Month: March 2018

It looks like “Game Over” for actress Lindsay Lohan in her state court fight against a software company for using what she claims is a likeness of her in a video game.

Lohan’s lawyer argued before New York’s top court that Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. violated her right to privacy by incorporating “look-a-like” images of her in the game “Grand Theft Auto V.”

But the state Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the satirical representations of “a modern, beach-going” young woman are not identifiable as Lohan. The court affirmed a ruling from a lower state appeals court dismissing her lawsuit.

Similar claims against Take-Two by “Mob Wives” television star Karen Gravano also were dismissed in a separate ruling.

A message left with Lohan’s lawyer wasn’t immediately returned.
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Kentucky has altered a statue of Jefferson Davis in the state Capitol, removing a plaque that declared the only president of the Confederacy to be a patriot and a hero.

The plaque adorned a 15-foot (4.5 meter) marble statue, which sits in a corner of the state’s ornate Capitol rotunda just behind a bronze statue of former President Abraham Lincoln. Both men were born in Kentucky.

Advocates have pushed for the Davis statue to be removed from the Capitol for years. Their protests gained momentum following the racially-motivated 2015 murders of nine people at an African-American church in South Carolina and the violent protests last year at a white supremacist rally in Virginia.

The Historic Properties Advisory Commission, which governs the statues in the rotunda, voted in 2015 to keep the statue in place as a symbol of the state’s divided past. Kentucky never joined the Confederacy, but it had a number of Confederate sympathizers who attempted to set up a Confederate government in the western part of the state during the Civil War.

Last year, the commission voted to alter the statue by removing a plaque that says Davis was a “Patriot-Hero-Statesman.” The commission then delayed that decision so a lawyer from Republican Gov. Matt Bevin’s administration could make sure the commission had authority to remove the plaque.

Officials removed the plaque on March 11, according to Leslie Nigels, director of the Division of Historic Properties. A report from Nigels during the commission’s meeting on Thursday said removing the plaque is consistent with the commission’s obligation to provide “an objective, balanced, and educational display.”

The Lincoln statute was erected in 1911. The Davis statute came in 1936 after a fundraising campaign by the United Daughters of the Confederacy at the height of the Jim Crow era, when segregation laws proliferated throughout the South.

The original plan, according to the Kentucky Historical Society, was for the Lincoln statue to face north while the Davis statue faced South. The plan was abandoned because the statues were too heavy to be that close together.

The plaque in question was installed in 1975. It was a gift from the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and former Gov. A.B. “Happy” Chandler was on hand to dedicate it.
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She’s just spent about eight hours being interrogated by Vietnamese state security officials at the airport after a flight from Europe, but the intimidation hasn’t shaken Mai Khoi’s focus.

“I’m busy,” she says on the phone over the clamor of rehearsing musicians hours later.

“I can’t talk, I have to practice.”

The outspoken musician, whose full name is Do Nguyen Mai Khoi, just released a new album titled “Dissent” and has learned to deal with pressure from Vietnam’s government as a matter of formality.

In a later call, she described how she was detained at Hanoi’s Noi Bai airport on Tuesday night after returning from a European tour and forced to recount the activities of her trip in painstakingly granular detail.

She said this type of “mental violence” isn’t new to her, but it is extremely disquieting in a country that has been giving long jail terms to activists who dare raise sensitive topics.

“No, to stay in Vietnam is not safe for me who wants to express freely, but I still have to stay here because I think it’s going to change. The censorship system’s going to change. The way they control people’s talk has to be changed,” she said.

Mixed signals on freedom of speech

Just which direction Vietnam is heading in when it comes to freedom of expression is not entirely clear. The country has been praised for huge strides it has made in LGBT rights, including rescinding a ban on gay marriage in recent years.

Bucking the regional trend, Vietnam is strengthening ties with the United States and other democracies to counterbalance the rapidly growing geopolitical influence of its old foe China amidst escalating tensions between Beijing and Hanoi over rival claims to the South China Sea.

Ina powerful diplomatic gesture, a U.S. aircraft carrier docked in Vietnam this year for the first time since the fall of Saigon, which was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the war.

This strategic alignment gives rise to hopes that increasing internationalism will lead Vietnam to greater openness, as does its current trajectory on international trade.

