Pioneering African American model and actress has brought the number of women who have put their name to allegations against Cosby to almost two dozen
Beverly Johnson, a supermodel and actress who was the first African American woman to be on the cover of Vogue magazine, has come forward alleging that she was drugged by Bill Cosby in the 1980s.
Johnson wrote a long piece for Vanity Fair about an encounter she had with the comedian in the mid-1980s, while she was going through a divorce.
She said that Cosby invited her to read for a part in The Cosby Show.
After several meetings with the comedian, he invited her to a reading at his house. He allegedly suggested to her that she act drunk – a feature shared in several other stories from other women who have made allegations against Cosby.
After dinner, Cosby insisted Johnson drink a cappuccino, which she said was “drugged – and drugged good”.
“My head became woozy, my speech became slurred, and the room began to spin non-stop,” the article continues. “Cosby mentioned for me to come over to him as though we were ready to act out the scene. He put his hands around my waist, and I managed to put my hand on his shoulder in order to steady myself.”
She said that her body went completely limp, and that her brain switched into “automatic survival mode.” She yelled at Cosby, calling him a “motherfucker” several times.
After that, the article continues, Cosby grabbed Johnson by the left arm and dragged her down “a bunch of stairs”. She said she was afraid her neck was going to break. When they reached the front door, she said, Cosby flagged down a taxi and shoved her inside.
She said that she called Cosby to confront him, but his wife, Camille, picked up the phone.
She said that at the time, she was worried that if she went public with the story, her career would suffer.
Johnson’s story brings the number of women who have put their name to allegations against the comedian to almost two dozen.
Martin Singer, the attorney representing Cosby, was not available for comment. Cosby has consistently denied all the allegations against him. In a statement on 22 November, Singer called the claims against the comedian “ridiculous” and “unsubstantiated, fantastical stories”
The residents of Bogada Chawl who have evicted by the BMC from their century old dilapidated building are yet to get alternative accommodation to be given by BMC.
Everyday a group of women and children sit on a protest at the entrance of the building which is of36,000 sq meterst at a prime location just next to Tata Memorial hospital.
The housing society of Bogada Chaw,l Baman Deo Cooperative Housing Society formed by Bogada Chawl tenants had passed a resolution to cancel the agreement with the present Builder Spee Relators which was duly informed and approved by BMC. According to documents provided by Baman Deo Cooperative housing Society the builder does not at all have the financial capacity to develop the building. They have paper evidence showing that the Spee Realtors who had taken a personal loan of a few lakhs of rupees has not been able to pay monthly installments to the bank. Such a builder who has taken such a small amount of loan and who cannot pay the interest by no means could build a structure of 36,000 sq meters says Chandra Shekhar secretary of Baman Deo Housing Society .
They want a builder who has a sound financial background be appointed their builder. They have in fact with the consent of the majority of the members selected Shayog Homes as their builder.
Therefore they have with majority of the housing society passed a resolution to terminate the agreement with Speed Realtors and Letter of Intent be revoked.
In spite of this request BMC went ahead and asked the developers Speed Realtors’ to provide them with alternative accommodation and using police force of about 250 -300 personnel’s made them vacate the building. The tenants demand for immediate proper alternate housing.
US-based news and blogging platform Huffington Post on Monday launched its Indian edition in association with Times of India Group.
HuffPost India combines Huffington Post’s news and blogging platform with the local expertise and reach of the Times of India Group, a statement said.
HuffPost will be the first major global entrant into a fast growing digital news space in India where a number of stand-alone players as also those which are part of traditional media groups have set shops.
Global media investment conglomerate GroupM has also come on board as a strategic partner for brand synergies and advertising in India for the Huffington Post, a news and blogging platform.
“The launch comes at a moment when India is facing huge and unique challenges, but also when India’s spiritual traditions have taken their place at the center of a global conversation about what it means to live a good life,” said President and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post Media Group Arianna Huffington.
