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    Anthony Weiner Hopes Voters Have Forgiven or Forgotten

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    Mr. Weiner returned from a prison term to launch an unlikely campaign for the City Council. Outside a polling place on Tuesday, it was hot, mostly friendly and a little awkward.Anthony Weiner, posted on a sunbaked corner of the East Village on Tuesday, had stooped to hear an older woman tell him that she had just voted for him when a much younger woman stopped, took a quick selfie in front of the candidate and muttered “pedophile.”“What did she say?” the older woman asked.“Supports another candidate,” Mr. Weiner deadpanned.That he is himself a candidate is a plot twist in a story that many believed had ended badly. Mr. Weiner resigned from Congress in 2011 following a sexting scandal. A second sexting scandal cost him a run for mayor in 2013. Four years later, he was convicted of a felony and served 18 months in prison for sharing sexually explicit photos and texts with a 15-year-old girl.He is now seeking an improbable comeback, running for a City Council seat in Lower Manhattan, asking voters to return him to an office he first won in 1991, in his mid-20s, in a Brooklyn district.During his campaign, he has owned those dark episodes without, as he put it, “wallowing” in them — “contrition, but not scraping.” He hopes his practical, street-level ideas to fix what ails the city — hire more police officers, find proper care for the mentally ill and homeless living in parks — attract voters ready to set aside his past.“I can’t think of another political campaign that’s quite like this,” he said.One thing that is undeniable, watching him greet person after person under a punishing midday sun that reduced his pole-thin shadow to a sliver, is that Mr. Weiner loves this part of the game. He is a tireless retail politician.“You guys vote yet?” he asked a passing couple.“We’re not from here.”“Maybe someday!” he replied.He recalls running for the Council in 1991 and has pictures of himself that year, looking gaunt and strung out.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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      6 Months After the Pelicot Trial, a Staging Brings Insight and Despair

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      The stripped-back performance, based on the rape trial that shocked France and the world, ran all night at a church in Vienna.It was a case that shook France. Last December, the husband of Gisèle Pelicot was convicted of drugging and assaulting her for over a decade, and for inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.Now, just six months later, the trial has already inspired a work of theater — in Vienna, as part of the city’s prestigious Festwochen festival. On Wednesday, the Swiss director Milo Rau, who has led the event since 2023, and the French dramaturg Servane Dècle presented “The Pelicot Trial,” a seven-hour reading of excerpts from the French legal proceedings and of interviews and commentary related to the case.It was a long night at the Church of St. Elisabeth, a red brick Roman Catholic church in a southern district of Vienna. The sun was setting when the audience went in at 9 p.m., filling the pews to capacity. When the final words were spoken, at around 4:15 a.m., sunrise was near, and only around 30 people remained.In a joint interview before the performance, Rau and Dècle said the wide range of material involved, with sections delving into history, philosophy and biology, was intended to dispel any notion that Pelicot’s story was an isolated event. “It’s an example of patriarchal violence,” Rau said. “The more we dive into it, the more we see that it’s the tip of the iceberg.”Rau has a long history of bringing trials to the stage. In “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” Rau reenacted the 1989 legal proceedings against the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife. In “The Congo Tribunal” and “The Moscow Trials,” he created mock criminal courts to analyze real political events.Gisèle Pelicot at the courthouse in Avignon, France, last December, when her husband was convicted of drugging and assaulting her for over a decade.Miguel Medina/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe 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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      The House Next Door Has Black Mold. Do I Tell Potential Tenants?

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      The issue was serious enough to cause health issues for the previous residents.My wife and I live in a neighborhood of single-family homes, most of which are owner-occupied. The home next door, however, is rented out by an absentee landlord. We became friendly with the previous tenants, who moved out very abruptly a couple of weeks ago. We learned from them that the house is infested with black mold, as identified by a professional testing company, and they shared the results with us. The mold issue was serious enough to cause health issues for the previous tenants. To our knowledge, the landlord has done nothing to mitigate this issue, and now he has listed the house for rent again. Our concern is that we’ve seen families with small children looking at the house. We believe that we might be in legal jeopardy if we were to inform prospective tenants about the mold issue, but what is our moral obligation? — Name WithheldFrom the Ethicist:In the late 1990s, Stachybotrys chartarum — sometimes dubbed “toxic black mold” — became the subject of national alarm, with news stories linking it to devastating health effects. Much of that panic was later walked back after scientific review. Still, people with allergies can experience a stuffy or runny nose and the like from mold exposure, while for people with asthma, compromised immune systems or simply bad luck, mold exposure can be genuinely harmful. In children, mold exposure has been associated with an increased risk of developing asthma. In every state, a landlord implicitly promises that a rental property is habitable. What counts as “habitable” varies by jurisdiction, but a serious mold problem most likely violates that standard.If the previous tenants shared their testing results with you, try to get a copy, if you haven’t already. You’ll want to satisfy to yourself, too, that the company doing the mold inspection is on the up-and-up; notoriously, there can be a conflict of interest when the people doing the inspections are also in the remediation business. (“In most cases, if visible mold growth is present, sampling is unnecessary,” the E.P.A. advises, while the C.D.C. flatly says that it “does not recommend mold testing,” noting that “there are no set standards for what is and what is not an acceptable quantity of different kinds of mold in a home.”) Assuming the problem has been correctly identified, you might write the landlord, asking whether the issue has been addressed, and sharing your health concerns.If you’re convinced that the danger remains, you could share the documentation with the agent listing this rental property. Realtors have their own ethical and legal obligations: If they believe the home is uninhabitable, they can’t simply let tenants assume the risk. And they’re unlikely to want to expose themselves to legal jeopardy for concealing a defect. (Disclosing facts shouldn’t expose you to legal jeopardy, but that’s a question for a lawyer.)You’re not under a moral obligation to act, and you wouldn’t be wrong to stay out of it. But this is the kind of gesture that, when well-informed, can make the world a little better. If a child were to suffer because no one spoke up, you might wish you had said something. If you were the one about to move in, you would want to know. A decent society depends, in part, on people who choose to help when they don’t strictly have to.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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      Inside the Jury Room at the Weinstein Trial, Rancor and Recrimination

