Month: June 2022

Oscar-winning Canadian screenwriter and director Paul Haggis is under house arrest in southern Italy on charges of sexual assault and aggravated personal injury, accusations that Haggis denies, his lawyers said on Monday.

“Mr. Paul Haggis was detained on Sunday with an emergency measure issued by the Brindisi prosecutors and is now under house arrest in Ostuni. He will be questioned by Thursday by a judge who will have to decide whether or not to confirm the detention,” his Italian lawyer Michele Laforgia told Reuters.

Haggis was charged with forcing a young non-Italian woman to have sexual intercourse against her will the course of two days in Ostuni, Italy, public prosecutors in Brindisi said in a statement on Sunday.

“Under Italian Law, I cannot discuss the evidence. That said, I am confident that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr. Haggis,” Haggis’ personal attorney Priya Chaudhry said in a statement.

Both lawyers said Haggis was pleading innocent and would cooperate with authorities. 

“A young foreign woman was forced to seek medical care” following the sexual relations, the prosecutors said in the statement.

They said that on Sunday after the non-consensual relations that man accompanied the woman to Brindisi airport, where she was left despite her “precarious physical and psychological conditions.”

An investigative source told Reuters the unidentified young woman will be questioned in the coming 10 days in what is known in Italy as an evidentiary incident, setting out evidence for a possible future trial.

Haggis, 69, wrote “Million Dollar Baby” and co-wrote and directed “Crash,” both of which he won an Oscar for.

In 2018 he denied accusations of sexual misconduct made by four women, including two who accused him of rape.

Haggis was in Ostuni to hold several masterclasses at the Allora Fest, a new film event being launched by Los Angeles-based Italian journalist Silvia Bizio and Spanish art critic Sol Costales Doulton that is set to run from June 21 to June 26.

The Allora Fest said they “learned with dismay and shock the news,” adding that the festival’s directors “immediately proceeded to remove any participation of the director from the event.”
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The surprise announcement by BTS last week that they were taking a break to focus on members’ solo projects stunned their global fanbase, shaking their label’s stock price and leaving many questions about the K-pop supergroup’s future.

HYBE, the company behind the band, denied the group was taking a hiatus — a word used in a translation of the group’s emotional dinnertime video announcement. In the days since, band members have remained active on social media, continuing the stream of posts, photos and assurances that the band wasn’t breaking up.

Despite the immediate impacts — HYBE’s stock initially dropped more than 25% and has yet to fully recover — several factors may still affect BTS’ future. One is looming military enlistment for older BTS members, as well as how engaged the group and their devoted fans, known as ARMY, will continue to be in social issues.

In 2020, at the height of BTS’ success, the South Korean government revised the country’s military law that requires able-bodied South Korean men to perform approximately two years of military service. The revised law allows top K-pop stars — including Jin, the oldest member of BTS — to defer their military service until they turn 30 if they’ve received government medals for heightening the country’s cultural reputation and apply for the postponement. All BTS members meet the criteria as recipients of government medals in 2018.

“Obviously, there’s a looming military enlistment so they might have thought it’d be good to do something individually before it’s too late and that’s why I think military enlistment was the biggest factor,” said Lee Dong Yeun, a professor at Korea National University of Arts.

There have been calls — including from South Korea’s former culture minister — for an exemption for BTS because of their contribution to heightening South Korea’s international reputation. But critics say that such an exemption would be bending the conscription rules to favor the privileged.

Jin, 29, is expected to enlist this year unless he receives an exemption.

Military enlistment of members has always been a headache for HYBE; BTS once accounted for 90% of the label’s profit. Currently, the group makes up 50%-60% of the label’s profit according to a report from eBest Investment & Securities.

The eBest report noted that the rapid stock plunge might have resulted from an “anticipation that the activities as the whole group might be uncertain after being discharged from the military.”

HYBE has been attempting to diversify its portfolio by debuting new K-pop bands, making online games, and rolling out Korean language tutorials.

As the most successful K-pop band to date with hits like “Dynamite” and “Butter,” BTS has for years commanded tremendous attention on social media and with each new music release. They recently performed several sold-out shows in the United States, became the first K-pop act to get a Grammy Award nomination, released an anthology album, “Proof,” and channeled their global influence with an address at the United Nations and a trip to the White House to campaign against hate crimes directed at Asians.

