Month: February 2020

Lawyers for “Full House” actress Lori Loughlin, her fashion designer husband Mossimo Giannulli and other prominent parents charged in the sweeping college admissions bribery case say they won’t be ready to go to trial until next year.
    
Federal prosecutors in Boston have said the first trial for the wealthy parents still fighting the charges should begin in October and that Loughlin and Giannulli should be tried in the first group.
    
But the substantial amount of evidence, outstanding pretrial motions and “general complexity” of the case make a trial this fall impossible, attorney Sean Berkowitz, who’s representing Loughlin and Giannulli, said in a response filed Wednesday. The first trial should begin no sooner than next February, Berkowtiz said.
    
Prosecutors have provided the defense with more than 1.9 million documents, consisting of more than 3.2 million pages, and more than 300 hours of audio and video, said Robert Popeo, an attorney for another parent charged in the case, media executive Elizabeth Kimmel.
    
Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 to get their daughters into the University of Southern California as crew recruits even though neither was a rower. Authorities say the money was funneled through a sham charity operated by college admissions consultant Rick Singer, who has pleaded guilty to orchestrating the scheme.
    
Loughlin’s lawyers have indicated they will argue that the couple believed their payments were legitimate donations and have accused prosecutors of hiding evidence that would support their claims of innocence while trying to bully them into pleading guilty.
    
Other parents are accused of paying to have someone cheat on their children’s entrance exams or similarly paying bribes to get them admitted to schools as fake recruited athletes.
    
Lawyers for Loughlin, Giannulli and other parents are also challenging prosecutors’ proposed groupings of the parents for the trials, saying “it lacks an organizing principle and makes no effort to treat like defendants alike.” Berkowitz also indicated that some parents will argue they should have their own separate trials because “a joint trial will result in substantial prejudice.”
    
A status hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 27.
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Closing arguments at the Harvey Weinsten rape trial are set to begin Thursday, with the jury hearing first from a Chicago attorney who’s taken #MeToo movement heat for representing the disgraced Hollywood mogul and making provocative mid-trial comments about his case outside of court.
    
Donna Rotunno faces the tricky task of convincing a Manhattan jury that there are too many inconsistencies and contradictions in the testimony of six Weinstein accusers who took the witness stand to convict her client – all without her breaking a promise made in defense opening statements that jurors wouldn’t hear any “victim shaming.”
    
In a podcast interview that aired last week, Rotunno said Weinstein is “well aware of the fact that his life is on the line here” and that he “deserves to have a voice out there.”
    
Weinstein, 67, is charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on a different woman in 2006. Other accusers testified as part of a prosecution effort to show he has used the same tactics to victimize many women over the years.
    
Weinstein, whose lawyers informed the court on Tuesday that he wouldn’t testify, has maintained any sexual encounters were consensual.
    
The jury of seven men and five woman is scheduled to hear the prosecution closings on Friday before getting instructions on the law from Judge James Burke next week and starting deliberations.
    
In often emotional testimony stretching over three weeks, Weinstein’s accusers described in lurid detail how he lured them to hotels in New York and Los Angeles on the pretense of promoting their acting careers before sexually assaulting them. The defense countered on cross-examination by confronting some with warm emails and other communications with Weinstein that continued for months or even years after the alleged attacks.
    
The jury has already heard about emails, certain to be a focus of Rotunno’s closing, in which the victim of the alleged rape wrote to Weinstein afterward to accept party invitations from him, give him new phone numbers and even express gratitude. One read: “I feel so fabulous and beautiful, thank you for everything.”
    
The lawyer is also likely to highlight the testimony of a friend and former roommate of the same accuser who said she never heard the woman say anything bad about the defendant. Instead, the woman once called Weinstein her “spiritual soulmate,” the witness said.
    
Rotunno’s closing argument will come less than a week after she came under fire on social media for a podcast interview in which she blamed victims for getting sexually assaulted. Rotunno told The New York Times’ “The Daily”’ she’d never been attacked “because I would never put myself in that position.”
    