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      As the panelists deliberated over whether the former Hollywood mogul should be convicted of sex crimes for a second time in Manhattan, accusations began to fly.Inside the jury room at the second New York sex crime trial of Harvey Weinstein, things were getting tense.The 12 jurors had already acquitted the former Hollywood mogul on one felony sex crime charge, and they had begun to deliberate on a second when the discussions suddenly turned pointed, and personal.One juror, who had been calm and had even prayed with the others, abruptly began accusing another of having been “bought out” by Mr. Weinstein or his lawyers.The moment, which occurred on the second day of deliberations in a case that was brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office after its earlier sex crime conviction against Mr. Weinstein was overturned, foreshadowed the rancor and dysfunction that would ultimately consume the panel, leading it to deadlock on Thursday over the question of whether Mr. Weinstein raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013.This account of what occurred in the jury room is based on interviews with several jurors, particularly one panelist who came forward twice to voice concerns to the judge about the behavior of his fellow jurors.That panelist, juror No. 7, described the interactions as having grown increasingly contentious and marked by personal attacks.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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      Interpol Arrests 20 Over Network That Distributed Child Sex Abuse Material

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      The international sweep included arrests in 12 countries across Europe and the Americas. The agency said there were also dozens of other suspects.Twenty people in Europe, the United States and South America have been arrested as part of an investigation into an international network that produced and distributed child sexual abuse material, Interpol said on Friday. The policing organization said the network was also thought to extend to Asia and the Pacific region.The arrests, which took place in 12 countries, were the result of a cross-border inquiry in which investigators tracked the illegal material online to people who viewed or downloaded it, according to Interpol.The sweep made public by Interpol on Friday included arrests in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Italy, Paraguay, Portugal, Spain and the United States. It also led investigators to 68 other suspects in 28 countries, including the Americas, Asia, Europe and Oceania, according to Interpol and the Spanish police.The investigation began last year in Spain, where officers from the national police force’s specialized cyberpatrols came across suspicious instant messaging groups, the Spanish police said in a statement on Friday. The police said the online groups had been set up exclusively to distribute images of child sexual exploitation.As the authorities in Spain became aware that the network behind the online messaging forums was international, they began to work with the Interpol, where investigators broadened the operation to South America, Interpol said.In the arrests announced on Friday, the police in Spain said they had detained seven people in five provinces, and seized cellphones, computers and storage devices. Investigators found that in some cases, those suspected of viewing or downloading the illegal images worked with children.In Seville in southern Spain, the police arrested a schoolteacher whom they accused of being in possession of exploitative images and belonging to several chat groups through which the illegal material was distributed.In Barcelona Province, the police arrested a health worker who treated children; the police said that he was suspected of paying minors in Eastern Europe for sexually explicit images.The police said that one man who was arrested in the town of El Masnou in Barcelona Province had downloaded a messaging app to watch the illegal material and later deleted the app to hide his activities from his family.In Latin America, officers arrested a teacher in Panama and 12 other people in countries across the region, Interpol said. More

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      What Diddy’s Defenders Ignore

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      Earlier this month, when I searched on TikTok for Casandra (Cassie) Ventura’s testimony in the federal sex trafficking trial against Sean Combs, one of the first autocomplete suggestions was “cassie is a liar diddy.”Ventura is not on trial. She is considered to be the government’s star witness in the racketeering conspiracy case against Combs. There are many other high-profile witnesses who testified to Combs’s violence, including the rapper Kid Cudi, who briefly dated Ventura, and Dawn Richard, who is a former member of the group Danity Kane. The entire world saw hotel surveillance video depicting Combs physically assaulting Ventura that was obtained by CNN, and Combs paid Ventura an eight-figure settlement after she sued him for sex trafficking and sexual assault in 2023.Ventura would seem to be a trustworthy witness to her own experience. Yet social media commentators have been trying to undermine public support for her and, by extension, cast doubt on the question of Combs’s culpability. These influencers tend to present some of Ventura’s comments to Combs out of the larger context of his alleged abuse, preying on a public that is poorly informed about sexual assault and domestic violence.During cross-examination, Combs’s lawyers had Ventura read text messages where she seemed to be responding enthusiastically to some sexual encounters that Combs planned. But Ventura testified that she felt coerced into this behavior, and it would make sense that she was trying to placate him; for example, she said that Combs threatened to release videos he recorded of their sex acts if she refused his demands.Combs’s defenders do not seem to care about this context. For example, on X, Andrew Tate, the manosophere influencer who has over 10 million followers and whose tagline is “I think women are dumb,” called Ventura a gendered slur, went after her husband and claimed, “No victims. Only volunteers.” (British prosecutors authorized 10 charges, including rape and human trafficking, against Tate this week, adding to his international legal troubles.)The basic line from most of the anti-Cassie content is that maybe she was beaten up — they have to concede that because of the hotel video — but she’s lying about the rest of it, because she’s a vindictive, bitter, money-grubbing ex trying to bring a successful man down.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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      Manhunt Underway for Former Police Chief Imprisoned for Murder and Rape