“Once you achieve success like BTS achieved success, then it means there’s a constant expectation to continue doing something that is connected to what you’ve already done, where you’ve already been. In the most recent releases that BTS has brought out, also we can see how they continually reflect back on where they have been,” said CedarBough Saeji, professor of Korean and East Asian Studies at Pusan National University.

She said Tuesday’s announcement signaled the band’s intention to figure out “where they are going for themselves without interference from other people” and “being able to choose their own path forward as artists.”

Last week’s announcement also leaves in doubt the group’s social justice efforts, which have included vocal support for the Black Lives Matter movement and anti-violence campaigns. BTS’ legions of fans have embraced the causes, matching a $1 million donation to Black Lives Matter after George Floyd’s death.

But the group has faced mushrooming questions about why it isn’t as vocal about discrimination in their own country.

A leading South Korean newspaper recently published a column in which the author mused why South Korea, despite having BTS — “the ambassador of anti-discrimination and human rights” — has struggled to enact an anti-discrimination law for 15 years.

“It’s an irony,” the writer said. “South Korea needs their force for good.”

The country’s lack of an anti-discrimination law has led to unfair treatment against women and foreigners, among others.

Jumin Lee, the author of the book “Why Anti-Discrimination Law?” told the Associated Press that there’s a dire need for the anti-discrimination law in the country.

“South Korea is in essentially the same situation legally as America’s Jim Crow South. Equal protection exists as a constitutional concept, but there is no implementing legislation that allows the government to force private businesses to comply,” Lee said. “What that means in practice is that if I’m a business owner, I could post a sign on my door tomorrow that says, ‘no gays’ ‘no blacks’ or ‘no old people,’ and absent extraordinary intervention by the Constitutional Court, there’s very little the law can do to stop me.”

Lee recently expressed disappointment in the band for not speaking up about the important domestic issue.

“BTS and their business folks know that speaking up in the U.S. is profitable but doing the same back home would be more trouble than it’s worth. So, they don’t,” tweeted Lee after the band’s visit to Washington.

Despite that, Lee said the band’s silence is understandable, stating that BTS would be met with “indifference at best and hostility at worse” from politicians if they did speak up.

Some South Korean celebrities like singers Harisu and Ha:tfelt have been speaking out on touchy subjects such as the anti-discrimination law and feminism, despite backlashes.

After speaking out about the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which killed 304 people in one of the country’s worst disasters, Cannes-winning actor Song Kang-ho and director Park Chan-wook were blacklisted by the administration of the ousted President Park Geun-hye, noted Areum Jeong, a scholar of Korean pop culture.

“So, although many idols might be politically conscious, they might choose not to discuss social issues,” Jeong said.

Several BTS members said during last week’s announcement that they were struggling with the group’s successes and having trouble writing new songs.

“For me, it was like the group BTS was within my grasp until ‘On’ and ‘Dynamite,’ but after ‘Butter’ and ‘Permission to Dance,’ I didn’t know what kind of group we were anymore,” member RM said. “Whenever I write lyrics and songs, it’s really important what kind of story and message I want to give out but it was like that was gone now.”

While that clouds what BTS’ next steps might be, Saeji said their continued candor was necessary because of how much the group has impacted their fanbase.

“They’re meeting the fans with that same honesty and saying to them, ‘You had my help when I needed it. And now I need my help,’” she said. “‘I need to be on my own. To think for myself, to know what I want to write a lyric about, to understand my own mind, to become inspired on my own.’”
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An 18-year-old from South Korea has won the 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the top showcases for the world’s best pianists. 

The competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, ended Saturday night with Yunchan Lim becoming the competition’s youngest winner of the gold medal. His winnings include a cash award of $100,000 and three years of career management. 

The silver medalist was Anna Geniushene, a 31-year-old from Russia, and the bronze medalist is Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old from Ukraine. 

Lim told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he’ll discuss with his teacher what the next move for his career should be. 

“I am still a student and I feel like I have to learn a lot still,” Lim said. “This is a great competition and I feel the burden of receiving this great honor and award so I will just push myself to live up to the honor I received today.” 

The competition was founded in 1962 in honor of the celebrated pianist Van Cliburn, who lived in Fort Worth. Cliburn, who died in 2013 at age 78, played for U.S. presidents, royalty and heads of state around the world. He is best remembered for winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, at the height of the Cold War. 

The competition is traditionally held every four years. This year’s competition was originally scheduled for last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.
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Swimming’s world governing body FINA on Sunday voted to restrict the participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions and create a working group to establish an “open” category for them in some events as part of its new policy.

