World

Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is facing sexual assault charges in the UK, police and prosecutors said on Thursday, after a review of allegations against him.

The two-time Oscar winner for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty” was artistic director of The Old Vic theatre in London between 2004 and 2015.

Allegations against him first emerged in the wake of the #MeToo movement that saw numerous claims of sexual assault and harassment in the movie industry.

That prompted an investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police, and a review by The Old Vic of the 62-year-old Spacey’s time in charge there.

The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that it had “authorised criminal charges” against the actor “for four counts of sexual assault against three men”.

“He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” said Rosemary Ainslie, from the service.

“The charges follow a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation,” added Ainslie, who heads the special crime division.

The Met said separately that the first two counts of sexual assault date from March 2005 in London, and concern the same man, who is now in his 40s.

The third is alleged to have happened in London in August 2008 against a man who is now in his 30s. The same man is alleged to be the victim of the separate charge.

The fourth sexual assault charge is alleged to have occurred in Gloucestershire, western England, in April 2013 against a third man, who is now in his 30s.

None of the alleged victims can be identified under English law.

The CPS, which brings prosecutions in England and Wales, and the police both referred to Spacey by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler.

Legal restrictions are in place limiting what the media can report until the case comes before a jury to avoid prejudicing any trial.

The CPS said that when considering whether to approve charges, it makes “fair, independent and objective” assessments about whether a case should go to court.

Claims against Stacey in 2017 led to the end of his involvement in the filming of the final season of the political drama “House of Cards”

He was also dropped from a Gore Vidal biopic on Netflix and as the industrialist John Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World”.

Christopher Plummer was brought in as a last-minute replacement.

Stacey, considered one of the finest actors of his generation, has previously denied similar charges in the United States.

The BBC is to axe 1,000 jobs and scrap some broadcast channels in traditional form as it prioritises digital and copes with a funding freeze, the British public service broadcaster said on Thursday.

Aiming to “build a digital-first public service media organisation”, the BBC said it would “change in step with the modern world, giving audiences the content they want… in the ways they want it”.

The network will create a single 24-hour television news channel serving the UK and abroad, absorbing BBC World.

Channels including children’s channel CBBC, BBC Four and Radio 4 Extra will stop traditional broadcasting, while “a number” of World Service language services will become digital only.

Director-General Tim Davie made a speech to BBC staff on Thursday in which he hailed “a fresh, new, global digital media organisation which has never been seen before.

“We need to evolve faster and embrace the huge shifts in the market around us,” he told them.

The first phase of the changes, including job cuts, will save £500 million (585 million euros, $630 million) a year, £200 million of which will help offset the £285 million funding gap caused by the government earlier this year freezing the television licence fee.

“The BBC will also reinvest £300 million to drive a digital-first approach, through changes to content and output and additional commercial income,” a statement said.

Further details are to be announced in the coming months, said the BBC, which marks its centenary this year.

The broadcaster has faced increasing claims from right-wingers since the UK’s divisive Brexit referendum in 2016 of political bias, and pushing a “woke”, London-centric liberal agenda.

The BBC, founded by Royal Charter and operating independently of government, has faced similar accusations from the political left.

Critics accused Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries of “cultural vandalism” and wrecking a world-renowned British institution when she announced the licence-fee freeze.

The fee — payable by every household with a television set — funds BBC television, radio and online services, as well as programming, many of which are exported commercially worldwide.

Supporters maintain the fee — currently £159 for a colour TV — provides excellent value for money, and a range of services from news and current affairs to wildlife documentaries, children’s output, drama and music.

But opponents, including rival commercial broadcasters, have long complained the guaranteed funding model, which criminalises non-payers, is unfair.

The United States said Thursday it will not invite representatives of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro or Nicaragua to next month’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, despite Mexican-led threats to boycott if they and Cuba are excluded.

“Absolutely not. We don’t recognize them as a sovereign government,” Kevin O’Reilly, the coordinator of the summit, told a Senate committee when asked about participation of Maduro’s government.

Maduro, who presides over a crumbling economy and whose 2018 re-election was widely criticized by international observers, is considered illegitimate by Washington, which recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president.

