crime

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld a jury's finding in a civil case that Donald Trump sexually assaulted a columnist within the dressing room of a luxury department store within the mid-Nineteen Nineties.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury awarded E. Jean Carroll on defamation and sexual abuse charges.

The magazine's longtime columnist had testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly encounter within the spring of 1996 right into a violent attack after they playfully entered the shop's dressing room.

Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying that the attack ever happened. But he testified briefly earlier this 12 months in a follow-up defamation trial that ended with an $83.3 million award. The second trial stemmed from comments made by then-President Trump in 2019 after Carroll first made the allegations public in his memoir.

In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected claims by Trump's lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan made several decisions that thwarted the trial, including his decision to confess two other women who had accused Trump of marrying them statements about having been sexually abused.

The judge also allowed the jury to look at the infamous “Access Hollywood” video wherein Trump bragged in 2005 about grabbing women's genitals because when someone is a star, “you can do anything.”

“We conclude that Mr. Trump has not established that the district court erred in any of the impugned rulings,” the 2nd Circuit said. “Furthermore, he has failed to establish that any alleged error or combination of alleged errors affected his essential rights necessary to justify a new trial.”

In September, each Carroll, 81, and Trump, 78, attended oral arguments within the 2nd Circuit.

Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, said in an announcement that Trump was elected by voters who “cast an overwhelming mandate, and they are calling for an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a rapid end to all witch hunts, including…” Democratic-sponsored Carroll Hoax, which stays under appeal.”

Roberta Kaplan, an attorney who represented Carroll throughout the trial and will not be related to the judge, said in an announcement: “Both E. Jean Carroll and I are pleased with today’s decision. We thank the Second Circuit for its careful consideration of the parties’ arguments.”

The first jury present in May 2023 that Trump sexually abused Carroll and defamed her with comments he made in October 2022. That jury awarded Carroll $5 million.

In January, a second jury awarded Carroll a further $83.3 million in damages for comments Trump made about her while he was president, finding them defamatory. That jury had been instructed by the judge to simply accept the primary jury's finding that Trump had sexually abused Carroll.

Trump testified for lower than three minutes within the second trial and was not allowed to challenge the jury's May 2023 conclusions. Still, he was animated within the courtroom throughout the two-week trial and jurors could hear him grumbling in regards to the case.

California Congressman Eric Swalwell has filed a state damages lawsuit against Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who faces dismissal over alleged “defamatory statements.”

Joseph Goethals of Goethals & Stone, PC in Burlingame, said Sunday that he filed the damages suit in Alameda County. The filing of a lawsuit is a proper requirement before the initiation of an actual lawsuit. Alameda County now has 30 days to reply, Goethals said. It will either accept the lawsuit and compensate Swalwell or reject the lawsuit and possibly file a defamation lawsuit in state court.

“Pamela Price intentionally made false claims,” Goethals said. “She is retaliating because the congressman supports the recall effort. This is an attempt to distract people from their gross incompetence that is endangering the residents of Alameda County.”

Media representatives for the prosecutor's office didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on Sunday.

Swalwell, who represents California's 14th Congressional District, has been a vocal critic of Price, whose recall effort goes before voters on Nov. 5. After the congressman held a press conference in early October advocating for the recall, Price published a post on her personal Facebook page That raised the query of whether Swalwell had anything to “hide” from his time as a prosecutor within the DA’s office from 2006 to 2012.

Price's campaign then released an announcement saying, “Voters would be better served if Congressman Swalwell focused less on overturning the will of the voters and more on defending our democracy.”

Price's campaign previously suggested on X.com that the The congressman was just beginning to complain about crime when “Alameda County residents historically elected the first black woman to serve as district attorney.”

“Pamela Price leaves me no choice but to file this lawsuit against her because of her deliberate and untrue statements,” Swalwell’s office said in an email Sunday. “No one is above the law, especially the Alameda County District Attorney. Price may be trying to bide time for her likely recall, but her intimidation tactics and efforts at political retaliation may not hold up. I will not allow her to attempt to tarnish my personal and professional reputation.”

Originally published: November 3, 2024 at 4:52 pm PST

KIEV, Ukraine — Russian missiles struck cities across Ukraine on Monday, damaging the country's largest children's hospital and other buildings. Heart surgeries needed to be halted and young cancer patients needed to undergo treatments outdoors. At least 31 people were killed, officials said.