Owned by AOL, Huffington Post has 119 million multi-platform visitors per month in the US (comScore, October 2014) and has over 80,000 bloggers.
“We are very excited to launch Huffington Post India. Huffington Post is the first real digital-first news success story globally, and their impact is seen across the world. We look forward to bringing HuffPo’s conversational approach to news to a large section of Indian audience,” said Satyan Gajwani, CEO of Times Internet (TIL), the digital arm of The Times of India.
Huffington Post has editions in the UK, Canada, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Maghreb, Germany, Brazil, South Korea and Greece.
Institute of Transport Economics and Meteorological Institute in Norway and four Indian research institutions – The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, Delhi), School of Planning and Architecture (SPA, Delhi), Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore) and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), will collaboratively work on developing mitigation and adaptation strategies for the transport sector in India
New Delhi, December 10: The Research Council of Norway has launched a new research project ‘CLIMATRANS – Coping with Climate: Assessing Transport Sector Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation for Indian Cities’ that will be implemented during the next three years. The project will assess climate change impacts in urban areas in India and aims to develop mitigation and adaptation strategies for the transport sector. Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru have been selected as case cities for further research.
The Indian transport system is one of the largest in the world and the demand for mobility and energy use for the transport sector has increased with rapid growth of economic activity. India is experiencing a dramatic increase in urbanization and increase in car ownership, which has resulted in a number of negative impacts.
“It is important to study Indian cities in terms of both their present as well as the projected transport sector contributions to local emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions and the impacts of future climate change. In fact, climate change might already have caused adverse effects on different settlements in India,” explains Dr Farideh Ramjerdi, Institute of Transportation Economics, Norway, who is the CLIMATRANS project manager.
CLIMATRANS is an interdisciplinary project within the realms of social and natural sciences and in close consultation with city and national stakeholders. Institute of Transport Economics and Meteorological Institute in Norway and four Indian research institutions – The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI, New Delhi), School of Planning and Architecture (SPA, New Delhi), Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore) and Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) – will collaborate in this research.
“Bengaluru is one of the fastest growing cities in Asia with a thousand vehicles being registered everyday. In 15 years, the city is projected to have 4.7 million cars on its roads. Increasing congestion and slow peak hour speeds are a result of private vehicles taking up 90 per cent of road space. But policies have so far focussed on constructing elevated roads and underpasses rather than improving public transit facilities and non-motorized transport,” points out Prof Ashish Verma, CLIMATRANS project partner from IISc, Bangalore. “It is important to understand the consequences of these trends in terms of climate change mitigation and adaptation so that policy makers in Bengaluru have a clear scientific perspective while framing transport policy towards a sustainable city.”
“In Delhi, vehicles contribute to an estimated 67 per cent of the total pollution load,” remarks Prof Sanjay Gupta, CLIMATRANS project partner from SPA, Delhi. “While various policy interventions such as reduction in sulphur content of diesel and petrol, implementation of Euro norms and CNG have led to reduction of emission levels, the progress is far from satisfactory and needs a serious relook in terms of evolving desirable policies and strategies which ultimately would improve the environmental quality of the city.”
“We hope that the project will enhance our understanding of how climate change affects the transportation sector and vice-versa. The outcome of the project should help policy makers in developing strategic transport plans for adaptation and mitigation,” says Dr Munish Chandel, CLIMATRANS project partner from IIT Bombay.
“As the countries of the world discuss climate commitments in Lima this week and in Paris next year, this study will produce valuable information for the transport sector in India,” notes Ms Neha Pahuja, CLIMATRANS project partner from TERI.
Real news of India has compiled a list of amazing photos of 2014. The year that was, of natural calamities, celebrities, and daily life activies
india on Wednesday dropped attempted suicide from a list of crimes punishable by prison, potentially paving the way for the release of a human rights activist who has been on hunger strike for the past 14 years.
The government informed parliament of its decision in a written reply from the home ministry on Wednesday, saying it was acting on a recommendation of the Law Commission.
