Spacey testifies how sex abuse allegations ‘exploded’ his career
LONDON — Kevin Spacey fought back tears and dabbed his eyes with a tissue Thursday as he told jurors in a London court how sexual misconduct allegations six years ago had destroyed his career.
“My world exploded,” Spacey said at his sexual assault trial. “There was a rush to judgment and before the first question was asked or answered I lost my job, I lost my reputation, I lost everything in a matter of days.”
The emotional testimony came toward the end of his nearly three hours in the witness box, in what could be the most consequential speaking part of his life. He denied sexually assaulting three men and chalked up crotch-grabbing allegations by a fourth as having been a “clumsy pass.”
The allegations that sent Spacey’s stellar film and stage career into a spiral came in 2017 as the #metoo movement gained momentum in the U.S. and a fellow actor accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior three decades earlier.
News of those accusations led others to come forward, including four men in England who said the two-time Oscar winner sexually assaulted them between 2001 and 2013.
Prosecutor Christine Agnew has called Spacey a “sexual bully” who “delights in making others feel powerless and uncomfortable.”
The four alleged victims, who didn’t know each other, independently described disturbing encounters that escalated from unwanted touching to aggressive fondling.
Spacey could face a prison term if convicted of charges that include sexual and indecent assault counts and one count of causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent. Spacey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
US prisoner exchange:
President Joe Biden on Thursday said he’s serious about pursuing a prisoner exchange for a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia for more than 100 days.
The Kremlin earlier this month suggested that it was open to a possible prisoner exchange that could involve Evan Gershkovich, but it underscored that such talks must be held out of the public eye.
Speaking at a news conference in Helsinki, Finland, Biden made clear that the U.S. is interested.
“I’m serious about doing all we can to free Americans being illegally held in Russia or anywhere else for that matter, and that process is underway,” said Biden, who was concluding a fiveday visit to Europe that took him to the UK, Lithuania and Finland.
Gershkovich was arrested on espionage charges in the city of Yekaterinburg while on a reporting trip. He is being held at Moscow’s Lefortovo prison. A Moscow court recently upheld a ruling to keep him in custody until Aug. 30.
Gershkovich and his employer deny the allegations, and the U.S. government has declared him to be wrongfully detained.
A former White House aide to President Donald Trump who became a prominent congressional witness against him and his allies in the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol has a book deal.
Cassidy Hutchinson’s “Enough” will be released
Former aide’s book deal:
Sept. 26 by Simon & Schuster.
In testimony last year to the House Jan. 6 committee, Hutchinson recalled the Secret Service resisting Trump’s demands that he join the mob of supporters trying to disrupt congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
She alleged that members of Trump’s inner circle dangled job opportunities and financial assistance while she was cooperating with the committee.
She also testified that her own lawyer — a former ethics counsel in the Trump White House — told her “the less you remember, the better.”
Hutchinson, a native of Pennington, New Jersey, previously worked in the White House Office of Legislative Affairs and as an intern for such Republicans as Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
Financial terms for her memoir were not disclosed.
Deadly monsoon rains:
Schools and colleges were closed after record monsoon rains led to massive waterlogging, road cave-ins, collapsed homes and gridlocked traffic in large parts of northern India, killing more than 100 people over two weeks, officials said Thursday.
At least 88 people died, 42 of them in the past five days, and more than 100 others were injured in the worsthit, mountainous Himachal Pradesh state, where cars, buses, bridges and houses were swept away by swirling floodwaters, a state government statement said. The region is nearly 310 miles north of New Delhi.
The water level of the Jamuna River in New Delhi topped a 40-year record and reached 681.5 feet Wednesday night.
Mass graves in Sudan: The bodies of dozens of people allegedly killed by Sudanese paramilitary forces and an allied militia have been
uncovered in a mass grave in West Darfur, the United Nations said Thursday.
According to “credible information” obtained by the U.N. Human Rights Office, at least 87 people — some of them from the ethnic African Masalit tribe — were killed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and an affiliated Arab militia. Their bodies were dumped in a three-foot grave just outside the West Darfur city of Geneina, the agency said.
Sudan has been rocked by violence since mid-april when tensions between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces erupted into open fighting.
Darfur has been one of the epicenters of the 12-week conflict, morphing into an arena of ethnic violence with the paramilitary troops and allied Arab militias attacking the Masalit and other African ethnic groups.
Thai politics: The leader of the progressive Thai political
party that outpaced its rivals to a surprise first-place finish in May’s general election failed Thursday in his initial bid to have Parliament name him the country’s new prime minister.
The vote of a joint session of the 500-seat House of Representatives and 250-seat Senate saw Pita Limjaroenrat win 324 votes in the first round of balloting, short of the majority of 376 needed to become prime minister.
His Move Forward Party finished first in the May 14 election and afterward assembled an eight-party coalition that together had won 312 seats, a healthy majority in the lower house.
But opposition in the Senate, whose members are overwhelmingly conservative and generally opposed to the reformist platform of Pita’s party, doomed his chances in the first vote. Only 13 senators supported his bid, while 34 voted against him and 159 abstained.