Florida
Abortion rights group sues after state orders TV stations to stop airing commercial
A group campaigning for a Florida abortion-right ballot measure sued state officials Wednesday over their order to TV stations to stop airing one ad produced by the group, Floridians Protecting Freedom.
The state’s health department, part of the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, told TV stations earlier this month to stop airing the commercial, asserting that it was false and dangerous and that keeping it running could result in criminal proceedings.
The group said in its filing in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee that the state’s action was part of a campaign to attack the abortion-rights amendment “using public resources and government authority to advance the State’s preferred characterization of its anti-abortion laws as the ‘truth’ and denigrate opposing viewpoints as ‘lies.’”
The state health department did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who heads the department, and its former general counsel, John Wilson, were named in the filing, which seeks to block the state from initiating criminal complaints against stations airing the ad.
The group has said that the commercial started airing on Oct. 1 on about 50 stations. All or nearly all of them received the state’s letter and most kept airing the ad, the group said. At least one pulled the ad, the lawsuit said.
Wednesday’s filing is the latest in a series of legal tussles between the state and advocates for abortion rights surrounding the ballot measure, which would protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, considered to be somewhere past 20 weeks. It would override the state’s ban on abortion in most cases after the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant.
The state attorney general tried to keep the measure off the ballot and advocates unsuccessfully sued to block state government from criticizing it. Another legal challenge contends the state’s fiscal impact statement on the measure is misleading.
Last week, the state also announced a $328,000 fine against the group and released a report saying a “large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions” were submitted to get the question on the ballot.
Eight other states have similar measures on their Nov. 5 ballot, but Florida’s campaign is shaping up as the most expensive. The nation’s third most populous state will only adopt the amendment if at least 60% of voters support it. The high threshold gives opponents a better shot at blocking it.
The ad features a woman describing how she was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant, ahead of state restrictions that would have blocked the abortion she received before treatment.
“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline Williams said.
In its letters to TV stations, the state says that assertion made the ad “categorically false” because abortion can be obtained after six weeks if it’s necessary to save a woman’s life or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
But the group says that exception would not have applied here because the woman had a terminal diagnosis. Abortion did not save her life, the group said; it only extended it.
New York
Hunter Biden revives lawsuit against Fox News over explicit images used in streaming series
NEW YORK (AP) — Hunter Biden has revived a lawsuit that accuses Fox News of illegally publishing explicit images of him as part of a streaming series.
The president’s son first sued Fox in New York in July over images used in the Fox Nation series “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” a “mock trial” of Hunter Biden on charges he has not faced. He dropped the suit without explanation three weeks later, the same day President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
On Tuesday, Hunter Biden filed a largely identical suit in state court in Manhattan, again arguing that the dissemination of intimate images without his consent violates New York’s so-called revenge porn law. The new suit adds one current Fox executive one former executive as named defendants.
Biden’s attorney, Tina Glandian, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on why the suit was revived.
In a filing Tuesday, Fox asked that the case be moved to federal court. The company issued a statement describing the second suit as “once again devoid of any merit.”
“The core complaint stems from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not complain about until sending a letter in late April 2024,” the statement said. “The program was removed within days of that letter, in an abundance of caution, but Hunter Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of multiple investigations and is now a convicted felon.”
Biden was convicted in July of three felony firearms charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018. The six-part Fox Nation series depicted a dramatized court proceeding on different, fictional charges.
Pennsylvania
Lawyers told to apologize for blasting recorded screams in Philly neighborhood
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Lawyers who blared a looped recording of a woman screaming as a test in their civil rights lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia must apologize in person and in writing to residents where the loud test took place, a federal judge ordered last week.
U.S. Judge John F. Murphy on Thursday described the hour-long predawn test on Sept. 23 as lacking foresight and judgment, resulting in “a deeply disturbing and potentially dangerous situation.” He gave the lawyers who oversaw the loudspeaker’s recorded screaming in south Philadelphia until the end of October to apologize to people who live nearby, about a block from the South Broad Street and Passyunk Avenue intersection.
“It was so jarring,” neighbor Rachel Robbins told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was just really awful.”