In court, prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon questioned the timing of the interview and rebuked Rotunno for calling the prosecution’s witnesses “liars.”
    
“That was taped a long time ago” Rotunno interrupted, claiming that she hadn’t talked to anyone in the media since the case began.
    
She was later contradicted by a Times spokeswoman, who told reporters the interview was recorded on Jan. 28, five days after opening statements and the start of testimony.
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The U.S. men’s national team urged the U.S. Soccer Federation to sharply increase pay of the American women and accused the governing body of making low-ball offers in negotiations with the men. The union for the women’s team filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the USSF that is scheduled for trial starting May 5 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The women agreed to a collective bargaining agreement in April 2017 that extends through 2021. The men’s labor contract expired at the end of 2018. The women's 2017-2021 deal is worse than the men's 2011-2018 deal, the men’s union said in a statement Wednesday. The federation continues to discriminate against the women in their wages and working conditions. ... What we believe should happen is simple. Pay the women significantly more than our recently expired men's deal. In our estimation, the women were due at least triple what our expired deal was worth in player compensation. The men claimed the federation wants their pay to stay at the same level as in their expired contract. It's a desperate attempt to cover up the fact that what they did to the women in 2017 is indefensible, the statement said. Carlos Cordeiro, who succeeded Sunil Gulati as USSF president in February 2018, did not respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment. ‘False narrative’The men said they issued their statement because the federation has been working very hard to sell a false narrative to the public and even to members of Congress. They have been using this false narrative as a weapon against current and former members of the United States women's national team. Molly Levinson, a spokesperson for the players involved in the lawsuit, issued a statement on behalf of women’s star Megan Rapinoe: Our great hope is that 2020 will be the year of equal pay. We are grateful for the support of our male colleagues, and also for the overwhelming solidarity from millions of fans and sponsors around the world who have stood with us to fight USSF's discrimination. Achieving equal pay is so much bigger than our team and our playing fields — women in work forces everywhere deserve equality now.” The men claimed the federation insisted the women sign a 2017-21 deal that was worse financially than the men's soon-to-expire 2011-18 CBA that had been negotiated six years earlier. They said the correct comparison should be between what the women got with their 2017-21 deal and triple what the federation agreed to pay the men in 2011 or whatever the men negotiate in their new CBA that will be retroactive to Jan. 1, 2019. They urged fans to write to Congress and to “tell the federation’s sponsors you will not support them until the federation starts doing the right thing and gives the women a new CBA that pays a fair share of the gate receipts and television and that sponsorship revenue to the players.” 
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From the houses to the noodles, South Korea’s Oscar winning movie “Parasite” tells its story of a suffocating class struggle through the sights and smells of Seoul.”Parasite” made history as the first non-English language movie to win the Oscar for best picture on Sunday, prompting
South Korean social media to erupt in celebration.
It is a tale of two South Korean families – the wealthy Parks and the poor Kims – mirroring the deepening disparities in
Asia’s fourth-largest economy and striking a chord with global audiences.
The visual clues in the film resonated with many South Koreans who identify themselves as “dirt spoons”, those born to
low-income families who have all but given up on owning a decent house and social mobility, as opposed to “gold spoons”, who are from better-off families.
Much of the movie was shot on purpose-built sets, but both the Parks’ mansion and the Kims’ squalid “sub-basement”
apartment were inspired by, and set, amid real neighborhoods in the South Korean capital.
A tour of the film’s locations, props, and backdrops reveals the unique meanings they have for many South Koreans as they engage in their own debates about wealth – and the lack of it.Pig Rice Supermarket featured in South Korea’s Oscar-winning “Parasite” is seen in Ahyeon-dong, one of the last shanty towns near downtown Seoul.Shanty town