Vietnam has just signed on to the the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) — a deal linking the economies of 11 countries across a vast stretch of the Pacific rim — and is on the cusp of securing a huge free trade agreement with the EU this year.

Le Dang Doanh, a former economic advisor to the Vietnamese government and current party member, believes these trade deals could help push his country toward greater openness.

“And I really do hope that the… CPTPP and Vietnam-EU Free Trade Agreement, including some paragraphs on the freedom of the voter, on the commitment of Vietnam to international conventions, will help increasingly to provide a more open environment,” he said.

Surging Internet penetration, Le said, was also increasingly pushing public debate beyond the traditionally tight censorship of the state.

“The Internet infiltration in Vietnam is very high and also Facebook is popular so that Vietnamese society now is free to collect more information, people have more independent thinking and Vietnam is increasingly internationalized,” he said.

Yet at the same time, the persecution of activists has escalated alarmingly in the past year and often they have been targeted precisely for their social media activities.

In February, environmental activist Hoang Duc Binh was sentenced to 14 years in jail for live-streaming a protest over a massive spill of toxic waste across 200 kilometers of Vietnamese coastline that has decimated the fishing business and enraged the public.

Blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, who is popularly known by the alias Mother Mushroom, was handed 10 years in June for criticizing the government in interviews with foreign media and on her Facebook page.

Activist Tran Thi Nga was sentenced to nine years of jail in July for posting articles and videos to Facebook in which she accused authorities of committing human rights violations.

In total, Human Rights Watch found at least 10 activists had been sentenced in 2017 to jail terms between five and 10 years while some 36 had been beaten by plained clothed thugs since 2015.

Artists like Mai Khoi continue to speak out

Despite the risks, artists such as Khoi – who shot to fame as a state ordained pop star in 2010 before deciding art without politics was meaningless – remain defiant and increasingly high-profile.

After Khoi was blocked from an attempt to run for parliament in 2016, she met then-U.S. President Barack Obama during his trip to Hanoi to give him an alternate view to the official state narrative on the country’s progress.

Subsequent concerts have attracted uninvited guests from the police, but when she launched her new album late last month to a private audience no one came to shut it down.

The Vietnamese government recently released a statement flatly refuting claims Khoi has made that she has been targeted because of her outspoken music.

“The competent authorities of Viet Nam have never issued any performance ban on Ms. Mai Khoi,” it said.

Khoi feels less than reassured, but no less determined.

“I have to forget about the fear and music keeps me strong. My songs, my feelings, my emotions and the support from people around me keeps me strong and [I] have more power, I mean the power inside me to keep continuing what I’m doing now,” she said.

 
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Prosecutors have selected the five additional accusers they plan to call to the witness stand at Bill Cosby’s April 2 sexual assault retrial.

The accusers, including model Janice Dickinson, were chosen from a group of eight women whose allegations date as far back as the early 1980s.

Prosecutors listed their selections in a letter to Judge Steven O’Neill that was made public on Wednesday.

O’Neill’s March 15 ruling cleared the way for prosecutors to broaden their case beyond the alleged assault of Andrea Constand in 2004 that led to Cosby’s only criminal charges. They want to show that he had a pattern of misconduct over a five-decade span.

At Cosby’s first trial, which ended in a deadlock, O’Neill allowed only one other accuser to take the stand. But that woman is not one of the five who will testify this time in support of Constand’s case.

In the letter to O’Neill and other filings, prosecutors have listed the women only by witness number. The Associated Press was able to identify them by cross-referencing the details of the allegations described in court filings with statements and other accounts they have made publicly.

The AP does not typically name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but those named below have consented.

Attorneys for Cosby, who is now 80, have said the women’s memories are tainted at best and tried to get them barred from testifying, but their request was denied.

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The criminal case

Andrea Constand

Ages then: She was 30; he was 66.

Constand told police in 2005 that Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her a year earlier at his suburban Philadelphia estate. The Temple University basketball team manager said he gave her three unlabeled blue pills to “relax” as she discussed a career change. She said she was semi-conscious when he digitally penetrated her. Cosby, a Temple alumnus, booster and former trustee, is charged with sexually assaulting a person unable to give consent, a felony that could bring 10 years in prison upon conviction. The defense says her story has evolved and there were other times they were sexually intimate. Cosby has pleaded not guilty.

