Names and faces
■ Heather Mills, the former wife of Paul McCartney, and her sister have received an apology and a settlement from Britain’s defunct News of the World tabloid over the hacking of their phones. Heather Mills and her sister Fiona Mills both received a formal apology in Britain’s High Court on Monday. In a statement read outside the court, she said she felt “joy and vindication” at the settlement. “My motivation to win this decadelong fight stemmed from a desire to obtain justice, not only for my family, my charities and myself, but for the thousands of innocent members of the public who, like me, have suffered similar ignominious, criminal treatment at the hands of one of the world’s most powerful media groups,” she said. Mills is one of a number of celebrities who have received settlements in the prolonged phone hacking scandal, which closed the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World in 2011. The paper was found to have hacked into the voicemail of many prominent Britons in a gross violation of privacy. A representative of the tabloid said it apologized to the Mills sisters for “the distress caused to them by the invasion of their privacy by individuals working for or on behalf of the News of the World.” The size of what was called a “substantial settlement” hasn’t been revealed. Mills and McCartney divorced in 2008 after a prolonged court clash over the size of the settlement she would receive.
■ The man who accused Kevin Spacey of groping him at a Massachusetts resort island bar in 2016 denied on Monday deleting or altering any text messages from the night of the alleged assault. The man was ordered to testify after he failed to turn over the phone he used that night to the defense and then said it was lost. Spacey’s lawyers say the man deleted messages from his phone that would support the two-time Oscar winner’s claims of innocence and then provided investigators with manipulated screenshots of conversations from that night. The accuser, speaking publicly for the first time, said he gave police what he had “available” to him “at the time” and did not manipulate any of the messages. “I have no knowledge of any deletions of messages on my phone,” the man said. The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they are the victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly. The man’s lawyer, Mitchell Garabedian, said they cannot find the phone but were able to retrieve a copy of its contents that had been backed up to a computer. An officer said he recalls giving the phone back to the man’s father, but neither the accuser nor his parents remember that, Garabedian said. Spacey’s lawyer said a backup copy of the phone is not enough. “None of that answers the central question, which is: Where is the actual phone? That’s what we want. That’s what we’re entitled to and we still don’t have it,” attorney Alan Jackson said. Spacey was not required to attend Monday’s hearing, and he did not appear. The accuser’s testimony comes days after the man voluntarily and without explanation dismissed a lawsuit that he had filed against the actor about a week earlier.