The lawyers represent a man who is suing the city and several officers over his arrest, conviction and 19 years in prison for sexual assault before the conviction was vacated in 2020. The man was shot by police three times at the scene.
At issue in the lawsuit is whether the man, who said he was trying to help the victim in the case, could have heard the woman’s screams from two blocks away.
The loudspeaker was set up near row homes and a day care center that was preparing to open for the day. Murphy wrote that neighbors were upset, with some watching children go into the day care facility while the recording was played.
“Plaintiff counsel’s disregard for community members fell short of the ethical standards by which all attorneys practicing in this district must abide,” the judge wrote.
The apology must explain “their transgression,” Murphy wrote, and take “full responsibility for the repercussions of the scream test.”
California
Microsoft settles video gamers’ lawsuit over Activision takeover
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft Corp. has settled a lawsuit from a group of gamers who sued to try to stop the company from buying video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $69 billion last year.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The two parties agreed to the dismissal of the lawsuit and will cover their own costs and fees, according to a court filing dated Monday.
The lawsuit was filed in 2022 in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco on behalf of 10 individual gamers who are fans of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise and other popular titles such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
The deal took nearly 22 months to close, reflecting concerns from rivals and government regulators that Microsoft could use its growing collection of games to stifle competition. It’s part of a broader industry consolidation that also has some independent game developers worried they’ll get sidelined as the industry allocates its resources toward blockbuster franchises with a history of past success.
Maryland
2 men charged with 7 homicides in gang case
BALTIMORE (AP) — Two men have been indicted by a Baltimore grand jury and charged with killing at least seven people as suspected hitmen for a gang, officials announced Tuesday.
Cornell Moore and Keith Russell, both 38, are accused of stealing cars and using those vehicles to carry out shootings, which included a 2022 double homicide of a man and his pregnant fiancée, according to prosecutors. She died but doctors were able to deliver the baby, according to police.
They have also been charged with three nonfatal shootings and a series of carjackings starting in 2020.
“This case represents the devastating impact a small number of violent perpetrators can have on our communities,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said at a news conference Tuesday. He called it one of his office’s most significant prosecutions since he was elected the city’s top prosecutor and sworn in early last year.
Bates said the investigation is ongoing and more arrests are expected as law enforcement seeks to take down an expansive criminal enterprise. His office worked with Baltimore police as well as federal agents to build their case.
Bates described Moore and Russell as hitmen who were following orders from other gang members. Bates declined to provide the name of the gang.
Attorneys representing Moore and Russell are not yet listed in online court records for this case. Emails seeking comment were sent to attorneys representing the men in separate ongoing cases in Baltimore County.
Bates said that members of the gang were compensated for committing acts of violence to further the organization’s mission and eliminate threats from rival groups. He said one of the seven homicides took place in Baltimore County.
“The cold and calculated nature of the alleged acts and these indictments must be met with swift and serious consequences,” he said. “These indictments are the first steps to achieving that.”
New Jersey
Ex-husband of ‘Real Housewives’ star gets 7 years for hiring mobster to assault her boyfriend
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The ex-husband of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member Dina Manzo was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for hiring a reputed mobster to assault her boyfriend in exchange for the defendant hosting a lavish wedding reception for the attacker.
Thomas Manzo, 59, of Franklin Lakes, will also have to serve three years of supervised release once he’s freed under the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton. A federal jury in June convicted him of conspiracy, falsifying and concealing documents, and committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity.
According to federal prosecutors, Manzo hired John Perna, whom they described as a soldier in the Lucchese crime family, to commit the July 2015 attack in which the boyfriend was beaten with a weapon. Perna’s wedding reception was held the following month at a restaurant in Paterson that Thomas Manzo partly owned, prosecutors said.
Perna pleaded guilty in December 2020 to committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity and received a 2-1/2-year sentence. He was freed in August 2023. Dina Manzo’s boyfriend is now her husband.
Abortion rights group sues after state orders TV stations to stop airing commercial
A group campaigning for a Florida abortion-right ballot measure sued state officials Wednesday over their order to TV stations to stop airing one ad produced by the group, Floridians Protecting Freedom.