The daytime shelling targeted five Ukrainian cities with greater than 40 rockets of differing types, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media. The Ukrainian Air Force said it intercepted 30 rockets. More than 150 people were injured.

It was the heaviest Russian bombing raid on Kiev in nearly 4 months. It hit seven of town's ten districts. At least seven people were killed within the capital, including two hospital staff. Ten people were killed in attacks in Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky's birthplace in central Ukraine.

During the attack on the youngsters's hospital in Okhmatdyt, debris fell into the opened chests of heart patients in the midst of an operation. The beds of cancer patients were rolled into parks and onto the streets.

“It is very important that the world does not remain silent about this now and that everyone sees what Russia is and what it is doing,” Zelensky said.

Russia denied the attack on the hospital and said the strikes hit military targets.

The attack got here a day before the scheduled start of a three-day NATO summit in Washington, where Western leaders backing Ukraine were to debate easy methods to reassure Kyiv of the alliance's full support and provides Ukrainians hope that their country can emerge from Europe's biggest conflict since World War II.

During a visit to Poland, Zelensky said he hoped the summit would result in the supply of additional air defense systems to Ukraine.

In a press release, US President Joe Biden called Monday's missile attacks “a terrible reminder of Russia's brutality.”

“It is vital that the world continues to stand with Ukraine at this important moment and that we do not ignore Russian aggression,” the statement said.

At the Kyiv hospital, rescue staff looked for victims under the rubble of a partially collapsed two-story wing of the ability. In the 10-story most important constructing, windows and doors were blown out and partitions blackened. In one room, the ground was splattered with blood. The intensive care unit, operating rooms and oncology departments were all damaged, officials said.

At the time of the attack, three heart surgeries were being performed, which resulted within the patients' open chests being contaminated by debris from the explosion, said Health Minister Viktor Liashko.

Water, light and oxygen had failed within the hospital and patients had been transferred to other hospitals, he said on Ukrainian television.

Rescue staff formed a line and passed bricks and other debris to one another as they searched through the rubble. Smoke rose from the constructing and volunteers and rescue staff worked wearing protective masks.

Some moms carried their children away on their backs, others waited with their children within the yard while the doctors' calls went unanswered.

A couple of hours after the primary attack, one other air raid siren sounded and lots of of them rushed to the hospital's shelter. By the sunshine of a flashlight, moms walked through the shelter's dark corridors, carrying their bandaged children, and medical staff carried other patients on stretchers. Volunteers handed out sweets to calm the youngsters.

Marina Ploskonos said her four-year-old son underwent spinal surgery on Friday.

“My child is terrified,” she said. “This shouldn't be happening, we're in a children's hospital,” she said, bursting into tears.

“Among the victims were the most seriously ill children in Ukraine,” said Volker Türk, the UN human rights commissioner. A UN team visited the hospital shortly after the attack and saw the youngsters receiving cancer treatment in hospital beds arrange outside, he added.

“This is abhorrent and I implore all influential people to do everything in their power to ensure that these attacks stop immediately,” Türk said.

The Kyiv city administration declared July 9 a day of mourning, with entertainment events banned and flags flown at half-mast.

Ukraine's security service said it had found debris from a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile at the positioning and opened a war crimes case. The Kh-101 is an air-launched missile that flies low to avoid detection by radar. Ukraine said it shot down 11 of 13 Kh-101 missiles fired on Monday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described Monday's rocket attacks as “particularly shocking,” said UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

At the request of France and Ecuador, the UN Security Council has called an emergency meeting on the attacks for Tuesday. Russia, which holds the rotating presidency of the council this month, will chair the meeting.

The founding charter of the International Criminal Court states that the deliberate attack on “hospitals and assembly points for the sick and wounded” is a war crime, unless the targets are military.

Late last month, the court issued arrest warrants for the previous Russian defense minister and the chief of the overall staff for an attack on the Ukrainian power grid.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks targeted Ukrainian military facilities and airbases and were successful. It denied that civilian facilities were targeted and claimed without evidence that images from Kyiv suggested the damage was attributable to a Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile.

Since the start of the war, now in its third 12 months, Russian officials have recurrently claimed that Moscow's forces would never attack civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, despite ample evidence on the contrary, including reports by the Associated Press.

