US Business

Actress Amber Heard is unable to pay her ex-husband Johnny Depp more than $10 million in damages, her lawyer said Thursday, after a US jury took the side of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star in a bitter defamation trial.

The high-profile televised court battle ended Wednesday when a seven-person jury found that Depp and Heard had defamed each other, but weighed in far more strongly with Depp.

The jury, after a six-week trial featuring claims and counterclaims of domestic abuse, awarded him $10.35 million in damages, in contrast with $2 million awarded to Heard.

Asked on NBC’s TODAY show if Heard will be able to pay up, her attorney Elaine Bredehoft said: “Oh no, absolutely not.”

She added that the “Aquaman” star wants to appeal the verdict and “has some excellent grounds for it.”

The 58-year-old Depp, who lost a libel case against the British tabloid The Sun in London in 2020 for calling him a “wife-beater,” celebrated the split verdict in the case as a victory while Heard said she was “heart-broken.”

Depp sued Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The Texas-born Heard did not name Depp in the piece, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and sought $50 million in damages.

The 36-year-old Heard countersued for $100 million, saying she was defamed by statements made by Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the Daily Mail her abuse claims were a “hoax.”

– ‘Horrible message’ –

Bredehoft said Depp’s legal team worked to “demonize” Heard and suppressed crucial evidence in the trial, preventing the jurors from examining evidence of Depp’s alleged abuse.

“A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused,” she said.

“We had an enormous amount of evidence that was suppressed in this case that was in the UK case,” she said. “In the UK case when it came in, Amber won, Mr. Depp lost.”

The lawyer said the ruling bodes ill for the MeToo movement and will discourage women from reporting sexual harassment and abuse.

“It’s a horrible message,” Bredehoft said. “It’s a significant setback, because that’s exactly what it means.

“Unless you pull out your phone and you video your spouse or your significant other beating you, effectively you won’t be believed.”

Bredehoft was asked by TODAY about Heard’s immediate reaction to the verdict in the trial, which took place in Fairfax County Circuit Court near the US capital.

“One of the first things she said is that, ‘I am so sorry to all those women out there,'” she said. “This is a setback for all women in and outside the courtroom, and she feels the burden of that.”

– ‘Zoo’ –

In a statement, Heard said “the disappointment I feel today is beyond words.

“I’m heartbroken that the mountain of evidence still was not enough to stand up to the disproportionate power, influence, and sway of my ex-husband,” she said.

For his part, Depp welcomed the verdict, saying “The jury gave me my life back.”

“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” Depp said in a statement.

Bredehoft said social media may have had an impact on the case although jurors had been instructed not to look at it.

“There’s no way they couldn’t have been influenced by it, and it was horrible,” she said. “It really, really was lopsided.”

Heard’s attorney also said she opposed having the trial televised.

“I was against cameras in the courtroom, and I went on record with that and had argued against it because of the sensitive nature of this, but it made it a zoo,” she said.

Actress Amber Heard is unable to pay her ex-husband Johnny Depp more than $10 million in damages, her lawyer said Thursday, after a US jury took the side of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” star in a bitter defamation trial.

The lengthy, high-profile televised court battle ended Wednesday, when a seven-person jury found that Depp and Heard had defamed each other, but weighed in far more strongly with Depp.

The jury awarded him $10.35 million in damages, in contrast with $2 million awarded to Heard.

Asked on NBC’s TODAY show if Heard will be able to pay up, her attorney Elaine Bredehoft answered: “Oh no, absolutely not.”

She added that Heard wants to appeal the verdict.

The 58-year-old Depp, who lost a libel case against The Sun tabloid in London in 2020 for calling him a “wife-beater,” celebrated the split verdict in the case as a victory while Heard said she was “heart-broken.”

Depp sued Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

The Texas-born Heard, who had a starring role in “Aquaman,” did not name Depp in the piece, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and sought $50 million in damages.

The 36-year-old Heard countersued for $100 million, saying she was defamed by statements made by Depp’s lawyer, Adam Waldman, who told the Daily Mail her abuse claims were a “hoax.”

