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      Supreme Court Ruling Means Italy’s ‘Bunga Bunga’ Saga Is Not Over

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      The ruling sets the stage for yet another trial related to the scandal involving Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy who died last year.After 14 years, the 21 women accused of helping to cover up Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s evening bacchanals had hoped that their long legal saga over the so-called “Bunga Bunga” scandal might be over.But Italy’s Supreme Court overturned their acquittals, ruling on Monday that the women could be retried, according to the general prosecutor on the case — a setback for the women and an indication of how large the shadow of Mr. Berlusconi, who died last year, still looms in Italy.The court decision sets the stage for yet another trial related to a scandal that gripped Italy and set off an international tabloid frenzy in 2010, when news emerged about parties Mr. Berlusconi was hosting at his villa near Milan.In the first trial, Mr. Berlusconi was accused of paying for sex with a 17-year-old woman at one of the parties and abusing his office to cover it up. Both the woman and Mr. Berlusconi denied it. Mr. Berlusconi was initially found guilty, but was later acquitted because of a lack of evidence that he was aware at the time that the teen was underage. In the second trial, several of Mr. Berlusconi’s associates were convicted of aiding and abetting prostitution by procuring women for the bacchanals, which became known as the “Bunga Bunga parties.”The third trial involved 21 women accused of accepting hush money to lie and protect Mr. Berlusconi in the earlier court proceedings. A lower court had acquitted them on procedural grounds, but prosecutors in Milan appealed the verdict.The deputy prosecutor general at the Supreme Court, Roberto Aniello, confirmed that Italy’s Supreme Court in Rome had ruled on Monday that the 21 women could be retried. The court has not yet explained its decision; that typically follows in a statement.An appeals court in Milan is set to take up the case, though it was not immediately clear when that would take place.The New York Times reached out to several of the women, who were not immediately available for comment. Some of the 21 have, in the past, admitted to taking money or expensive gifts from Mr. Berlusconi, but said it was not intended to buy their silence. More

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      Former U.S. Soldier Is Sentenced to 14 Years for Planning to Help ISIS

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      Pvt. Cole Bridges pleaded guilty in 2023 to charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and attempting to murder U.S. military service members.A former soldier in the U.S. Army was sentenced on Friday to 14 years in prison after pleading guilty to attempting to provide ISIS with information to help plan an ambush he thought would result in the deaths of U.S. soldiers in the Middle East, according to the U.S. Justice Department.The soldier, Pvt. Cole Bridges, 24, of Stow, Ohio, also discussed potential locations for terrorist attacks in New York City with an undercover F.B.I. agent whom he believed to be a supporter of the Islamic State.Private Bridges enlisted in the military in 2019 and joined an infantry division in Fort Stewart, Ga. Before enlisting, he had already been persuaded by radical ideologies, according to the Justice Department.“Cole Bridges used his U.S. Army training to pursue a horrifying goal: the brutal murder of his fellow service members in a carefully plotted ambush,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.Beginning in at least 2019, Private Bridges began researching jihadist propaganda and posted his support for ISIS on social media. About a year after joining the Army, he began a correspondence with an F.B.I. agent who was posing as an ISIS supporter in contact with the group in the Middle East.A criminal complaint filed in the Southern District of New York detailed the soldier’s fervent intent on aiding the Islamic State, describing Private Bridges as “a supporter of ISIS and its mission to establish a global caliphate.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Outlines Google Search Changes It’s Weighing in Antitrust Case

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      They include making Google’s data available to rivals and forcing it to break off parts of the company, the Justice Department said in a court filing.The Justice Department said Tuesday night that it was considering asking a federal court to force Google to break off parts of the company or change its practices in order to eliminate its monopoly in search, moves that could redefine the $2 trillion company’s core business.In a filing, the government said it could ask the court to require Google to make the underlying data that powers its search engine available to competitors.It said it was considering asking for “structural” changes to Google to stop the company from leveraging the power of its Chrome browser, Android operating system or Play app store to benefit its search business. But it stopped short of identifying what those changes could be.“Google’s anticompetitive conduct resulted in interlocking and pernicious harms that present unprecedented complexities in a highly evolving set of markets,” the government said in its filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “These markets are indispensable to the lives of all Americans, whether as individuals or as business owners, and the importance of effectively unfettering these markets and restoring competition cannot be overstated.”Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said in a blog post in response to the filing that the company was concerned the Justice Department was “already signaling requests that go far beyond the specific legal issues in this case.”In a landmark ruling in August, a judge on that court, Amit P. Mehta, said Google “is a monopolist, and it has acted as one to maintain its monopoly.” It crossed a line when it paid companies like Apple and Samsung billions of dollars to be the automatic search engine in web browsers and on smartphones, Judge Mehta ruled in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.N. Official Took $3 Million in Secret Gifts From Businessman

