WEINSTEIN ON LEAVE DURING HARASSMENT INQUIRY

YORK» Movie mogul NEW

Harvey Weinstein is on indefinite leave from the company he co-founded while an internal investigation into numerous sexual harassment allegations against him is completed, The Weinstein Co.’s board of directors announced Friday.

In a statement, the board said that Weinstein’s future with the company depends on his therapeutic progress and the results of the internal investigation. It said Weinstein’s leave commenced Friday.

The announcement came a day after The New York Times reported that Weinstein over the years has reached at least eight legal settlements with women over alleged harassment.

Weinstein and his family have given more than $1.4 million in political contributions since the 1992 election cycle, nearly all of it to Democratic lawmakers, candidates and their allies, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Feds say they thwarted NYC plot targeting concert venues.

Three Islamic State sympathizers plotted to cause bloodshed at concert venues, subway stations and Times Square before U.S. agents thwarted the international terror plot, authorities said Friday.

One of the defendants, Abdulrahman El Bahnasawy, was arrested after traveling from Canada to New Jersey in May 2016 to stage the attacks, authorities said. The capture of the Canadian citizen came after an investigation using an undercover FBI agent posing as an Islamic extremist that also led to the arrests last year of U.S. citizen Talha Haroon in Pakistan and Russell Salic in the Philippines, where he’s a citizen.

According to criminal complaints, El Bahnasawy, 19, sent the undercover agent an image of Times Square with a smartphone message saying, “We seriously need to car bomb times square. Look at these crowds of people!”

Poll: Just 24 percent say U.S. heading right direction.

WASHINGTON» Just 24 percent of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction after a tumultuous stretch for President Donald Trump that included the threat of war with North Korea, complaints about hurricane relief and Trump’s equivocating about white supremacists. That’s a 10-point drop since June, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The decline in optimism about the nation’s trajectory is particularly pronounced among Republicans.

In June, 60 percent of Republicans said the country was headed in the right direction; now it’s just 44 percent.

Moscow gets 130 fake bomb calls, evacuates 100,000 people.

MOSCOW»

Moscow on Friday faced over 130 fake bomb calls that prompted the evacuation of some 100,000 people from shopping malls, schools, railway stations and office buildings.

It was the most massive flurry of fake bomb threats since a wave of bomb hoaxes began in early September. The fake bomb threats have affected dozens of Russian cities and incurred massive economic damages.

Sheriff, deputies indicted after body searches of 900 high school students.

As the school day was starting, Worth County High School was on lockdown. Neither the teachers nor students knew what was going on.

For the next four hours, 40 uniformed officers — the entire staff of the sheriff’s office — fanned through the school, ordering students against the walls of classrooms and hallways, demanding the kids hand over their cellphones.

All 900 students were searched, part of a drug sweep ordered by Sheriff Jeff Hobby.

He did not have a warrant. He had a “target list” of 12 suspected drug users. Only three of the students were in school that day, April 14. By noon, no drugs had been found.

The sheriff’s full-court press, however, would yield legal consequences — for Hobby and his office. In the days following the sweep, students came forward charging they had been inappropriately groped and manhandled by deputies. A class-action federal civil suit followed.

And now, this week a grand jury indicted Hobby and two deputies for their part in the high school raid. Hobby faces charges of sexual battery, false imprisonment, and violation of oath of office, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Fourth U.S. soldier dead after attack in Niger.

WASHINGTON» After an extensive search, a U.S. soldier who had been missing for nearly two days in Niger was found dead, a result of a deadly ambush by dozens of Islamic extremists on a joint patrol of American and Niger forces, U.S. military officials said Friday. The soldier, whose name has not been released, was one of four U.S. soldiers and four from Niger killed in the attack.

Comedian May dies of cardiac arrest.

LOS ANGELES»

A spokeswoman for Ralphie May says the comedian has died. He was 45. May died of cardiac arrest. She said he had been fighting pneumonia, which caused him to cancel a few appearances in the past month.

His body was found Friday morning at a private residence in Las Vegas.

On Wednesday, the round-faced May was named casino comedian of the year at the Global Gaming Expo.