Showing posts with label Faces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faces. Show all posts

Saturday, 15 October 2016

US election 2016: Trump faces new sex assault allegations


  Two more women have come forward to accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault, in the latest such allegations against the embattled Republican nominee.
Former Apprentice contestant Summer Zervos said the businessman forced himself on her at a Los Angeles hotel and began "thrusting his genitals".
   Kristin Anderson told the Washington Post he reached up her skirt and groped her in a New York club in the 1990s.
The Republican nominee branded the allegations as "lies and smears".
   Ms Anderson, now 46, said the property mogul touched her through her underwear at a Manhattan nightspot when she was a waitress trying to make it as a model.
   She said she was "very grossed out and weirded out".
Ms Anderson said she turned round to find a man sitting on a red velvet couch whom she recognised instantly as the celebrity property mogul.
   "He was so distinctive looking," she told the Washington Post, "with the hair and the eyebrows. I mean, nobody else has those eyebrows."
    She added: "It wasn't a sexual come-on. I don't know why he did it. It was like just to prove that he could do it, and nothing would happen.
"There was zero conversation. We didn't even really look at each other. It was very random, very nonchalant on his part."
    The newspaper said it had approached Ms Anderson after learning of her story through a third party, and she had spent several days deciding whether to go public.
   Mr Trump's spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, said in a statement emailed to the Washington Post: "Mr Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous."
   Meanwhile, Summer Zervos, a former contestant on season five of The Apprentice in 2006, said she was sexually assaulted by Mr Trump after she was invited by him to discuss job opportunities.
   Ms Zervos, 41, told an emotional news conference in Los Angeles that she met him in 2007 in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where the businessman greeted her by kissing her on the mouth.
   She said he asked her to sit next to him on a sofa where he "grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast".
   Ms Zervos fought back tears as she said Mr Trump attempted to lead her into the bedroom and "began thrusting his genitals", even as she fended off his advances.
   She said Mr Trump then began talking to her as if she were a candidate for a job interview.
Ms Zervos, who described herself as a Republican, said she was subsequently offered a low-paid job at a Trump-owned golf course.
   She was flanked during the press conference by well-known lawyer Gloria Allred, who has previously represented alleged sexual assault victims of entertainer Bill Cosby.
   At the time of the alleged assault, Mr Trump was recently married to his third and current wife, Melania Trump.

   His campaign said he "vaguely remembers" Ms Zervos, but insisted the meeting at the hotel never happened.
  In a statement, he said: "The media is now creating a theatre of absurdity that threatens to tear our democratic process apart and poison the minds of the American public."
   Referring to another of his accusers during a rally in North Carolina, he said: "Believe me, she would not be my first choice, that I can tell you."
 
     Ms Zervos said she was spurred to come forward after Mr Trump denied during last Sunday's presidential debate ever having committed sexual assault.
   He rebutted the suggestion on national television as he was asked about a leaked recording from 2005 in which he is heard bragging that he can force himself on women because he is a star.
   Polls suggest Mr Trump is losing ground in some of the key battleground states against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, with just 24 days until the election.
SOURCE: www.naijacop.com

Wednesday, 24 August 2016

Australian Concert Promoter Andrew McManus Faces Jail Term Over Cash in Suitcase

 Andrew McManus, the Australian concert promoter who presented tours by Whitney Houston, Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, Kiss, the Beach Boys, Mötley Crüe and many others, has pleaded guilty to attempting to pervert the course of justice, an offense which carries a maximum sentence of up to 14 years in prison.
McManus entered his plea Tuesday (Aug. 23) in Sydney's Downing Centre, though the charges of participating in a criminal group and attempting to gain a financial advantage by deception have been dropped, the Sydney Morning Herald reports.
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The impresario, now aged 55, was taken into custody in Melbourne in September 2015 following a joint sting involving the FBI and local Melbourne police into alleged drug trafficking and money laundering.
McManus and three others had been under the microscope since police confiscated more than A$700,000 ($493,000) from a man at a Sydney hotel in 2011. The live music veteran later claimed that the money was to repay another man who he said had handed over cash as a deposit for a ZZ Top tour. He then claimed he needed it back to fund a Lenny Kravitz tour. “In essence, I delivered back 700 grand I now need to borrow it again,” he told police in 2012. “As quickly as possible.”
McManus, who has battled health problems in recent years, emphatically denied the allegations. He wrote in a post on Facebook in March: "I have never been bankrupt and I will fight these allegations until my last breath." He also blasted negative news stories against him as “libellous” and blamed the “Aussie thing" of bringing down "tall poppies”.
McManus will appear in court once more this Friday (Aug. 26) when his sentencing date will be fixed.
It’s a stunning turn of events for the high-profile entrepreneur who was recognized as one of Australia’s leading promoters and known for his big, brash personality and relationships with many of the world's leading bands.
And it’s not the first scandal involving McManus, a one-time manager of ARIA Hall fo Fame inducted rock band The Divinyls. In 2010, he got caught up in a salary cap scandal that threatened to bring down the National Rugby League’s Melbourne Storm franchise. McManus' company was alleged to have funneled illegal payments to players. He remarked in 2014 that the Australian Taxation Office had fined him A$120,000 ($84,000) per Storm player, a A$2.4 million ($1.6 million) punishment that contributed to the demise of his company, Andrew McManus Presents.
McManus’ new company One World Entertainment has a six-date Engelbert Humperdinck tour of New Zealand on the slate.