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      The official secretly took $3 million in gifts from a businessman to whom he steered the organization’s funds, a court ruled. The U.N. got a song about the ocean.A high-ranking United Nations official secretly took $3 million in gifts from a British businessman while he steered more than $58 million of the organization’s money to the man’s companies, according to a ruling from an internal U.N. court.The decision provided a potential answer to a question that has baffled the organization since news broke in 2022 of Vitaly Vanshelboim’s disastrous investments: Why did a 20-year veteran of the United Nations defy auditors and common sense by entrusting his agency’s entire investment portfolio to a man he purportedly met at a party?The court found last week that Mr. Vanshelboim, a Ukrainian, had committed fraud and “blatant misconduct” by failing to disclose the gifts from the businessman, David Kendrick. It said Mr. Vanshelboim had received interest-free loans, home repairs, a new Mercedes and a $1.2 million sponsorship for his teenage son, who was a tennis player.“This is insane, how is this possible,” the son wrote back to his father at the time, according to an email cited in the court ruling. “I’m not even a good tennis player yet.”“Part of my job is to make insane things happen,” Mr. Vanshelboim replied, the court said.The United Nations now says that all $58 million that Mr. Vanshelboim’s agency entrusted to Mr. Kendrick has been lost. Mr. Vanshelboim was fired last year, fined a year’s pay and ordered to repay all the money lost through the United Nations’ dealing with Mr. Kendrick.He appealed those penalties, but the court largely rejected his arguments, saying he had to pay $58 million or lose his U.N. pension. Mr. Vanshelboim declined to comment. Mr. Kendrick did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      2 Men Sentenced for Attacking Officers at Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

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      One of the men, from New Jersey, referred to lawmakers as “traitors” and encouraged other rioters to drag them out of the building by their hair, prosecutors said.A man from New Jersey and another from New York were sentenced to prison on Friday after federal prosecutors said they had breached the U.S. Capitol building and attacked law enforcement officers during the riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The New Jersey man, Michael Oliveras, 51, was sentenced to five years in prison. He broke into the Capitol with rioters and urged them to drag members of Congress out of the building by their hair, according to a news release.Prosecutors said Mr. Oliveras, who lived in Lindenwold, N.J., traveled to Washington to try to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election. According to the release, he documented his attack online, not only posting on social media that he had booked a hotel room near the building to scope it out, but also detailing when he entered the Capitol.Mr. Oliveras, carrying an American flag, marched to the West Front of the Capitol and confronted police officers, the release said. About 10 minutes later, a video he recorded showed him barging into the building and looking for lawmakers, yelling, “Where are they?” He also called them “traitors,” prosecutors said.“Drag them out by their hair,” he yelled, using an expletive.Mr. Oliveras entered and was ejected from the Capitol twice. During an unsuccessful third attempt, he stood in a doorway telling others to “push” and then brawled with officers.He continued with the riot for hours into the evening, marching to the other side of the building and encouraging others as they destroyed media equipment, the release said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court to Decide Whether Mexico Can Sue U.S. Gun Makers

