By Tom Hays
NEW YORK (AP) --Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty to a new indictment Monday that includes revised charges of predatory sexual assault, a development that caused the judge to delay the start of his trial until early next year.
The change to the case was intended to open the door for an actress to testify against Weinstein in a rape and sexual assault trial that had been scheduled to start on Sept. 9.
Weinstein mostly kept quiet during a brief appearance in a Manhattan courtroom aside from some exchanges with Judge James Burke, who at one point scolded him for pulling out his cell phone during the proceeding.
After the judge agreed with defense lawyers that the trial needed to be put off so they could have time to respond to the revised charges, he told them the new trial date of Jan. 6 was firm. To make the point, he stared at the defendant and asked, "Mr. Weinstein, do you want to go to trial?"
"Not really," Weinstein quipped.
Weinstein, 67, who's free on $1 million bail, has denied all accusations of non-consensual sex.
After the hearing, his attorneys said they would ask the judge to dismiss the indictment, which they called a "desperate" attempt to salvage the case.
"I think the case itself is weak," said his lawyer Donna Rotunno.
Weinstein previously pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of raping a woman in 2013 and performing a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006.
The case remains about those two women, but prosecutors said the new indictment was needed to allow a third woman, Annabella Sciorra, to testify. Sciorra, who is best known for her work on "The Sopranos," says Weinstein raped her inside her Manhattan apartment after she starred in a film for his movie studio in 1993.
Prosecutors can't charge Weinstein with the alleged attack on Sciorra because it took place too long ago to be prosecuted under state law, but they want to use her testimony to prove that Weinstein had a pattern of assaulting women. That's necessary to prove the charge of predatory sexual assault.
Sciorra's lawyer, Gloria Allred, said her client was willing to tell her story to bring Weinstein to justice. She criticized the defense team for saying they would try to get the testimony barred.
"Why are they so afraid of having additional witnesses testify?" she said.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they are victims of sexual assault, but Sciorra went public with her story in a story in The New Yorker in October 2017.
Court papers unsealed on Monday indicate that, in addition to Sciorra, prosecutors plan to call three other women as witnesses to try to demonstrate a pattern of "prior bad acts" by Weinstein.
The papers don't identify the women but cite a time and location — Feb. 19, 2013, at a Beverly Hills hotel — that appear to correspond to news accounts about an unnamed Italian actress and model who alleged in a 2017 interview that Weinstein raped her in her hotel room.
Separately, defense attorneys have asked an appeals court to move the trial out of New York City because a "circus-like atmosphere" there fueled by news reports and social media posts. It's unclear when the court will take up the request.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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