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The five other accusers

Janice Dickinson

Ages then: She was 27; he was 45.

Dickinson met Cosby in 1982 and saw him as a trusted friend and mentor as she tried to broaden her career from modeling to music and television. Dickinson said Cosby arranged for her to fly to see him perform in Lake Tahoe and knocked her out with a pill he gave her after she had complained of stomach pain. She said she woke up in pain and found fluids between her legs. She never reported the encounter to authorities and has said she was afraid that if she did, her career would be damaged and Cosby would retaliate. Cosby lawyer Martin Singer said in 2014 that Dickinson’s allegations were a lie and a “glaring contradiction” to what she wrote in her book and what she had previously told the media.

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Janice Baker-Kinney

Ages then: She was 24; he was 45.

Baker-Kinney, then a Harrah’s casino bartender in Reno, Nevada, went to a pizza party at a nearby home where Cosby was staying in 1982. He insisted that she take two pills, she said, before the backgammon game they were playing went blurry. She said she recalls seeing her blouse unbuttoned and his pants unzipped before she awoke naked with signs she had been sexually assaulted. The defense says her story is “nothing like Ms. Constand’s” because she only met Cosby once, “voluntarily” took quaaludes and apologized for passing out.

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Heidi Thomas

Ages then: She was 24; he was 46.

Thomas’ agent sent the aspiring actress to meet Cosby for career advice at a Harrah’s hotel in Reno in 1984, but the limousine he sent instead took her to a private house where she said he gave her a drink so she could play the intoxicated person in a script he gave her. During intermittent bouts of consciousness, she said, she was naked and Cosby forced her to perform oral sex. The defense says she has given three versions of her story.

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Chelan Lasha

Ages then: She was 17; he was 48.

The model and aspiring actress met and befriended Cosby in 1986. Lasha said he invited her to his Las Vegas hotel room to introduce her to a modeling agency representative and gave her a pill he described as an antihistamine and a double shot of almond liqueur to help fight a cold. At Cosby’s behest, Lasha said, she changed into a robe, wet her hair and posed for a few modeling shots. She said Cosby then directed her to the bed, where he pinched her nipple and humped her leg as she lay immobilized and unable to speak. She says she woke up naked.

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Lise-Lotte Lublin

Ages then: She was 23; he was about 52.

Lublin was an aspiring actress when she met Cosby in 1989. She and her mother went for a run with Cosby, and he gave them show tickets before he invited her to the Elvis suite of the Las Vegas Hilton to practice acting improvisation. He prodded her to take two drinks to relax, which she ultimately did. She said she recalls seeing Cosby stroking her hair and walking down a hall before she woke up at home two days later. She said she believes she was sexually assaulted. The defense says Lublin assumes she is a victim based on other media accounts but can only remember Cosby stroking her hair.
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There are fewer than 2,000 wild pandas in the world. However, as VOA’s David Byrd reports, a new documentary tells how scientists are working to introduce captive-bred panda cubs into the wild.
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Sean Penn, Oscar-winning actor, has other passions these days.

“I’m not in love with the job of acting anymore,” says Penn, whose films include “Milk,” “Mystic River,” “Dead Man Walking” and many others. “In fact, what I want to do is write books.”

Penn fears the world is so overwhelmed with “content” that even great movies are quickly forgotten. But he still believes in words. This week, Penn joins such literary heroes as Norman Mailer and Jack Kerouac, not to mention such acting peers as Ethan Hawke and James Franco, as an author of fiction.

Penn’s novel is called “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff,” a title not out of place for someone whose off-screen adventures have led to encounters with everyone from Mikhail Gorbachev to El Chapo. “Bob Honey,” its volatile and alienated protagonist like/unlike the writer himself, is a hot tour of the United States and beyond as a Trump-like figure known as “The Landlord” rises to power and Bob Honey longs to be “Unbranded, unbridled and free.”

