Names and faces
■ Los Angeles prosecutors told a judge Tuesday that they will not retry Harvey Weinstein on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. Deputy District Attorney Paul Thompson announced the decision to Superior Judge Lisa Lench at a hearing. Lench dismissed the charges that a jury failed to reach an agreement in December and said Weinstein would be returned to New York. The Los Angeles jury convicted Weinstein, 70, of the rape and sexual assault of an Italian model and actor. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in addition to the 23-year sentence he is already serving for a similar conviction in New York. Jurors could not reach unanimous verdicts on charges involving two accusers, a rape count and a sexual assault count involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and a sexual battery count involving model Lauren Young. Weinstein was acquitted of a count of sexual battery against a massage therapist. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they identify themselves publicly, as the women named in this instance. Weinstein’s New York conviction is under appeal and his attorneys plan to appeal his conviction in Los Angeles.
■ A Romanian court rejected Tuesday a bail request from social media influencer and retired kickboxer Andrew Tate, who is detained in the country on suspicion of organized crime and human trafficking, an official said. It is not clear what bail conditions were proposed by Tate’s legal team. Tate, 36, a British-U.S. citizen with 5.3 million Twitter followers, was initially detained in late December in Romania’s capital Bucharest, along with his brother, Tristan, and two Romanian women. None of the four has yet been formally charged. Romania’s anti-organized crime agency DIICOT claimed in a statement after the December arrests that victims were lured with pretenses of love and later intimidated, placed under surveillance and subjected to other control tactics while being coerced into engaging in pornographic acts for the financial gain of the crime group. Before Tuesday’s court decision, a post appeared on his Twitter account, that read: “If you want a life people will aspire for, you’ll need to be prepared to defend it.” Tate will remain in detention until at least March 29.