Celebrity chef Batali found not guilty in sex misconduct trial
Mario Batali was found not guilty of indecent assault and battery on Tuesday, following a swift trial in which the celebrity chef waived his right to have a jury decide his fate.
The 61-year-old former Food Network personality quickly strode out of the courtroom with his lawyers without commenting on the case, which centered on allegations that he aggressively kissed and groped a Boston woman while taking a selfie at a bar in 2017.
In delivering the verdict, Boston Municipal Court Judge James Stanton agreed with Batali’s lawyers that the accuser had credibility issues and that photos suggested the encounter was amicable.
“Pictures are worth a thousand words,” he said.
But the judge also rebuked Batali while suggesting the former star of shows like “Molto Mario” and “Iron Chef America” has already paid “a high cost” in terms of his diminished reputation and financial losses.
“The defendant did not cover himself in glory on the night in question,” Stanton said. “His conduct, his appearance and his demeanor were not befitting of a public person of his stature at that time.”
Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said he was disappointed in the verdict but grateful Batali’s accuser had come forward.
Batali, who pleaded not guilty to indecent assault and battery in 2019, had faced up to 2½ years in jail and would’ve been required to register as a sex offender if convicted.
His accuser, who also exited the courtroom without speaking with reporters, had testified how she felt confused and powerless to do anything to stop Batali.
But in his closing statements, Batali’s lawyer Antony Fuller portrayed the 32-year-old Bostonarea resident as an “admitted liar” who is financially motivated because she’s filed a lawsuit seeking more than $50,000 in damages.
“In her world, truth is a flexible concept,” he said, referencing the woman’s recent admission of attempting to avoid jury service by claiming to be clairvoyant, which was a focus of the two-day trial.
SKorea leader takes office:
Yoon Suk Yeol, a conservative political neophyte, took office Tuesday as South Korea’s new president with a vow to pursue a negotiated settlement of North Korea’s threatening nuclear program and an offer of “an audacious plan” to improve its economy if it abandons its nuclear weapons.
Yoon is starting his single five-year term during one of the most challenging situations of any recent new president, facing a mix of significant security, economic and social problems that are besetting the world’s 10th largest economy.
There’s widespread skepticism that an increasingly belligerent North Korea will give his offers much consideration, and South Korea’s deep political and social divides, as well as growing worry about the state of the pandemic-hit economy, are reflected in a recent poll showing that Yoon faces lower popularity numbers than departing President Moon Jae-in.
Intel officials questioned:
Top U.S. intelligence officials were questioned Tuesday about why they misjudged the durability of governments in both Afghanistan
and Ukraine, and whether they need to reform how intelligence agencies assess a foreign military’s will to fight.
U.S. intelligence believed the U.S.-backed Kabul government would hold out for months against the Taliban and thought Russian forces would overrun Ukraine in a few weeks. Both assessments were wrong. The U.S. and Western allies are now rushing to aid Ukraine’s resistance against Russia in what has turned into a grinding, violent stalemate.
“What we missed was the will to fight of the Ukrainians ... and we also missed that in Afghanistan,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
He added, “I realize will to fight is a lot harder to assess than number of tanks or volume of ammunition or something. But I hope the intelligence community is doing some soul-searching about how to better get
a handle on that question.”
Cuba hotel blast: The elegant Hotel Saratoga was supposed to reopen in Havana Tuesday after a two-year pandemic break. Instead, it was a day of mourning for the 42 people known to have died in an explosion that ripped apart the building and of continued searching for victims.
Emergency workers continued to hunt through the ruins of the 19th century building.
Roberto Enriquez, a spokesman for the military-owned Gaviota tourism company that operates the Saratoga, said 51 people were working to get the hotel ready for its re-inauguration, Enriquez said, and 23 of them are among the dead: executives and maids, cooks and reception desk workers, security personnel and technicians.
Three workers remain missing, believed to be buried under the debris.
Authorities have said they
suspect the cause was a leak of gas as a tank truck was servicing the building.
Castaway indicted: A man found floating on a raft off the coast of New England in 2016 after his boat sank was charged in an indictment unsealed Tuesday with killing his mother at sea to inherit the family’s estate.
The eight-count indictment released in federal court in Burlington, Vermont, also says Nathan Carman killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of an effort to defraud insurance companies, but he was not charged with that killing.
Carman was found in an inflatable raft eight days after leaving a Rhode Island marina to go fishing with his mother, Linda Carman, who was never found.
Nathan Carman, 28, of Vernon, Vermont, was arrested Tuesday. He’s due in federal court Wednesday in Rutland, Vermont.
Mexico may skip summit: Mexico’s president said Tuesday that he would not attend next month’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles if the Biden administration excludes Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — adding his voice to increasing warnings of a boycott by some leaders across the region.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has been saying in recent weeks that the U.S. government should not exclude anyone from the summit, but he had not previously threatened to stay home.
“If they exclude, if not all are invited, a representative of the Mexican government is going to go, but I would not,” Lopez Obrador said, after a visit to Cuba. He said his foreign affairs secretary, Marcelo Ebrard, would go.
The Mexican president’s absence would be a blow to the summit expected to deal heavily with the issue of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.