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      Grant Hardin, 56, escaped on Sunday from a high-security prison in Arkansas, where he was serving a decades-long sentence for first-degree murder and rape.A manhunt was underway in northern Arkansas after a former police chief convicted of first-degree murder and rape slipped out of a high-security prison, dressed in a fake law enforcement uniform.Grant Hardin, 56, who had previously served as the police chief in Gateway, Ark., escaped from the Calico Rock North Central Unit around 2:50 p.m. on Sunday, county officials said. He is considered extremely dangerous.An image released by the Stone County Sheriff’s Office on its Facebook page shows what it says is Mr. Hardin wearing clothes similar to a law enforcement uniform, escaping through a controlled gate while pushing a cart of utility materials.“It has been determined that Hardin was wearing a makeshift outfit designed to mimic law enforcement when he escaped the North Central Unit. He was not wearing a Department of Corrections uniform, and all DOC-issued equipment has been accounted for,” Rand Champion, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Corrections, said in a statement.Mr. Hardin was briefly the police chief in Gateway, a small town near the Missouri border. He held several other law enforcement positions in the state beginning in the 1990s, including as an elected constable, according to public records and local news reports. He was terminated multiple times, and was trailed by reports of using excessive force, poor performance and, in one instance, falsifying a police report, according to local news media.In 2017, Mr. Hardin was arrested and charged with shooting James Appleton just outside Gateway, where Mr. Appleton worked in the water department. According to the police affidavit, Mr. Appleton was pulled over in a pickup truck while he was on the phone with his brother-in-law, then was shot in the head at point-blank range with a shotgun.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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      Susan Brownmiller, Who Reshaped Views About Rape, Dies at 90

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      Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist whose book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape” helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence, died on Saturday. She was 90.Alix Shulman, a longtime friend, confirmed Ms. Brownmiller’s death at a hospital in New York, which she said came after a long illness.“Against Our Will,” published in 1975, was translated into a dozen languages and ranked by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.Among other things, it offered the first comprehensive history of rape across the centuries, starting with ancient Babylon, and examined its use as a wartime military tactic to further subjugate the losing side.The book’s publication — along with real-time reports of mass rape in war-ravaged Bangladesh — joined a tide of events that were reshaping society’s attitude toward rape.The ascendant women’s movement was already opening the public’s eyes about sexual violence. Anti-rape groups had started to form in the early 1970s. Groundbreaking works like “Our Bodies, Ourselves” (1971) were empowering women to take control of their bodies and their sexuality. When “Against Our Will” arrived, the country seemed ready to grapple with its implications.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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      Up Next at the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Trial: Dawn Richard and Former Employees

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      After four days with Casandra Ventura, known as Cassie, on the stand, prosecutors will be seeking to corroborate her testimony with additional witnesses.As the second week of Sean Combs’s racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking trial begins, the first witness is set to be Dawn Richard, a singer in two music groups backed by Mr. Combs who says she saw him physically abuse his former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura.A performer in the now-defunct groups Danity Kane and Diddy — Dirty Money, Ms. Richard began her testimony on Friday, recalling an incident from 2009 in which she said Mr. Combs attempted to hit Ms. Ventura, known as the singer Cassie, with a skillet, then punched and kicked her.“She went into fetal position — you could see she was literally trying to hide her face or her head,” Ms. Richard testified. She also said that Mr. Combs threatened her and a bandmate to keep silent about the event, saying he told them that “where he comes from, people go missing if they say things like that, if they talk.”Ms. Richard filed a lawsuit against Mr. Combs last year, shortly before he was arrested. She accused him in the suit of threatening her, groping her and flying into “frenzied, unpredictable rages” while he oversaw her career. The girl group Danity Kane was formed during the third iteration of Mr. Combs’s MTV reality show “Making the Band.”After the jury had been dismissed on Friday, a lawyer for Mr. Combs called Ms. Richard’s accusation of abuse from 2009 a “drop-dead lie,” noting that Ms. Ventura had not mentioned it during her four days on the witness stand.Ms. Richard is the first of a series of government witnesses scheduled for this week who are expected to testify about what they saw of Ms. Ventura’s 11-year on-and-off relationship with Mr. Combs.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