The defunct US news website Gawker has settled a lawsuit won by retired US professional wrestler Hulk Hogan for $31m (£25m). The privacy case forced Gawker to declare bankruptcy earlier this year, after a jury awarded Mr Hogan $140m over a leaked sex tape.
Mr Hogan's legal bill was paid by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who said he wanted to curb Gawker's "bullying". Mr Thiel co-founded PayPal and was an early shareholder in Facebook.
In a New York Times article in August explaining why he had funded the case, he said his own privacy had been violated when Gawker outed him as a gay man in 2007. Campaign group Reporters without Borders, however, criticised Mr Thiel's "secret" involvement in the case, calling it a "serious threat" to press freedom.
Gawker shut down in August following the judgement. The website, launched in the early 2000s, was known for its acerbic tone and aggressive coverage of celebrities.
The case involved a video posted by Gawker in 2012 after Mr Hogan was secretly recorded having sex with his friend's wife.
The settlement was announced on Wednesday in a blog post by Gawker founder Nick Denton, who called the conclusion of the case "a hard peace". He said the company and staff were confident the appeals process would reduce the judgement against Gawker, but that "all-out legal war would have cost too much, and hurt too many people, and there was no end in sight."
Mr Denton also said that as part of the settlement, three "true stories " would be "removed from the web". Two other cases against Gawker journalists were also dropped.
He said it was "a settlement that allows us all to move on, and focus on activities more productive than endless litigation."
Mr Denton, who was also held liable along with the journalist who wrote the article, filed for personal bankruptcy following the $140m judgement. Gawker media also filed for bankruptcy, and shuttered the long-running blog Gawker.com in August.
[All Africa] Higher and Tertiary Education, Science and Technology Development Minister Professor Jonathan Moyo was yesterday tossed in the clink Don't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! for alleged abuse of office and misappropriating over $400 000 Zim-bob-we Manpower Development Fund (Zimdef) funds.
$400K Zim-bucks? That's what, about a dollar-thirty-nine?
He was later released into the custody of his lawyer and is expected to appear in court today.
Zimdef is a parastatal that falls under Prof Moyo's portfolio.
The minister presented himself to the Zim-bob-we Anti-Corruption Commission (ZACC) head office in Mt Pleasant, Harare, where a warned and cautioned statement was recorded after over five hours of closed-door grilling.
Prof Moyo, his deputy Dr Godfrey Gandawa, Zimdef chief executive Mr Frederick Mandizvidza and Zimdef principal director (finance) Mr Nicholas Mapute are expected to appear in court today.
The minister -- who for long had been denigrating and claiming that ZACC was improperly constituted -- handed himself over to the anti-corruption body yesterday afternoon and was released into the custody of his lawyer Mr Terrence Hussein last night.
Speaking after the meeting with ZACC officers, Advocate Lewis Uriri, instructed by Mr Hussein, said his client was placed under arrest and released into the hands of his lawyer.
"I can confirm that he was invited to assist police and ZACC with investigations. He voluntarily availed himself for that process. He answered questions as put to him and at the end of that process,they immediately decided that they would be arresting, detaining and charging him."
Posted by: Fred ||
11/04/2016 00:00 ||
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$400K Zim-bucks? That's what, about a dollar-thirty-nine?
Drunk coffee without putting anything in the kitty?
[AnNahar] The first trials of the thousands of suspects arrested in the wake of Turkey's failed July 15 coup aimed at ousting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will begin in early 2017, the chief Ankara prosecutor said on Thursday.
Thousands of ex-soldiers, legal workers and civilians are currently in jail pending trial on suspicion of involvement in the coup, which Ankara says was masterminded by the U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gulen.
"Without giving an exact date, we are expecting to begin the first trials at the start of 2017," Ankara's chief prosecutor Harun Kodalak said in comments published by Turkish media.
He added: "There could be a trial or trials opened in the last month of this year but it is in 2017 that we are planning to open a series of trials," he said.
The trials are expected to be the most substantial legal process in Turkey in its modern history, with purpose-built facilities needed to be set up in some areas.
The scale of the crackdown and the duration of the suspects' stay in pre-trial detention has caused international concern and strained Turkey's ties with the European Union.
Gulen, who has been based in the United States since the late 1990s, has vehemently denied the claims of his involvement in the coup.
Turkish officials have in recent days said two civilians -- a theology lecturer named Adil Oksuz and businessman Kemal Batmaz -- were in charge of organizing the coup bid from the Akinci airbase in Ankara.
According to prosecutors, the two were in the United States and only returned to Turkey two days before the coup bid.
Batmaz is in custody in Sincan prison outside Ankara. Embarrassingly for the Turkish authorities, Oksuz was detained in the aftermath of the coup but then released and is now on the run.
According to Kodalak, video footage has confirmed that Batmaz was at the base on the night of the coup. Batmaz has denied involvement in the coup.
Turkish officials have said that Oksuz was the so-called "imam" of the plot and in charge of coordinating between Gulen and the army.
But Kodalak said Batmaz "could be as important as Adil Oksuz and even his superior."
According to a report Wednesday by Turkey's NTV television, the authorities had thwarted a mass escape plan by 5,544 coup suspects.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
11/04/2016 00:37 ||
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Agents within the Federal Bureau of Investigation want to take down the personnel at the top of the Justice Department, according to a former D.C. based U.S. Justice attorney.
Joe DiGenova, who has bureau sources close to the FBI investigation, named Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, Assistant Attorney General Peter Kaznick, Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin, and Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell as senior level staff at DOJ have who have “done something that they are going to regret.”
In a radio interview last night, DiGenova said that investigators have been able to flip Weiner and Abedin. Abedin [and Weiner] are afraid they will lose custody of their child [although it is doubtful Weiner will have joint custody] and they are singing. Who knows, Maybe there is a shred of decency between them?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The defunct US news website Gawker has settled a lawsuit won by retired US professional wrestler Hulk Hogan for $31m (£25m). The privacy case forced Gawker to declare bankruptcy earlier this year, after a jury awarded Mr Hogan $140m over a leaked sex tape.
