BEYONCE GIVES BIRTH TO TWINS
LOS ANGELES: Pop diva Beyonce and her rap mogul husband Jay Z have welcomed twins, according to United States media reports on the two new members of music’s royal family that already includes 5-year-old Blue Ivy.
News that the songstress had given birth, reported by entertainment outlets, including People magazine and US Weekly, ignited social media, with the socalled “Bey hive” fan group buzzing over the yet unrevealed sexes and names of the latest additions to the Carter Clan.
US Weekly cited multiple sources as saying that the twins were born earlier this week.
Entertainment news outlet E! said the couple had been spotted at a local hospital on Thursday.
Speculation grew when an woman was photographed on Friday carrying a large bouquet of pink, blue and purple flowers — complete with a card that appeared to read “B+J” — along with twin pink and blue balloons in the shape of feet that read “Baby Girl” and “Baby Boy”.
Speculation that Beyonce's due date had approached was fuelled earlier this week when husband Jay Z, 47, was absent at the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
The rapper, who grew up as Sean Carter, took to Twitter to thank artistes who had influenced him as well as former president Barack Obama.
Obama hailed the hip-hop mogul -- who campaigned actively with Beyonce for the first African-American president — as a kindred spirit at the event in a surprise appearance by video.
“Jay and I are also fools for our daughters, although he's going to have me beat once those twins show up,” the former president and father of two joked.
Some fans clamouring for details on the twins took Obama’s aside as a hint that the babies might be girls. But despite rumblings and guessing games no concrete details regarding sexes or names of the babies have been revealed. Andrea Constand (inset)in 2004.
At the time, Constand worked at Cosby’s alma mater, Temple University.
David Harris, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, who specialises in criminal justice, said the hung jury did not mean that a civil jury would clear Cosby of liability.
Approximately 60 accusations of sexual assault have been made against Cosby over a number of years, but only Constand’s resulted in criminal charges.
Cosby has denied all of the accusations.
Constand herself sued
Cosby in
2005 and settled for an undisclosed sum.
Women bringing civil cases would also likely find it easier to introduce testimony from other accusers to support claims that Cosby engaged in a pattern of assault, said Douglas Wigdor, a plaintiffs’ attorney who represents clients in sexual harassment cases.
Little testimony about other accusations against Cosby was allowed in the Pennsylvania trial because of the strict standards for admitting evidence in criminal cases.
Even with the lower standard of evidence in civil cases, Rodney Smolla, dean of Delaware Law School, said that plaintiffs bringing defamation claims faced a significant challenge.
In addition to proving that Cosby assaulted them, Smolla said, they would have to establish that he said something about them beyond denying the allegations, such as calling them known liars or promiscuous.
“The defamation case is this clever way of saying, If I say you raped me and you say it didn’t happen, then you’re defaming me by calling me a liar,” he said. “And that, in itself, is a difficult case. It’s not a classic defamation case.”
Smolla said the outcome of any civil case would depend on how seriously jurors take the case, how they relate to one another and how they deal with holdout jurors.
“That is the human side of the legal system that can be hard to predict,” he said. Reuters