Gérard Depardieu skipping hearing on alleged sex assaults of 2 women, lawyer says, citing health reasons
CBSN
Paris — French actor Gérard Depardieu, who is facing trial for the alleged sexual assaults of two women on a film set in 2021, won't appear before a criminal court in Paris on Monday due to health reasons, his lawyer said.
Depardieu, who previously has denied any wrongdoing, is accused of using "violence, coercion, surprise or threat" in the alleged assault, which prosecutors said took place on the set of "Les Volets verts" ("The Green Shutters").
Lawyer Jérémie Assous said doctors say the actor's health doesn't enable him to appear for the opening of the trial on Monday.
Kazan, Russia — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday presided at the closing session of a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, praising its role as a counterbalance to what he called the West's "perverse methods." The three-day summit in the city of Kazan covered the deepening of financial cooperation, including the development of alternatives to Western-dominated payment systems, efforts to settle regional conflicts and expansion of the BRICS group of nations.
Turkey launched airstrikes late Wednesday in Kurdish-held parts of Syria and Iraq in retaliation for a deadly attack at a state-owned defense manufacturer in Ankara that saw at least two attackers kill four people and wound more than a dozen others.
Sri Lanka deployed troops and increased police patrols around a Jewish community center in a popular surfing town on Wednesday after the U.S. embassy warned American citizens of a possible attack on popular tourist sites in the area.
Gisele Pelicot, the woman at the center of the mass-rape trial that's shocked her own country of France and the world, told her husband in court on Wednesday that she still "did not understand why" he had drugged and raped her for nearly a decade, along with dozens of other men he invited into their home.
Toronto — Police in eastern Canada are investigating the death of a 19-year-old woman who was found inside a walk-in oven at a Walmart store in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Authorities received a call reporting a death Saturday night, prompting the evacuation of the store. The deceased woman, a Walmart employee, was found inside the walk-in oven in the store's bakery department.
Mexican troops shot dead 19 suspected members of the Sinaloa cartel after they came under attack in the northwestern state, the ministry of defense said Tuesday.
French-Polish director Roman Polanski, who fled the United States decades ago after admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old, will no longer face trial over an alleged assault of another minor after reaching a settlement, his lawyer said Tuesday.
An ambulance service in Australia had to come to the rescue of a woman who "got herself in a spot of bother earlier this month" when she became wedged between two boulders while trying to recover her dropped cell phone. Matilda Campbell slipped into a 10-foot-deep crevice in the region's Hunter Valley and spent about seven hours stuck between the massive rocks before rescuers finally freed her with just cuts and scrapes, officials said.
Hundreds gathered Monday to mourn Catholic priest Marcelo Pérez, an activist for Indigenous peoples and farm laborers who was killed in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas.
Jerusalem — Israeli police on Monday said they had arrested seven Israeli citizens accused of being a spy network gathering information on Israel's military bases and energy infrastructure for Iranian intelligence.
Israel's war with Iran-backed Hezbollah escalates as IDF bombs financial institutions across Lebanon
A fresh wave of Israeli airstrikes started pounding locations across Lebanon on Sunday night, some striking dangerously close to Lebanon's only international airport. Israel had said it would launch a widescale assault on a banking institution it regards as Hezbollah's de-facto financial arm, the Al-Qard Al-Hassan Association.