By Thomas Adamson
PARIS (AP) --The European Union has congratulated director Ken Loach, who took the Palme d'Or in Cannes for "I, Daniel Blake," a film partly funded by the European Commission.
Loach received the French Riviera festival's top prize Sunday night for the film about a disabled carpenter in northern England fighting for social assistance. The production received almost 100,000 euros ($112,000) from the Creative Europe program.
Romanian Cristian Mungiu's film "Graduation," which won Sunday's Best Director award, also received support.
The program, which has supported 14 other Palme d'Or winners, co-funds the development and distribution to several EU countries of films that contribute to "cultural diversity."
Commissioner Gunther H. Oettinger, responsible for digital economy and society, congratulated both the teams "for this extraordinary success."
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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