The state’s health department, part of the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, told TV stations earlier this month to stop airing the commercial, asserting that it was false and dangerous and that keeping it running could result in criminal proceedings.
The group said in its filing in U.S. District Court in Tallahassee that the state’s action was part of a campaign to attack the abortion-rights amendment “using public resources and government authority to advance the State’s preferred characterization of its anti-abortion laws as the ‘truth’ and denigrate opposing viewpoints as ‘lies.’”
The state health department did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment. State Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, who heads the department, and its former general counsel, John Wilson, were named in the filing, which seeks to block the state from initiating criminal complaints against stations airing the ad.
The group has said that the commercial started airing on Oct. 1 on about 50 stations. All or nearly all of them received the state’s letter and most kept airing the ad, the group said. At least one pulled the ad, the lawsuit said.
Wednesday’s filing is the latest in a series of legal tussles between the state and advocates for abortion rights surrounding the ballot measure, which would protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, considered to be somewhere past 20 weeks. It would override the state’s ban on abortion in most cases after the first six weeks of pregnancy, which is before many women know they’re pregnant.
The state attorney general tried to keep the measure off the ballot and advocates unsuccessfully sued to block state government from criticizing it. Another legal challenge contends the state’s fiscal impact statement on the measure is misleading.
Last week, the state also announced a $328,000 fine against the group and released a report saying a “large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions” were submitted to get the question on the ballot.
Eight other states have similar measures on their Nov. 5 ballot, but Florida’s campaign is shaping up as the most expensive. The nation’s third most populous state will only adopt the amendment if at least 60% of voters support it. The high threshold gives opponents a better shot at blocking it.
The ad features a woman describing how she was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was 20 weeks pregnant, ahead of state restrictions that would have blocked the abortion she received before treatment.
“The doctors knew that if I did not end my pregnancy, I would lose my baby, I would lose my life, and my daughter would lose her mom,” Caroline Williams said.
In its letters to TV stations, the state says that assertion made the ad “categorically false” because abortion can be obtained after six weeks if it’s necessary to save a woman’s life or “avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
But the group says that exception would not have applied here because the woman had a terminal diagnosis. Abortion did not save her life, the group said; it only extended it.
New York
Hunter Biden revives lawsuit against Fox News over explicit images used in streaming series
NEW YORK (AP) — Hunter Biden has revived a lawsuit that accuses Fox News of illegally publishing explicit images of him as part of a streaming series.
The president’s son first sued Fox in New York in July over images used in the Fox Nation series “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” a “mock trial” of Hunter Biden on charges he has not faced. He dropped the suit without explanation three weeks later, the same day President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
On Tuesday, Hunter Biden filed a largely identical suit in state court in Manhattan, again arguing that the dissemination of intimate images without his consent violates New York’s so-called revenge porn law. The new suit adds one current Fox executive one former executive as named defendants.
Biden’s attorney, Tina Glandian, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on why the suit was revived.
In a filing Tuesday, Fox asked that the case be moved to federal court. The company issued a statement describing the second suit as “once again devoid of any merit.”
“The core complaint stems from a 2022 streaming program that Mr. Biden did not complain about until sending a letter in late April 2024,” the statement said. “The program was removed within days of that letter, in an abundance of caution, but Hunter Biden is a public figure who has been the subject of multiple investigations and is now a convicted felon.”
Biden was convicted in July of three felony firearms charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018. The six-part Fox Nation series depicted a dramatized court proceeding on different, fictional charges.
Pennsylvania
Lawyers told to apologize for blasting recorded screams in Philly neighborhood
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Lawyers who blared a looped recording of a woman screaming as a test in their civil rights lawsuit against the city of Philadelphia must apologize in person and in writing to residents where the loud test took place, a federal judge ordered last week.
U.S. Judge John F. Murphy on Thursday described the hour-long predawn test on Sept. 23 as lacking foresight and judgment, resulting in “a deeply disturbing and potentially dangerous situation.” He gave the lawyers who oversaw the loudspeaker’s recorded screaming in south Philadelphia until the end of October to apologize to people who live nearby, about a block from the South Broad Street and Passyunk Avenue intersection.