Ahyeon-dong is one of the last shanty towns near downtown Seoul and made an appearance in several scenes depicting the Kims’ humble neighborhood. Perched on a hillside near the main train station, Ahyeon-dong is a warren of steep, narrow streets, many of which end in long staircases that residents climb to reach their homes.
“Watching the film made me feel like they put my life right in there,” said Lee Jeong-sik, the 77-year-old co-owner of Pig
Rice Supermarket, which is featured in the film. Kim Kyung-soon, 73, who has operated the shop with her
husband Lee for 45 years, said she opens the supermarket at around 8:30 a.m., while he closes it down after midnight.
She used to open the store even earlier, at 5 a.m., for mothers who would stop by early to buy school lunch fixings for
their children. Now, however, the neighborhood is mostly older people, with few young couples or children, Kim said.
The film’s fictional Kim family live in a “sub-basement”, usually small, dark apartments built partially underground.
Residents said rent for the sub-basement apartments had increased to around 400,000 won ($340) per month, more than
doubling in the past decade.
Ahyeon-dong sits in the shadow of newly built apartment towers, and the city has faced protests from some residents who fear losing their homes to redevelopment.
“It’s definitely a neighborhood that isn’t faring well,” Lee said. When he heard that “Parasite” had won at the Academy
Awards he was so happy he could not sleep. As a throng of media gathered outside his shop, he wondered whether the film’s fame would change plans to eventually build new apartments there.Seoul’s Beverly Hills
In contrast, the scenes around the wealthy Parks’ home – which itself was a movie set built elsewhere – were filmed in
Seongbuk-dong, known as South Korea’s Beverly Hills and home to many business families and diplomatic residences.
Unlike Ahyeon-dong, the streets in Seongbuk-dong are clear of rubbish and almost silent, with most homes hidden behind high walls, spiked fences, and security cameras.
“The houses here are all very fancy residences,” said Chung Han-sool, CEO of Peace Estate Agents. “Most of the houses have basements and they use it for home bars or mini theaters.”
According to real estate brokers, homes there usually cost around 7 billion won ($6 million). Those rented to foreign
diplomats are offered for 10 milllion-15 million won ($8,500 to $12,725) per month.
“There are 48 ambassadors living in the neighborhood, so there is a whole separate squad of police officers in the area,”
Chung said.
Even within Seongbuk-dong the disparity is highlighted by the “gisasikdang” or “drivers’ diners”, similar to one featured
in “Parasite”. Gisasikdang sprung up to serve meals to drivers, including those ferrying the area’s wealthy residents.
“There are taxi, bus drivers and those who drive the CEOs who live around here,” said Bae Sun-young, a manager at a
gisasikdang in Seongbuk-dong. “The wealth is so polarized here. It’s extreme.”FILE -People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on South Korean director Bong Joon-ho who won four Oscars with his film “Parasite”, in Seoul, South Korea, Feb. 10, 2020.Tasty symbolism
As news of the Oscar wins spread, South Korean social media burst with photos and recipes of “jjapaguri”, a combination of two different instant noodles translated in the movie as “ram-dong” (ramen plus udong).
The dish initially became popular as everyday food due to a television show but got a boost from the film, which added a
satirical twist as the Parks top it with expensive Korean beef. U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris even tweeted
with an image of jjapaguri cup noodles, saying the embassy was hosting a party to watch the awards ceremony.
Standing in the cramped aisles of Pig Rice Supermarket in Ahyeon-dong, Lee noted that the residents’ economic status was reflected in what they bought.
“People are not well off here,” he said. “What they buy most is ramen and alcohol.”
The other supermarket that makes an appearance in “Parasite” is ORGA Whole Foods in Bangi-dong, a trendy neighborhood in Seoul that is popular with upper-middle class families who want to send their children to top elementary and middle schools.
“The most popular items in our store aren’t cigarettes, alcohol or instant food like in regular supermarkets,” Ryu
Hee-woong, a manager at the branch, said.  “Our customers usually purchase fresh food that is focused on safety,
sustainability, and eco-friendliness.”
($1 = 1,179.2300 won) 
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