targeted appeared to be functioning normally after being temporarily knocked offline.

KillNet claimed responsibility last week for attacks on a number of US state government websites, and it has taken aim at other countries opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There was no immediate comment from the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).