Since the war began, greater than 1,600 medical facilities have been damaged and 214 have been completely destroyed, based on statistics released last month by the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.

Colonel Yuri Ignat of the Ukrainian Air Force said Russia had improved the effectiveness of its air strikes and equipped its missiles with special systems, including so-called heat traps that evade air defense systems.

In Monday's attack, the cruise missiles flew only 50 meters above the bottom and were subsequently harder to hit, he said in a comment sent to AP.

About three hours after the primary attacks, more rockets hit Kiev and partially destroyed a non-public medical center. Four people were killed there, the Ukrainian emergency management service said.

The massive pressure wave scorched surrounding buildings, shattered windows and hurled a dog into the neighboring yard, said local resident Halina Sichievka.

“Now we have nothing left in our apartment, no windows, no doors, nothing. Nothing at all,” said the 28-year-old.

The Ukrainian Air Force said among the weapons utilized in the attack were Kinzhal hypersonic missiles, that are amongst probably the most advanced Russian weapons. They travel at ten times the speed of sound and are subsequently difficult to intercept.

Three substations in two districts of Kyiv were damaged or destroyed, energy company DTEK said.

Samya Kullab in Kyiv contributed to this report.

politics

Vermont is the primary state to pass a law requiring fossil fuel firms to pay a portion of the damages brought on by climate change after the state catastrophic floods in summer and damage brought on by other weather extremes.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to turn out to be law without his signature, saying he was concerned in regards to the costs and consequences the small state would face if it needed to tackle the oil industry by itself.

“Instead of coordinating with other states like New York and California, which have far more resources, Vermont – one of the least populated states with the lowest GDP in the country – has chosen to cover the costs associated with climate change on its own,” Scott wrote in a letter to lawmakers. But he said he understood the need to hunt funds to mitigate the damage brought on by climate change, which has harmed Vermont “in so many ways.”

The floods last July Torrential rains flooded Vermont's capital city of Montpelier, the nearby city of Barre and a number of other southern Vermont communities, destroying homes and washing away roads across the agricultural state. Some called it the state's worst natural disaster since a 1927 flood that killed dozens of individuals and caused widespread destruction. It took months for businesses – from restaurants to shops – to rebuild, losing their summer and even fall seasons. Some have only recently reopened, while dozens of house owners have needed to enter the cold season with flood-ravaged homes.

Under the bill, the Vermont State Treasurer, in consultation with the Natural Resources Agency, would submit a report by January 15, 2026, on the whole costs to Vermonters and the state of emitting greenhouse gases from January 1, 1995, through December 31, 2024. The assessment would examine impacts on public health, natural resources, agriculture, economic development, housing, and other areas. The state would use federal data to find out the quantity of covered greenhouse gas emissions attributed to a fossil fuel company.

It is a polluter-pays model that affects firms that extract fossil fuels or refine crude oil in trade or business and are liable for multiple billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the course of the period in query. The funds might be utilized by the state to do things like upgrade stormwater drainage systems; upgrade roads, bridges and railroads; relocate, raise or upgrade wastewater treatment plants; and insulate private and non-private buildings to be more energy efficient. The model is modeled after the federal Superfund pollution cleanup program.

“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly fanned the flames of climate change without taking action to put it out,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a press release. “Finally, perhaps for the first time ever, Vermont will hold the companies most responsible for climate-related floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damage they cause.”

Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil and gas industry's foremost lobbying organization, expressed extreme concern that the law “retroactively imposes costs and liability for past activities that were legal, and that it violates equal treatment and due process principles by holding corporations responsible for the actions of society as a whole. Moreover, it is overridden by federal law.” In a letter to lawmakers before the law took effect, it also said that the measure didn’t inform potentially affected firms of the quantity of the potential fees.

Vermont lawmakers are aware that the state faces legal challenges, however the governor worries in regards to the costs and what a Vermont failure would mean for other states.

Democratic state Rep. Martin LaLonde, an attorney, believes Vermont has good legal arguments. Lawmakers worked closely with many legal scholars to draft the bill, he said in a press release.

“The bottom line is that the stakes are too high for the citizens of Vermont – and the costs are too high – to absolve the companies that caused the mess from their obligation to help clean up the damage,” he said.