Lawyer for Prince Andrew acknowledges sex assault lawsuit
NEW YORK — Prince Andrew has acknowledged through his lawyer that he has been served with a lawsuit by a U.S. woman who says he sexually assaulted her, clearing a hurdle that had stalled legal proceedings for several weeks.
The acknowledgment was confirmed in a joint agreement signed by a lawyer for the British prince, approved by a Manhattan federal judge and entered into the public court record Tuesday.
The court papers said Andrew had been challenging acceptance of the lawsuit until lawyers spoke by phone on Sept. 21. An agreement was signed three days later, according to the order signed by Judge Lewis Kaplan.
In the lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre claims Andrew abused her on multiple occasions in 2001 when she was under 18. His lawyer has called the allegations “baseless.”
Delivering a lawsuit to a defendant is usually a routine matter but can be more complicated when a defendant resides outside the United States.
A judge must be satisfied that a defendant has been notified of the allegations and has reasonable time to respond. The prince must file responses by Oct. 29. A conference was scheduled for Nov. 3.
Lawyers for Giuffre had told the judge that they’d delivered the lawsuit to Andrew in numerous ways, though never directly into his hands.
Los Angeles attorney Andrew Brettler, who signed the papers on Andrew’s behalf acknowledging the prince was aware of the lawsuit, had argued at a hearing this month that Giuffre’s claim was “baseless, nonviable and potentially unlawful.”
Brettler has said that Andrew cannot be sued because an earlier lawsuit in the United States that was settled “absolves our client from any and all liability.” That 2009 settlement document, however, remains sealed.
NKorea fires missile: North Korea fired a short-range missile into the sea Tuesday at nearly the same moment its U.N. diplomat was decrying the U.S.’s “hostile policy” against it, in an apparent return to its pattern of mixing weapons displays with peace overtures to wrest outside concessions.
The latest launch came only three days after North Korea repeated its offer for conditional talks with South Korea.
In an emergency National Security Council meeting, the South Korean government expressed regret over what it called “a shortrange missile launch” by the North.
Tuesday’s launch came after Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, reached out to Seoul twice on Friday and Saturday, saying her country was open to resuming talks and reconciliatory steps if conditions are met. She criticized Seoul for calling Pyongyang’s previous missile tests a provocation.
At nearly the same time as Tuesday’s launch, North Korean Ambassador Kim Song used his speech on the last day of the U.N. General Assembly’s annual highlevel meeting to justify his country’s development of a “war deterrent” to defend itself against U.S. threats.
Biden’s judicial nominees:
President Joe Biden is nominating nine lawyers to run
U.S. attorney’s offices across the country, a diverse group of candidates in the latest round of picks for the top law enforcement positions.
The nominations, announced by the White House on Tuesday, are expected to run the federal prosecutors’ offices in Hawaii, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Colorado, Ohio, Vermont and the U.S. Virgin Islands. They would include several historic firsts, including the first Black female attorneys to lead their districts, the Biden administration said.
Germany election: Pressure grew for a quick start to talks on Germany’s next government as newly elected lawmakers held their first meetings on Tuesday and tensions simmered in outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s bloc, which declined to its worst-ever result in the country’s election.
Olaf Scholz and his center-left Social Democrats,
the narrow winners of Sunday’s parliamentary election, underlined their hopes of talks soon on forming a coalition with the two parties that are likely to be kingmakers.
Since neither of the traditional big parties wants to renew their outgoing “grand coalition” of rivals, the thirdand fourth-placed parties — the environmentalist Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats — appear to hold the keys to a parliamentary majority. Leaders of those parties plan to meet this week.
Congo sex abuse: Twenty-one workers for the World Health Organization in Congo have been accused of sexually abusing people during a Ebola outbreak, a WHO-commissioned panel said Tuesday in a report that identified 83 alleged perpetrators connected to the 2018-20 mission.
The panel released its findings months after an Associated Press investigation
found senior WHO management was informed of multiple abuse claims in 2019 but failed to stop the harassment and even promoted one of the managers involved.
“This is the biggest finding of sexual abuse perpetrated during a single U.N. initiative in one area or one country during the timebound period of a U.N. response effort,” said Paula Donovan, co-director of the Code Blue Campaign, which is campaigning to end sexual exploitation by U.N. peacekeepers.
Panel member Malick Coulibaly said investigators uncovered a total of nine rape allegations.
The youngest of the alleged victims, identified in the report only as “Jolianne” and believed to be 13
Climate youth summit:
Youth climate activists Vanessa Nakate and Greta Thunberg chastised global leaders Tuesday for failing to meet funding pledges to
help poor nations adapt to a warming Earth and for delivering too much “blah blah blah’’ as climate change wreaks havoc around the world.
They even cast doubt on the intentions behind a youth climate gathering where they were speaking in Milan.
Four hundred climate activists from 180 countries were invited to Italy’s financial capital for a threeday Youth4Climate summit that will send its recommendations to a major United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, that begins on Oct. 31. But participants are demanding more accountability from leaders and a bigger official role for young people.
“They invite cherry-picked young people to pretend they are listening to us,’’ Thunberg said. “But they are not. They are clearly not listening to us. Just look at the numbers. Emissions are still rising. The science doesn’t lie.”