On participation at the summit of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who has likewise been accused of increasing authoritarianism, O’Reilly also gave a definitive “no.” 

He gave a less clear answer when asked if Cuban government representatives would attend, saying that the White House was in charge but no invitation has been sent “to my knowledge.” 

President Joe Biden wants the June 6-10 Summit of the Americas to showcase democracy in Latin America and to step up cooperation on migration, a key political priority for the United States. 

But Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a leftist, has threatened to boycott the summit if the United States does not invite all countries, although his foreign minister could still come.

After Lopez Obrador, the leaders of Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras and the 14-nation bloc of Caribbean states have also put their attendance in doubt, while Chile has joined calls for the widest possible participation.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican and vociferous critic of Latin American leftists, urged the Biden administration not to give in to Mexican demands to “invite this trifecta of tyranny.”

“I don’t think the United States of America should, frankly, be bullied or pressured into who to invite to a summit we’re hosting,” Rubio said at the hearing.

If Lopez Obrador “doesn’t want to come, he doesn’t come,” Rubio said.

“If we have a summit where we don’t invite dictators and the people who wanted dictators to come decide to boycott it, then we’ll just know who our real friends are in the region,” he said.

Lopez Obrador, who recently visited Cuba, has argued that Latin America is in the process of uniting like the European Union, meaning that all nations need to be included at regional summits.

O’Reilly said the Biden administration was “constantly in dialogue” with Mexico as well as other nations on how to structure the summit.

The Biden administration also plans to invite civil society groups from across Latin America including Cuba.

“We want to have a broad participation from civil society, from every country where authoritarians, where dictators, are seeking to snuff out public debate,” O’Reilly said.

Eleven newborn babies have perished in a hospital fire blamed on an electrical short circuit in Senegal’s western city of Tivaouane, authorities said Thursday.

In the latest in a series of hospital deaths that have exposed the weaknesses of the nation’s healthcare system, President Macky Sall announced the tragedy on Twitter before declaring three days of national mourning.

“I have just learned with pain and dismay about the deaths of 11 newborn babies in the fire at the neonatal department of the public hospital,” Sall wrote after the fire late Wednesday.

“To their mothers and their families, I express my deepest sympathy,” he tweeted.

“Where is Mohamed?,” asked one of the distraught mothers outside Mame Abdou Aziz Sy Dabakh Hospital in Tivaouane, a city that has a population of 40,000.

Her baby son was taken to the hospital 10 days ago and was baptised on Monday, Mohamed’s 54-year-old father Alioune Diouf said.

The city’s mayor Demba Diop said the fire had been caused by “a short circuit and spread very quickly”.

Local media quoted witnesses saying gas bottles exploded preventing any rescue attempts.

Health Minister Abdoulaye Diouf Sarr was quoted in media reports also blaming an electrical fault.

– ‘Beyond heartbroken’ –

The maternity unit was equipped to take care of 13 babies. 

“At the time of the fire, there were 11, whom nurses were unable to save,” the minister said.

Mayor Demba Diop said “three babies were saved”.

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted that he was “beyond heartbroken with this tragic news.

“I’m sending my deepest condolences to the parents and families of the babies who lost their lives.” 

Health Minister Sarr, who had been in Geneva attending a meeting with the WHO, said “an investigation is under way to see what happened”.

The tragedy in Tivaouane comes after several other public health incidents in Senegal, which suffers from a great disparity between urban and rural areas in healthcare services. 

In the northern town of Linguere in late April, a fire broke out at a hospital and four newborn babies were killed. The town’s mayor cited an electrical malfunction in an air conditioning unit in the maternity ward.

– ‘This is unacceptable’ –

Wednesday’s accident came over a month after the nation mourned the death of a pregnant woman who waited in vain for a caesarean section.

The woman, Astou Sokhna, arrived at a hospital in the northern city of Louga in pain. The staff refused to accommodate her request for a C-section, saying it was not scheduled. 

She died on April 1, 20 hours after arrival.

Sokhna’s death caused a wave of outrage across the country over the dire state of the health system. Sarr acknowledged two weeks later that the death could have been avoided.