Bredehoft said Depp’s legal team worked to “demonize” Heard and suppressed crucial evidence in the trial, preventing the jurors from examining evidence of Depp’s alleged abuse.

“A number of things were allowed in this court that should not have been allowed, and it caused the jury to be confused,” she said.

The lawyer said the ruling bodes ill for the MeToo movement and will discourage women from reporting sexual harassment and abuse.

“It’s a horrible message,” Bredehoft said. “It’s a significant setback, because that’s exactly what it means.

“Unless you pull out your phone and you video your spouse or your significant other beating you, effectively you won’t be believed.” 

For his part, Depp welcomed the verdict, saying “The jury gave me my life back.”

“The best is yet to come and a new chapter has finally begun,” Depp said in a statement.

Russian forces on Thursday hammered the last Ukrainian defences holding a strategic city in the Donbas region as the war approached its 100th day and Washington warned it could still last for months.

Vladimir Putin’s troops have set their sights on capturing eastern Ukraine since Ukrainian forces repelled them from seizing Kyiv after the Russian invasion began on February 24.

Defending the east has come at a high cost for Ukraine, with President Volodymyr Zelensky reportedly admitting that up to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying daily.

Russia’s invasion — set to enter its 100th day on Friday — has killed thousands of people and sent millions of Ukrainians fleeing.

The industrial hub of Severodonetsk in Lugansk, part of the Donbas, has become a key target for Moscow, and the local governor said that 80 percent of the city was already now under Russian control.

“The most difficult situation is in the Lugansk region, where the enemy is trying to displace our units,” said Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces in a statement.

“Street fighting continues” in Severodonetsk, said Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday on Telegram, vowing that Ukrainian forces would fight “until the end”.

Severodonetsk’s Azot factory, one of Europe’s biggest chemical plants, was targeted by Russian soldiers who fired on one of its administrative buildings and a warehouse where methanol was stored.

Ukrainian troops were still holding an industrial zone, Gaiday said, a situation reminiscent of Mariupol where a huge steel works was the south-eastern port city’s last holdout until Ukrainian troops finally surrendered in late May.

– ‘Fuel to the fire’ –

Ukraine’s commander in chief pleaded for modern armaments from NATO, telling France’s top general, Thierry Burkhard that “the enemy has a decisive advantage in artillery.”

“It will save the lives of our people”.

This week, US President Joe Biden announced that more advanced rocket systems were on the way.

The Himars multiple launch rocket system, or MLRS, is a mobile unit that can simultaneously launch multiple precision-guided missiles up to 80 kilometres (50 miles) away.

They are the centrepiece of a $700 million package unveiled Wednesday that includes air-surveillance radar, more Javelin short-range anti-tank rockets, artillery ammunition, helicopters, vehicles and spare parts.

But analysts caution against a sudden battlefield game changer, not least because Ukrainian troops need time to learn how to use them effectively.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused Washington of “adding fuel to the fire” with the new weapons, although US officials insist Ukraine has promised not to use them to strike inside Russia. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said there were no signs of Russia pulling back its forces: “As best we can assess right now, we are still looking at many months of conflict.”

Overnight, a missile struck railway infrastructure near the comparatively stable western city of Lviv, injuring five people, regional governor Maksym Kozytsky said Thursday.

West of Severodonetsk, in the city of Sloviansk, AFP journalists saw buildings destroyed by a rocket attack.

On Wednesday, at least one person died and two others were injured in Soledar, between Sloviansk and Severodonetsk, AFP saw.

The European Union has also sent weapons and cash for Ukraine, while levelling unprecedented economic sanctions on Moscow.

– Hunger crisis –

Germany said Wednesday it would deliver an air defence system capable of shielding a major city from Russian air raids, although it will take months to get to the frontline.

EU leaders agreed this week to ban most Russian oil imports but played down the prospects of shutting off Russian gas on which many member states are hugely dependent.

The sanctions are biting — a panel of investors said Wednesday Russia has failed to pay $1.9 million of accrued interest on a sovereign bond.