Transgender rights has become a major talking point as sports seek to balance inclusivity while ensuring there is no unfair advantage.

The decision, the strictest by any Olympic sports body, was made during FINA’s extraordinary general congress after members heard a report from a transgender task force comprising leading medical, legal and sports figures.

The new eligibility policy for FINA competitions states that male-to-female transgender athletes are eligible to compete only if “they can establish to FINA’s comfortable satisfaction that they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 (of puberty) or before age 12, whichever is later.”

The policy was passed with a roughly 71% majority after it was put to the members of 152 national federations with voting rights who had gathered for the congress at the Puskas Arena.

“We have to protect the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions,” said FINA President Husain Al-Musallam.

“FINA will always welcome every athlete. The creation of an open category will mean that everybody has the opportunity to compete at an elite level. This has not been done before, so FINA will need to lead the way. I want all athletes to feel included in being able to develop ideas during this process.”

The issue of transgender inclusion in sport is highly divisive, particularly in the United States where it has become a weapon in a so-called “culture war” between conservatives and progressives.

The new FINA policy also opens up eligibility to those who have “complete androgen insensitivity and therefore could not experience male puberty.”

Swimmers who have had “male puberty suppressed beginning at Tanner Stage 2 or before age 12, whichever is later, and they have since continuously maintained their testosterone levels in serum (or plasma) below 2.5 nmol/L.” are also allowed to compete in women’s races.

Female-to-male transgender athletes (transgender men) are fully eligible to compete in men’s swimming competitions.

Advocates for transgender inclusion argue that not enough studies have yet been done on the impact of transition on physical performance, and that elite athletes are often physical outliers in any case.

The debate intensified after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender NCAA champion in Division I history after winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle earlier this year.

That followed New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard becoming the first transgender athlete to compete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo last year.
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American actor and director Liev Schreiber says events in Ukraine didn’t impact him much before the Russian invasion. Due to the war, he became deeply involved in charity work and rediscovered the Ukrainian part of his heritage. VOA’s Tatiana Vorozhko reports.
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Despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, couples there continue to get married. For many, the war itself prompted them to officially tie the knot – especially military couples. At least one jewelry store provides military couples with free wedding bands; wedding ceremonies are often held online, at times, literally from the front lines. Anna Kosstutschenko has the story.
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After two days of deliberations in which they reached verdicts on nearly all of the questions put before them, jurors in a civil trial who were deciding on sexual abuse allegations against Bill Cosby will have to start from scratch on Monday.

By the end of the court day Friday, the Los Angeles County jury had come to agreement on whether Cosby had sexually assaulted plaintiff Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion when she was 16 in 1975, and whether Huth deserved any damages. In all they had answered eight of nine questions on their verdict form, all but one that asked whether Cosby acted in a way that should require punitive damages.

Judge Craig Karlan, who had promised one juror when she agreed to serve that she could leave after Friday for a prior commitment, decided over the objections of Cosby’s attorneys to accept and read the verdict on the questions the jury had answered. But he had to change course when deputies at the Santa Monica Courthouse appeared and required him to clear the courtroom. The courthouse has a required closure time of 4:30 p.m. because of no budget for deputies’ overtime.

Karlan refused to require the departing juror, who had been chosen as foreperson, to return on Monday, so jurors will have to begin again with an alternate in her place.

“I won’t go back on my word,” Karlan said.

It was a bizarre ending to a strange day of jury deliberations. It began with a note to the judge about what he called a “personality issue” between two of the jurors that was making their work difficult.

After calling them to the courtroom and getting them to agree that every juror would be heard in discussions, the jurors resumed, but had a steady flurry of questions on issues with their verdict form that the judge and attorneys had to discuss and answer. One question was on how to calculate damages.

After the lunch break, Cosby lawyer Jennifer Bonjean moved for a mistrial because of a photo taken by a member of Cosby’s team that showed a juror standing in close proximity to a Cosby accuser who had been sitting in the audience and watching the trial.

Karlan said the photo didn’t indicate any conversation had happened, and quickly dismissed the mistrial motion, getting assurances from the juror in question, then the entire jury, that no one had discussed the case with them.

The accuser, Los Angeles artist Lily Bernard, who has filed her own lawsuit against Cosby in New Jersey, denied speaking to any jurors.

“I never spoke to any juror, ever,” Bernard told the judge from her seat in the courtroom. “I would never do anything to jeopardize this case. I don’t even look at them.”