Three midwives on duty the night Sokhna died were given a six-month suspended prison sentence on May 11 by the High Court of Louga for “failure to assist a person in danger” in connection with her case. 

Amnesty International’s Senegal director Seydi Gassama said his organisation had called for an inspection and upgrade for neonatal services in hospitals across Senegal after the “atrocious” death of the four babies in Linguere.

With the new tragedy, Amnesty “urges the government to set up an independent commission of inquiry to determine responsibility and punish the culprits, no matter the level they are at in the state apparatus”, he tweeted. 

Opposition lawmaker Mamadou Lamine Diallo also responded with outrage to the Tivaouane blaze. 

“More babies burned in a public hospital… this is unacceptable @MackySall,” he tweeted. 

“We suffer with the families to whom we offer our condolences. Enough is enough.”

Ukraine said Thursday the war in the east of the country had hit its fiercest level yet as it urged Western allies to match words with support against invading Russian forces.

Moscow’s troops are pushing into the industrial Donbas region after failing to take the capital Kyiv, closing in on several urban centres including the strategically located Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Russian forces also shelled Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, killing four people, after Moscow’s efforts to capture the north-eastern hub were repelled by heavy battles early in the war. 

Britain and Germany both said Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be defeated in the conflict, now in its fourth month, but Kyiv called on the West to urgently supply more heavy weapons for its outgunned forces.

“The fighting has reached its maximum intensity,” Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar told a press briefing about the battles in the east.

“Enemy forces are storming the positions of our troops simultaneously in several directions. We have an extremely difficult and long stage of fighting ahead of us.”

Pro-Moscow separatist groups have controlled parts of Donbas, the industrial basin comprising Donetsk and Lugansk regions, since 2014 but Russia now appears set on taking the whole region.

Lugansk regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said that “heavy” Russian bombardments on Lysychansk had done extensive damage to civilian infrastructure, including a humanitarian aid centre.

– ‘Show me one Nazi!’ –

Three people died in recent Russian attacks on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which stand on the crucial route to Ukraine’s eastern administrative centre in Kramatorsk, Gaiday said.

In Kramatorsk itself, children roamed the rubble left by Russian attacks as the sound of shellfire booms.

“That was a 22 (122-mm artillery),” said Yevgen, a sombre-looking 13-year-old who moved to Kramatorsk with his mother from the ruins of his village Galyna. 

“I am not scared,” he declared as he sat alone on a slab of a destroyed apartment block. “I got used to the shelling.”

Four civilians were killed in shelling in the Donetsk region around Kramatorsk, the Ukrainian presidency said.

Fresh shelling around Kharkiv in the northeast killed another four people, with officials warning residents to take to air raid shelters.

“The occupiers are again shelling the regional centre,” the governor of the Kharkiv region, Oleg Sinegubov, said on Telegram. 

Russia’s rationale of a “special military operation” to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine draws a snort of derision in one village near Kharkiv.

“Show me one Nazi in the village! We have our nation, we are nationalists but not Nazis nor fascists,” says retired nurse Larysa Kosynets.

– ‘Putin must not win’ –

As the toll mounted, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to add to the billions of dollars in weaponry it has already poured in, and blasted suggestions a negotiated peace could include territorial concessions.

“We need the help of our partners — above all, weapons for Ukraine. Full help, without exceptions, without limits, enough to win,” Zelensky said in his daily address to the nation.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba had earlier told Davos that his country “badly” needs multiple-launch rocket systems to match Russian firepower.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has faced criticism over Berlin’s slow response, underscored the “resolve and strength” of the West.

“Our goal is crystal clear — Putin must not win this war. And I am convinced that he will not win it,” the German chancellor told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Scholz added that it was a “matter of making it clear to Putin that there will be no dictated peace.” 

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss echoed the German chancellor’s comments and warned against offering “compromise or appeasement” to Putin.

“We need to make sure that Putin loses in Ukraine and that Ukraine prevails,” Truss told reporters during a visit to Sarajevo, saying that Kyiv needed to be supported without “backsliding”.