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      The justices will consider whether a 2005 law that gives gun makers broad immunity applies in the case, which accuses them of complicity in supplying cartels with weapons.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Mexico may sue gun manufacturers in the United States for aiding in the trafficking of weapons used by drug cartels.Mexico sued seven gun makers and one distributor in 2021, blaming them for rampant violence caused by illegal gun trafficking from the United States spurred by the demand of Mexican drug cartels for military-style weapons.Mexico has strict gun control laws that it says make it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain firearms legally. Indeed, the suit said, its single gun store issues fewer than 50 permits a year. But gun violence is rampant.The lawsuit, which seeks billions of dollars in damages, said that 70 to 90 percent of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States and that gun dealers in border states sell twice as many firearms as dealers in other parts of the country.Judge Dennis F. Saylor, of the Federal District Court in Boston, dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, saying it was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that prohibits many kinds of suits against makers and distributors of firearms. The law, Judge Saylor wrote, “bars exactly this type of action from being brought in federal and state courts.”But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, revived the suit, saying that it qualified for an exception to the law, which authorizes claims for knowing violations of firearms laws that are a direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuriesIn urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, the gun makers said that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court.” Mexico’s legal theory, they added, was an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.”“Absent this court’s intervention,” the gun makers’ petition continued, “Mexico’s multi-billion-dollar suit will hang over the American firearms industry for years, inflicting costly and intrusive discovery at the hands of a foreign sovereign that is trying to bully the industry into adopting a host of gun-control measures that have been repeatedly rejected by American voters.”In response, Mexico said the defendants were complicit in mass violence.“The flood of petitioners’ firearms from sources in the United States to cartels in Mexico is no accident,” Mexico’s brief said. “It results from petitioners’ knowing and deliberate choice to supply their products to bad actors, to allow reckless and unlawful practices that feed the crime-gun pipeline, and to design and market their products in ways that petitioners intend will drive up demand among the cartels.” More

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      Los Angeles District Attorney Says He Is Reviewing Menendez Case

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      Interest in the Menendez brothers has intensified after the release of a new Netflix drama about the case. A separate documentary is forthcoming.George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney, said on Thursday that his office was reviewing a decades-old case involving the brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, who killed their parents in their Beverly Hills home and were sentenced to life in prison.The case in the 1990s was one of the first to draw a daily national audience to a televised criminal trial. By their own testimony, the two young men marched into the den of the family’s mansion one evening with shotguns and fired more than a dozen rounds at their mother and father while the couple sat on the couch.Prosecutors presented the brothers as greedy, coldblooded killers, interested in having unfettered access to their parents’ assets, which were valued at about $14 million. Defense lawyers for the brothers argued that they had been sexually molested for years by their father, and had killed out of fear.Mr. Gascón wouldn’t indicate which way he was leaning, but his remarks indicated that the sex abuse claims are among the aspects his office was reviewing. He said his office was divided over whether the brothers should remain in prison for the rest of their lives.“We have a moral and ethical obligation to review what is being presented to us,” he said.Mr. Gascón’s remarks come in the homestretch of his re-election bid as interest in the Menendez case has intensified after the release of a new Netflix drama about the case. The series, “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” has been assailed by Erik Menendez and many other members of the Menendez family as grotesque and riddled with falsehoods.Ryan Murphy, one of the series’s creators, has defended his work in interviews. He told The Hollywood Reporter that there was “room for all points of view” and argued that the brothers should be grateful to him for bringing more attention to the case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In Retrial, Man Convicted of Murder of Transgender Woman

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      Rasheen Everett strangled Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar in her Queens apartment. His 2013 conviction was thrown out because of a judge’s error.For the second time, a Manhattan man has been found guilty in the 2010 murder of a transgender woman.The man, Rasheen Everett, was first convicted in 2013 of murdering Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar, 29, but a mistake by the judge overseeing the case led an appeals court to toss the conviction in 2021, forcing prosecutors to retry the case.On Thursday, a jury in Queens found Mr. Everett, 43, guilty of second-degree murder and of tampering with evidence. The killing was just one example of what the American Medical Association has declared an “epidemic” of violence against people who are transgender.In a statement, the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said that prosecutors had been determined to pursue the case regardless of the years that had passed since Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s killing.“Upon a reversal of a conviction through no fault of the prosecutors, my office built a strong case against this individual once again, and we successfully proved that he callously murdered a young woman 14 years ago,” Ms. Katz wrote.On a March morning in 2010, Mr. Everett strangled Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar, who had advertised her services as a prostitute, in her apartment in Glendale, Queens. Then, prosecutors said, he doused her body in bleach in an attempt to destroy evidence of his crime and stayed in her apartment for more than a dozen hours. He also stole a camera, a laptop, a coat, a cellphone and keys from her apartment and fled to Las Vegas, according to prosecutors, where he was arrested days later. Prosecutors said that his DNA was found under Ms. Gonzalez-Andujar’s fingernails.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More