Karlan fought to get past the hurdles and have jurors deliberate as long as possible, and kept lawyers, reporters and court staff in the courtroom ready to bolt as soon as a verdict was read, but it was fruitless in the end.

Jurors had begun deliberating Thursday morning after a two-week trial.

Cosby, 84, who was freed from prison when his Pennsylvania criminal conviction was thrown out nearly a year ago, did not attend. He denied any sexual contact with Huth in a clip from a 2015 video deposition shown to jurors. The denial has been repeated throughout the trial by his spokesperson and his attorney.

In contentious closing arguments, Bonjean urged the jurors to look past the public allegations against Cosby and consider only the trial evidence, which she said did not come close to proving Huth’s case.

Huth’s attorney Nathan Goldberg told jurors Cosby had to be held accountable for the harm he had done to his client.

The Associated Press does not normally name people who say they have been sexually abused, unless they come forward publicly, as Huth and Bernard each have. 
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The price of bitcoin fell below $20,000 Saturday for the first time since late 2020, in a fresh sign that the sell-off in cryptocurrencies is deepening. 

Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, fell below the psychologically important threshold, dropping by as much as 9% to less than $19,000 and hovering around that mark, according to the cryptocurrency news site CoinDesk. 

The last time bitcoin was at that level was in November 2020, when it was on its way up to its all-time high of nearly $69,000, according to CoinDesk. Many in the industry had believed it would not fall under $20,000. 

Bitcoin has now lost more than 70% of its value since reaching that peak. 

Ethereum, another widely followed cryptocurrency that’s been sliding in recent weeks, took a similar tumble Saturday. 

It’s the latest sign of turmoil in the cryptocurrency industry amid wider turbulence in financial markets. Investors are selling off riskier assets because central banks are raising interest rates to combat quickening inflation. 

The overall market value of cryptocurrency assets has fallen from $3 trillion to below $1 trillion, according to coinmarketcap.com, a company that tracks crypto prices. On Saturday, the company’s data showed crypto’s global market value stood at about $834 billion. 

A spate of crypto meltdowns has erased tens of billions of dollars of value from the currencies and sparked urgent calls to regulate the freewheeling industry. Last week, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to regulate the digital assets. The crypto industry has also upped its lobbying efforts — flooding $20 million into congressional races this year for the first time, according to records and interviews. 

Cesare Fracassi, a finance professor at the University of Texas at Austin who leads the school’s Blockchain Initiative, believes Bitcoin’s fall under the psychological threshold isn’t a big deal. Instead, he said the focus should be on recent news from lending platforms. 

Cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network said this month that it was pausing all withdrawals and transfers, with no sign of when it would give its 1.7 million customers access to their funds. Another crypto lending platform, Babel Finance, said in a notice posted on its website Friday that it will suspend redemptions and withdrawals on products due to “unusual liquidity pressures.” 

“There is a lot of turbulence in the market,” Fracassi said. “And the reason why prices are going down is because there is a lot of concern the sector is overleveraged.” 

The cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase announced Tuesday that it laid off about 18% of its workforce, with the company’s CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong placing some of the blame on a coming “crypto winter.” 

Stablecoin Terra imploded last month, losing tens of billions of dollars in value in a matter of hours. 

Crypto had permeated much of popular culture before its recent tumble, with many Super Bowl ads touting the digital assets and celebrities and YouTube personalities routinely promoting it on social media. 

David Gerard, a crypto critic and author of “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain,” said the recent meltdowns show a failure by regulators, who he believes should have put more scrutiny on the industry years ago. Many nascent investors — especially young people — invested in crypto based on a false hope that was sold to them, he said. 

“There are real human victims here that are ordinary people.” 
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A gnawing uncertainty hung over the Yellowstone National Park gateway town of Gardiner this week following unprecedented flooding that shut down one of America’s most beloved natural attractions and swept away roads, bridges and homes.

Gardiner itself escaped the flooding but briefly became home to hundreds of park visitors stranded when the road leading into it was closed along the surging Yellowstone River. When the road reopened, the tourists vanished.

“Town is eerie right now,” said Katie Gale, who does booking for a company that offers rafting and other outdoor trips. “We had all those folks trapped in here, and then as soon as they opened the road … it was just like someone just pulled the plug in a bathtub.”