– ‘Illegal’ sanctions –

The Ukraine conflict has sparked fears of a global food crisis, on top of the political and economic shockwaves that have already reverberated around the world since the February 24 invasion.

The Kremlin on Thursday accused Western countries of stopping grain-carrying vessels from leaving ports in Ukraine, rejecting accusations that Russia was to blame.

“We accuse Western countries of taking a number of illegal actions that have led to this blockade,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meanwhile poured cold water on an Italian peace plan to end the war.

The Russian central bank cut its key interest rate to 11 percent from 14 percent following an emergency meeting, as authorities sought to rein in the ruble which has surged in value despite the conflict.

Moscow slapped strict capital controls to boost the economy after the imposition of the sanctions and since then the ruble has staged a spectacular rebound — but Russia fears a strong ruble can hit budget revenues and exporters. 

The Kremlin is also seeking to tighten its grip over the parts of Ukraine it occupies, including fast-tracking citizenship for residents of two southern regions that are mostly under Russian control.

The United States branded the plan an “attempt to subjugate the people of Ukraine”.

burs-dk/jm

Witnesses to the Texas school shooting rampage on Thursday questioned the early police response to the massacre, as bereaved parents said they pleaded for officers to storm the building and stop the bloodshed — to no avail.

As the town of Uvalde mourned 19 children and two teachers killed in America’s latest mass shooting, Jacinto Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn died in Tuesday’s massacre, said he raced to Robb Elementary School in the small town of Uvalde when he heard about the shooting.

“There was at least 40 lawmen armed to the teeth but didn’t do a darn thing (until) it was far too late,” Cazares told ABC News Wednesday night, joining other grief-stricken parents quoted in US media as saying they urged police to act more forcefully, as America’s worst school shooting in a decade unfolded.

“The situation could’ve been over quick if they had better tactical training, and we as a community witnessed it firsthand,” said Cazares.

Daniel Myers and his wife Matilda — both local pastors — told AFP they were at the scene, and saw parents growing frantic as police appeared to wait on reinforcements before entering the school.

“Parents were desperate,” said Daniel Myers, 72. “They were ready to go in. One family member, he says: ‘I was in the military, just give me a gun, I’ll go in. I’m not going to hesitate. I’ll go in.'”

“So there was desperation there, there was time lapse,” he told AFP at a makeshift memorial outside the school, where wooden crosses have been erected with victims’ names.

The tight-knit Latino community was changed forever when an 18-year-old with a history of being bullied entered the school with an assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Officials say the gunman, Salvador Ramos, wearing a military-style vest, was confronted by a school resource officer, but was able to enter through a back door. Ramos then made his way to two adjoining classrooms and started shooting.

Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw told CNN Ramos was inside for about 40 minutes before police managed to shoot and kill him.

US Border Patrol chief Raul Ortiz, meanwhile, said the force’s agents “didn’t hesitate.”

“They came up with a plan. They entered that classroom and they took care of the situation as quickly as they possibly could,” Ortiz told CNN.

– ‘I have no words’ –

Speaking out for the first time, Ramos’s mother Adriana Reyes told ABC News her son could be aggressive when he got really angry but was “not a monster.”

“I had an uneasy feeling sometimes, like ‘what are you up to?,'” she told ABC Wednesday evening.

“We all have a rage, that some people have it more than others,” Reyes said.

Reyes expressed sympathy for the slain children and their parents, saying she was not aware that her son had been buying weapons.

“Those kids… I have no words,” Reyes said through tears. “I don’t know what to say about those poor kids.”

A teacher who was in the school building and spoke to NBC on condition she not be named said she had not been able to eat since the tragedy.

She said her students were watching a Disney movie to celebrate the imminent end of the school year, when she heard gunfire down the hall. She told the kids to get under their desks and rushed to lock the door.

“They knew this wasn’t a drill,” the teacher said, referring to the so-called active shooter exercises sadly common in US schools. “We knew we had to be quiet or else we were going to give ourselves away.”

Eventually police broke her classroom windows from the outside and helped the kids to safety.

Authorities have said Ramos shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face before heading to Robb Elementary School with an AR-15 rifle.