“It was so jarring,” neighbor Rachel Robbins told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “It was just really awful.”
The lawyers represent a man who is suing the city and several officers over his arrest, conviction and 19 years in prison for sexual assault before the conviction was vacated in 2020. The man was shot by police three times at the scene.
At issue in the lawsuit is whether the man, who said he was trying to help the victim in the case, could have heard the woman’s screams from two blocks away.
The loudspeaker was set up near row homes and a day care center that was preparing to open for the day. Murphy wrote that neighbors were upset, with some watching children go into the day care facility while the recording was played.
“Plaintiff counsel’s disregard for community members fell short of the ethical standards by which all attorneys practicing in this district must abide,” the judge wrote.
The apology must explain “their transgression,” Murphy wrote, and take “full responsibility for the repercussions of the scream test.”
California
Microsoft settles video gamers’ lawsuit over Activision takeover
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Microsoft Corp. has settled a lawsuit from a group of gamers who sued to try to stop the company from buying video game publisher Activision Blizzard for $69 billion last year.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. The two parties agreed to the dismissal of the lawsuit and will cover their own costs and fees, according to a court filing dated Monday.
The lawsuit was filed in 2022 in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco on behalf of 10 individual gamers who are fans of Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty franchise and other popular titles such as World of Warcraft, Overwatch and Diablo.
The deal took nearly 22 months to close, reflecting concerns from rivals and government regulators that Microsoft could use its growing collection of games to stifle competition. It’s part of a broader industry consolidation that also has some independent game developers worried they’ll get sidelined as the industry allocates its resources toward blockbuster franchises with a history of past success.
Maryland
2 men charged with 7 homicides in gang case
BALTIMORE (AP) — Two men have been indicted by a Baltimore grand jury and charged with killing at least seven people as suspected hitmen for a gang, officials announced Tuesday.
Cornell Moore and Keith Russell, both 38, are accused of stealing cars and using those vehicles to carry out shootings, which included a 2022 double homicide of a man and his pregnant fiancée, according to prosecutors. She died but doctors were able to deliver the baby, according to police.
They have also been charged with three nonfatal shootings and a series of carjackings starting in 2020.
“This case represents the devastating impact a small number of violent perpetrators can have on our communities,” Baltimore City State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said at a news conference Tuesday. He called it one of his office’s most significant prosecutions since he was elected the city’s top prosecutor and sworn in early last year.
Bates said the investigation is ongoing and more arrests are expected as law enforcement seeks to take down an expansive criminal enterprise. His office worked with Baltimore police as well as federal agents to build their case.
Bates described Moore and Russell as hitmen who were following orders from other gang members. Bates declined to provide the name of the gang.
Attorneys representing Moore and Russell are not yet listed in online court records for this case. Emails seeking comment were sent to attorneys representing the men in separate ongoing cases in Baltimore County.
Bates said that members of the gang were compensated for committing acts of violence to further the organization’s mission and eliminate threats from rival groups. He said one of the seven homicides took place in Baltimore County.
“The cold and calculated nature of the alleged acts and these indictments must be met with swift and serious consequences,” he said. “These indictments are the first steps to achieving that.”
New Jersey
Ex-husband of ‘Real Housewives’ star gets 7 years for hiring mobster to assault her boyfriend
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — The ex-husband of “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member Dina Manzo was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in prison for hiring a reputed mobster to assault her boyfriend in exchange for the defendant hosting a lavish wedding reception for the attacker.
Thomas Manzo, 59, of Franklin Lakes, will also have to serve three years of supervised release once he’s freed under the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton. A federal jury in June convicted him of conspiracy, falsifying and concealing documents, and committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity.
According to federal prosecutors, Manzo hired John Perna, whom they described as a soldier in the Lucchese crime family, to commit the July 2015 attack in which the boyfriend was beaten with a weapon. Perna’s wedding reception was held the following month at a restaurant in Paterson that Thomas Manzo partly owned, prosecutors said.
Perna pleaded guilty in December 2020 to committing a violent crime in aid of racketeering activity and received a 2-1/2-year sentence. He was freed in August 2023. Dina Manzo’s boyfriend is now her husband.