That draining of visitors has become a major concern for businesses in towns such as Gardiner and Red Lodge that lead to Yellowstone’s northern entrances and rely on tourists passing through.

Officials have said the park’s southern part, which features Old Faithful, could reopen as soon as next week. But the north end, which includes Tower Fall and the bears and wolves of Lamar Valley, could stay closed for months after sections of major roads inside Yellowstone were washed away or buried in rockfall. Roads leading to the park also have widespread damage that could take months to repair.

Red Lodge is facing a double disaster: It will have to clean up the damage done by the deluge to parts of town and also figure out how to survive without the summer business that normally sustains it for the rest of the year.

“Winters are hard in Red Lodge,” Chris Prindiville said as he hosed mud from the sidewalk outside his shuttered cafe, which had no fresh water or gas for his stoves. “You have to make your money in the summer so you can make it when the bills keep coming and the visitors have stopped.”

Yellowstone is one of the crown jewels of the park system, a popular summer playground that appeals to adventurous backpackers camping in grizzly country, casual hikers walking past steaming geothermal features, nature lovers gazing at elk, bison, bears and wolves from the safety of their cars, and amateur photographers and artists trying to capture the pink and golden hues of the cliffs of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and its thundering waterfall.

All 4 million visitors a year have to pass through the small towns that border the park’s five entrances.

The flooding — triggered by a combination of torrential rain and rapid snowmelt — hit just as hotels around Yellowstone were filling up with summer tourists. June is typically one of Yellowstone’s busiest months.

At least 88 people were rescued by the Montana National Guard over the past few days from campsites and small towns, and hundreds of homes, including nearly 150 in Red Lodge, were damaged by muddy waters. One large house in Gardiner that was home to six park employees was ripped from its foundation and floated miles downstream before sinking. Four to five homes could still topple into the Stillwater River, which already washed several cabins away, according to a spokesperson for Stillwater County.

No deaths or serious injuries have been reported.

Red Lodge remained under a boil-water advisory, and trucks supplied drinking water to half of the town that was without it. Portable toilets were strategically placed for those who couldn’t flush at home.

The Yodeler Motel, once home to Finnish coal miners, faced its first shutdown since it began operating as a lodge in 1964. Owner Mac Dean said he is going to have to gut the lower level, where 13 rooms flooded in chest-high waters.

“Rock Creek seemed to take in its own course,” he said. “It just jumped the bank and it came right down Main Street and it hit us.”

Dean had been counting on a busy summer tied to the park’s 150th anniversary. The Yodeler had the most bookings in the 13 years Dean and his wife have owned the business. Now he’s hoping to get some help, possibly from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The damage is catastrophic,” he said. “We’re between a rock and a hard place. And if we don’t get some assistance, we’re not gonna make it.”

President Joe Biden declared a disaster in Montana, ordering federal assistance be made available.

The tourism season had started well for Cara McGary, who guides groups through the Lamar Valley to see wolves, bison, elk and bears. She had seen more than 20 grizzlies some days this year.

Now, with the road from Gardiner into northern Yellowstone washed out, the wildlife is still there, but it’s out of reach to McGary. Her guide business, In Our Nature, is suddenly in trouble.

“The summer that we prepared for is not at all similar to the summer that we’re going to have,” she said. “This is an 80% to 100% loss of business during the high season.”

Officials and business leaders are hoping Gardiner, Red Lodge and other small communities can draw visitors even without access to the park.

Sarah Ondrus, owner of Paradise Adventure Company, that rents out cabins and offers rafting, kayaking and horseback riding trips, was frustrated she was getting so many cancellations.

“Montana and Wyoming still exist. I don’t know how I can convince these people,” Ondrus said. “Once our water quality is good and our law enforcement thinks it’s OK, we’re good to go again. It’s still a destination. You can still horseback ride, go to cowboy cookouts, hike in the national forest.”

That could be a tall order for anyone coming from the south or east sides of the park who had hoped to exit in the north. After the southern portion of the park reopens, it would take an almost 200-mile (320 kilometers) detour through West Yellowstone and Bozeman to reach Gardiner. It would require a nearly 300-mile (480 kilometers) drive from Cody, Wyoming.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, has faced criticism from Democrats and members of the public for being out of the country during the disaster.

Spokesperson Brooke Stroyke said the governor had left last week on a long-scheduled personal trip with his wife and was due back Thursday. She would not say where he was, citing security reasons.

In his absence, Montana’s Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras signed an emergency disaster declaration Tuesday.
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