Russian energy giant Gazprom said its gas exports to countries outside the former Soviet Union dropped by more than a quarter year-on-year between January and May after losing several European clients.

The war also risks triggering a global food crisis.

Ukraine — one of the world’s main producers — will likely export only half the amount of grain that it did in the previous season, the Ukrainian Grain Association said.

The conflict was already translating into huge costs for consumers purchasing essentials from cereals to sunflower oil to maize, with the poorest among the hardest hit.

The head of the African Union, Senegalese President Macky Sall, was preparing to travel to Russia for talks with Putin to avert a hunger crisis.

The visit on Friday is aimed at “freeing up stocks of cereals and fertilisers, the blockage of which particularly affects African countries”, along with easing the Ukraine conflict, Sall’s office said Thursday. 

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A gunman has killed at least four people at a hospital building in Tulsa, Oklahoma, police said — the latest in a string of mass shootings across the United States in recent weeks.

The killings come as Texas families bury their dead after a school shooting left 19 young children dead just eight days earlier.

The Tulsa shooting suspect, who was armed with a rifle and a handgun during his attack on the Saint Francis hospital campus, died by suicide, police said Wednesday.

“Right now we have four civilians that are dead, we have one shooter that is dead, and right now we believe that is self-inflicted,” Tulsa Police Department Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish told reporters.

He said officers responded immediately after emergency calls came in reporting that a gunman had stormed into the second floor of the Natalie Building, which houses a clinic on the Saint Francis campus.

Police “were hearing shots in the building” when they arrived, according to Dalgleish, who said officers then searched each room and floor while trying to clear the building during what authorities described as an active shooter situation.

Police Captain Richard Meulenberg said officers treated the scene as “catastrophic,” with “several” people shot and “multiple injuries.”

It was not clear how many other people might have been wounded. 

Dalgleish said the entire assault — from the moment emergency calls came in, to the time officers engaged the shooter — lasted about four minutes.

He also noted that the suspect had yet to be identified.

US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the shooting, the White House said in a statement, adding that the administration has offered support to Tulsa officials.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 233 mass shootings this year in the United States — more than one such incident per day in 2022 so far.

US media reported the country was hit by a dozen mass shootings over the recent Memorial Day weekend.

The United States generally counts mass shootings as involving four or more deaths.

– ‘Preventable’ –

Elizabeth Buchner, a legal assistant who lives behind the building where the shooting occurred, said she rushed out of her house when she heard helicopters and a loud commotion coming from the direction of the hospital.

“It was the most law enforcement I’ve ever seen at one place in my entire life,” Buchner, 43, told AFP by telephone.

She said she witnessed a tactical team rush inside as part of a response that she described as “fast and strong,” with “no hesitation.”

Melissa Provenzano, an Oklahoma state legislator, also praised the officers’ swift response.

“It could have been so much worse,” she told CNN.

But she expressed frustration at how such tragedies keep happening in the country.

“These things are preventable, and it’s time to wake up and address this.”

– Uvalde funerals –

The shooting is the latest in a spate of deadly assaults by gunmen that have rocked the United States in the past month.

On May 14 a white supremacist targeting African Americans killed 10 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The shooter survived and is facing charges.

Ten days later an 18-year-old gunman armed with an AR-15 burst into an elementary school in the small Texas town of Uvalde and killed 21 people — 19 of them young children — before being shot dead by law enforcement.

On Wednesday one of the two teachers killed in that attack was laid to rest in Uvalde, a day after the first funerals for the children.

Gun regulation faces deep resistance in the United States, from most Republicans and some rural-state Democrats.

But Biden — who visited Uvalde over the weekend — vowed earlier this week to “continue to push” for reform, saying: “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”

Some key federal lawmakers have also voiced cautious optimism and a bipartisan group of senators worked through the weekend to pursue possible areas of compromise.

They reportedly were focusing on laws to raise the minimum age for gun purchases or to allow police to remove such weapons from people considered a threat to themselves or others — but not on an outright ban on high-powered rifles like those used in Uvalde and Buffalo.