The government panel for legal reform had deemed the suicide law “anachronistic” and “undesirable” in a 2008 report.
Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike in protest against army atrocities in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur. Under the old law anyone attempting to kill themselves is liable for a jail term of a year.
She has been under detention throughout her fast, and is force-fed by tubes several times a day.
The World Health Organization has listed India as one of the countries with the highest suicide rates – 21.1 per 100,000 people in 2012.
The Indian government said 134,799 people committed suicide in 2013, a rise of 11.9 percent over the previous year. There was no data on the number of attempted suicides, it said.
More than 800,000 people each year worldwide commit suicide — around one person every 40 seconds — WHO said in September.
The first time John Lennon met Paul McCartney, Lennon was about ready to go onstage with his band the Quarrymen. One of the group members knew McCartney from school, so he introduced him to his bandmates. Lennon was 16; McCartney was 15. It was July 6, 1957, and the most significant meeting in rock history was about to go down.
The six-piece Quarrymen were setting up for their 8 p.m. performance in the garden of Liverpool’s St Peter’s Church. After chatting for a few minutes, McCartney showed Lennon how to tune his guitar. He then played a few classic rock ‘n’ roll songs — including cuts by Gene Vincent and Little Richard – to show Lennon what he was capable of.
Then the Quarrymen performed. “I just thought, ‘Well, he looks good, he’s singing well and he seems like a great lead singer to me,’” McCartney said of Lennon’s performance to Record Collector magazine in 1995. “Of course, he had his glasses off, so he really looked suave. I remember John was good. He was really the only outstanding member, all the rest kind of slipped away.”
Incidentally, that Quarrymen show was recorded on tape and sold for approximately $120,000 in 1994.
After the show, the Quarrymen, along with McCartney and another pal, went to a pub, where they lied about their ages to get served. Lennon was so impressed with McCartney’s natural talent and knowledge of music that he and the other members of the group later asked McCartney to join them, even though Lennon was a bit hesitant to invite such a powerful figure into his group.
A year later, George Harrison joined the band. By early 1959, everyone else had quit, leaving the trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison without a real group. Within a year, they picked up another member, a drummer and renamed themselves the Beatles. You know the rest.
Nelson Mandela’s country, one year after his death, a feeling of grim frustration has taken hold.
South Africa is a land of highest highs and lowest lows — and over the past few months, the pendulum has swung to the pessimistic end of the spectrum.
As South Africans paused Friday to remember their former president and reflect on his legacy, the country’s weighty challenges — a sputtering economy, resurging crime, political paralysis — were front and center.
It doesn’t help that many of us are in the dark. Huge swathes of South Africa’s cities have been without electricity for hours and days as Eskom, the musty old power utility, enforces “load shedding,” or rolling blackouts. The power cuts in recent weeks have been the worst in many years as Eskom struggles to meet demand.
This isn’t the only state entity in trouble — postal workers just last week returned from a months-long strike. With no mail delivered since August, and with Christmas nearing, there is a massive backlog of letters and parcels.
All of this spells trouble for an already faltering economy, with GDP growth forecast at just 1.4 percent for 2014.
Mumbai, Dec. 4 — Back in 2011, when Kangana Ranaut and Aanand L Rai worked together for the first time, they delivered a hit, Tanu Weds Manu. Now, they’re currently working on a film that is being touted as a sequel to the 2011 comedy, but has no similarity to the original story.
Kangana’s performance in this film seems to have impressed the director as he has now decided to cast her in another one of his films. She will be seen playing the role of a new-age Heer in that project.
Apparently, after seeing Kangana’s performance in director Vikas Bahl’s Queen, Aanand had written a challenging role for her for the ‘sequel’. But when the film’s shoot started in Delhi, he realised that she was pulling it off with great ease. Aanand says, “Kangana and I love to work with each other. After Tanu Weds Manu, I wanted to challenge the actor in her, and she overcame those challenges very smoothly. So, I decided to come up with something even more challenging for her.”