According to Uvalde’s justice of the peace Eulalio Dia, anguished families waiting for news of their children had to provide DNA samples to help in the identification process.

“Some of the children were not in good shape,” Diaz told the El Paso Times.

– ‘Common sense’ –

Pressed Wednesday on how the teen was able to obtain the murder weapon, Texas Governor Greg Abbott brushed aside suggestions tougher gun laws were needed in his state — where attachment to the right to bear arms runs deep.

But in the shooting’s wake President Joe Biden — who will head to Uvalde in coming days — has called on lawmakers to take on America’s powerful gun lobby and enact “common sense gun reforms.”

The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest since 20 elementary-age children and six staff were killed at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s long-awaited fever dream of a biopic about the King of Rock’n’Roll, “Elvis”, split Cannes down the middle on Thursday between cheering admirers and barb-throwing critics.

The epic features a star-making turn by young actor Austin Butler as the swivel-hipped, rule-breaking cultural pioneer and Tom Hanks as his exploitative manager, Colonel Tom Parker.

As one of the hottest tickets this year at the world’s top film festival, the movie drew a 12-minute standing ovation at the premiere attended by Kylie Minogue, Shakira, Ricky Martin and the late rocker’s ex-wife Priscilla Presley.

But as the first reviews emerged, the glowing portrayal of an American icon and the top solo recording artist of all time divided Cannes.

Robbie Collin of London’s Daily Telegraph called it “indecently entertaining” and set for a “big” box office this summer. 

“Elvis Presley grooving down 1950s Beale Street to the sound of (American rapper) Doja Cat and singing Viva Las Vegas in the style of Britney Spears?” he said of the movie’s head-spinning musical mashups. “Man, it’s good to have Baz Luhrmann back.”

Oscar-winning Mexican director Guillermo del Toro tweeted that the film was “dazzling, bold and moving…Loved it. Loved it. Loved it”.

– ‘Deliriously awful’ –

The New York Times’s Kyle Buchanan said fans of Luhrmann, the brashly flamboyant director of “Moulin Rouge!”, “The Great Gatsby” and “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”, would get exactly what they came for.

“Overcranked, glittery, silly, fun, ridiculous… sometimes all of those within the same five seconds! The only variables are lead actor Austin Butler (better than expected) and Tom Hanks (much worse!),” he said.

France’s Le Figaro called it a “departure from the conventional biopic” while its “baroque touch does the rest” to make it a crowd-pleaser.     

The picture traces the King’s life from his dirt-poor childhood living in a black neighbourhood in the segregated Deep South to his final, drug-addled years as a bloated shadow of himself during a lengthy residency in a Las Vegas hotel.

It trains a spotlight on the role of blues, gospel and soul in shaping his music, showing Elvis as a respectful and devoted admirer of black culture rather than a white profiteer ripping it off.

In a scathing review, US movie website IndieWire zeroed in on what it called its historical whitewashing.

“Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination is framed as something that personally happened to Elvis Presley, and made him feel very sad,” reviewer David Ehrlich wrote, calling the film “deliriously awful”. 

The Guardian was similarly unimpressed: “Incurious yet frantic, Luhrmann’s spangly epic is off-key – and Austin Butler flounders in those blue suede shoes.”

– Not a Bond baddie –

At a news conference, Luhrmann said he was unfazed about occasionally being panned. 

He said he was most concerned about the reaction of Elvis’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, an actress and film-maker screening her new feature “War Pony” at Cannes, and Priscilla Presley. Both have given their blessing to the film.  

“Criticism of anything you make — I’m used to it,” Luhrmann said. 

“No critique, no review was ever going to mean more to us than the review of the woman who was married to Elvis Presley.”

Hanks said he didn’t take on the role of Colonel Parker as a typical villain. 

“I’m not interested in playing a bad guy just for the sake of ‘Before I kill you Mr Bond, perhaps you’d like a tour of my installation?'” he said, joking about the cartoonish evildoers of the 007 movies.

“What Baz tantalised me with right off the bat was: here was a guy who saw an opportunity to manifest a once-in-a-lifetime talent into a cultural force.

“I give Colonel credit for doing that very thing.”