“Bob Honey” has an improvisational style and a trail of alliterations (“Quite intentionally, to a fault,” Penn acknowledges). The plot involves septic tanks, lethal mallets and fireworks for dictators. The book’s back story also follows a scattered path. Last year, Penn released a brief audiobook under the pseudonym Pappy Pariah. He expanded on it and published a hardcover under his own name, although he says that opinions contained within, including a poem that chastises the #MeToo movement, are not necessarily his own.

“A character’s thought pattern,” he says of such lines as “A platform for accusation impunity?/Due process has lost its sheen?”

During a recent interview with The Associated Press, the 57-year-old Penn talked about writing, movies, #MeToo and his changing tastes in books. He has more trouble in mind for Bob Honey, depending on whether he thinks the public will care. Some reviews have been rough (“Sean Penn The Novelist Must Be Stopped” reads a Huffington Post headline), but the novel has made the top 100 on Amazon.com and hit No. 1 in a category Penn should appreciate: absurdist fiction.

On why he wrote the novel:

“I needed to step away from the news cycle some time during 2015-2016. It was occurring to me more and more that the debates I had found even myself part of in the public arena had become that which were dividing us as a country more and more, that we entered the conversations now as 3-year-olds and to be in the conversation was to be a 3-year-old. The only way I felt I could respond to it was a kind of satire — to choose to laugh, instead of vent, or instead of rage.”

On some favorite authors from Mailer to Cormac McCarthy and what they have in common:

“I realized after I wrote this book that my reading of fiction has been, and I hadn’t thought about it before, almost entirely mono-cultural. It’s almost been entirely American men, the authors I have read. I’m anxious to change that. … My real history of going to bookstores and buying a book has been the rugged men tale tellers and I find that my interests do go beyond that.”

 “I was early on a reader of Louise Erdrich, but I haven’t read any of her writing in a long time. I’d like to go back and see what she’s been doing. I’m a big fan of Sharon Olds as a poet. Whenever she has a book out, I grab it.”

On #Metoo:

“One of the interesting things that I note has not come up in the discussion of sexual abuse, be it by a partner or a parent or a legal system, and it’s sort of surprising that there isn’t within any of these movements any express concern or dialogue when it comes to the age consent in this country.”

“Here we are talking about sexual abuse and you’re still seeing in this country teenagers being married. I think for a movement about protecting young people, about protecting women, that if we are to add to our empathy those who were exploited for their ambition, among the other things, which is not my business to say that that’s a fair thing to be protected from or not. The expectation for me in my adulthood was that I was responsible for that. We are all different and people have different strengths and weaknesses at different times in their lives. But when we’re talking about kids, it’s just clear.”

On a possible movie of `Bob Honey’:

“A couple of people have talked to me about that. I think that if one of these talented directors really wants to do it, then it would be a lot of fun to see them go do it. But I don’t want anything to do with it other than pay whatever it is to buy a ticket and see it.”
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Prosecutors in the Minnesota county where Prince died have agreed to share investigative files with attorneys for the musician’s family under strict guidelines.

Carver County Attorney Mark Metz says Prince’s death investigation remains active, so the data is confidential. But family attorneys may view it to determine whether to file a lawsuit in Illinois before a two-year statute of limitations expires.

Prince’s plane stopped in Moline, Illinois, when he became ill from a suspected drug overdose days before his death. He died April 21, 2016.

A judge’s order says attorneys must view the data at the sheriff’s office only. It must not be copied, shared or openly discussed.

Investigative data becomes public in Minnesota after a case is resolved, or if no charges are filed. Metz said he plans to make a charging decision in the near future.

 
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Rapper Fetty Wap handed out gift cards to families at a New Jersey supermarket just in time for Easter.

The Record reports the Paterson native visited his hometown Tuesday for a giveaway at ShopRite in Center City Mall. Marie Sweeney-Tevis, ShopRite’s director of public relations, says the organization was excited for the opportunity.

Fetty Wap, whose real name is Willie Maxwell II, says he’s fortunate to be able to help people now considering his upbringing. The rapper posed for pictures with eager fans and joked that he might land a couple of Easter dinner invitations.

Fetty Wap is no stranger to giving back. He’s donated turkeys for Thanksgiving each year in Paterson since 2015.

The rap star says he’ll always support his hometown.
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