Is it true that he plans to give Kangana a tragic avatar in that film? “Yes, that idea has always been in my mind. I have already had a tryst with a tragedy (with his 2013 directorial venture Raanjhanaa), so I don’t mind revisiting it. But the idea will take its own time. I haven’t set a deadline for it since I can’t think of anything else except the sequel (to Tanu Weds Manu) right now,” says Aanand.
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- Owner of Tommy the chimp tells Guardian case is ‘ridiculous’
- Attorney for Nonhuman Rights Project likely to continue appeal
A chimpanzee is not a legal person, a New York appeals court has decided, saying that no matter how great apes are, they cannot give back to society in a way that merits human rights.
Rejecting an animal rights group’s bid to expand the definition of “legal person” to chimpanzees, a five-judge panel found that although the animals are autonomous beings they do not take part in the societal bargains that guarantee rights like bodily freedom.
In October the attorney Steven Wise, representing the Nonhuman Rights Project, made a case that a privately owned chimpanzee named Tommy was unlawfully imprisoned in New York, and should be transferred to a sanctuary in Florida. Wise argued that chimpanzees, having shown self-awareness, intelligence and empathy, are close enough kin to humans as to deserve some rights.
But while the court granted that chimpanzees share much with humans and are not simple objects, like chairs or tables, justice Karen Peters wrote in the court’s decision that apes cannot contribute to society or suffer legal consequences of their actions.
“Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions,” Peters wrote.
Wise’s cases on behalf of Tommy and three other chimpanzees are the first to argue that habeas corpus can apply to a non-human. The writ would have forced Tommy’s owner, Patrick Lavery, to prove to the court he could justify Tommy’s imprisonment.
From his home in Florida, Lavery told the Guardian that he found the idea of giving Tommy certain human rights “a ridiculous statement, in my opinion”.
Lavery has declined to appear at any of the case’s hearings and learned of the court’s decision from the Guardian. He defended the small building in which he keeps Tommy as “an excellent home” with TV, several rooms and outdoor enclosures. “He’s happy there,” Lavery insisted.
“He’s not being illegally detained. He’s legally there, and of course we have to abide by the rules. Tommy’s got an excellent home, and he never knew what it was like to have a home where he was loved and cared for before.”
Wise did not immediately respond for a request for comment. He has said he will take the case to New York’s highest appeals court.
Peters wrote that the courts have not left Tommy and other chimpanzees defenseless, pointing out that New York has a ban on keeping primates as pets. She said that Wise could lobby the state to pass laws granting greater protections of chimpanzees.
Wise’s suit does not allege that Lavery has broken the law in his treatment of Tommy, and Lavery said that he follows all federal and state regulations. Lavery said he found the central premise of Wise’s suits mystifying.
“From what I understand, after he frees the chimps he’s gonna go after the elephants, he’s got other species on his list,” he said. “But they’re not gonna be free at another sanctuary.
“It’s different if an animal’s been pulled out of the wild, but an animal that’s raised domestically, by humans, they’re used to being fed and cleaned up after.”
In many of his arguments, Wise notes that habeas corpus was used in the 18th century to help free a slave, a comparison Lavery considered inappropriate.
“If a slave means you have somebody wait on you and feed you and clean up after you and do all that, to me that’s not the definition of a slave, in my opinion,” he said.
Wise has also argued chimpanzees should have legal “visibility” as children do, but Peters was careful to include a riposte to that line of thinking.
“To be sure, some humans are less able to bear legal duties or responsibilities than others. These differences do not alter our analysis, as it is undeniable that, collectively, human beings possess the unique ability to bear legal responsibility,” Peters wrote.
The appellate court’s decision upholds a state judge’s 2013 ruling. Before a separate court on Tuesday, Wise argued on behalf of a deaf chimp named Kiko, who lives with his owner in Niagara Falls.
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