crime

By Andrew Dalton | Associated Press LOS ANGELES — A woman has sued director Roman Polanski, alleging he raped her in his home when she was a minor in 1973. The woman aired the allegations, which the 90-year-old Polanski has denied, in a news conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred, on Tuesday. The account is similar to the still-unresolved Los Angeles criminal sexual assault case that prompted Polanski in 1978 to flee to Europe, where he has remained since. The woman who filed the civil lawsuit said she went to dinner…

Andrey Kurkov’s latest novel to be translated into English, The Silver Bone, has begins in dramatic fashion. Its hero, Samson Kolechko, is walking in the streets of revolutionary Kyiv. It is the spring of 1919. Suddenly, two Russian Cossacks appear. They chop off his ear with a sabre before riding off. “Hot blood poured down his cheek and seeped under his collar,” Kurkov writes. Samson’s unfortunate father is cut down and killed.The severed right ear – recovered and placed in a tin – plays a central role in Kurkov’s…

Late 90s and early 00s cinema wasn’t all bad, but it was responsible for a crop of particularly dismal crime flicks. Including pictures such as the now notorious Rancid Aluminium, these were painfully contrived and agonisingly ironic winks to camera, made by film-makers who watched the movies of Tarantino and the Coen brothers and figured, how hard can it be? So it’s disappointing that Ethan Coen’s solo directorial outing (his brother Joel having already ventured out alone with the sombre, stylised The Tragedy of Macbeth)…

In his years as a US federal agent, Tigran Gambaryan helped to lead landmark investigations that took down cryptocurrency thieves and money launderers, dark-web drug dealers, and even crypto-funded child exploitation networks. Now, in his post-government role at the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, he has become the target himself of a very different sort of federal crypto crackdown: For the past two weeks, he and another Binance executive have been detained against their will by Nigerian officials.Since February 26,…

John Barnett, a former quality control engineer at Boeing who—just last week—testified against the company as part of a whistleblower retaliation lawsuit, has been found dead, the BBC reports.The M3 MacBook Airs are as Good as Ever, and That’s the ProblemBarnett, 62, who previously worked for Boeing for three decades and retired from the company in 2017, was found at his motel in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday. The local coroner’s office says Barnett appears to have died as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot.…

Two teenage boys from Miami, Florida, were arrested in December for allegedly creating and sharing AI-generated nude images of male and female classmates without consent, according to police reports obtained by WIRED via public record request.The arrest reports say the boys, aged 13 and 14, created the images of the students who were “between the ages of 12 and 13.”The Florida case appears to be the first arrests and criminal charges as a result of alleged sharing of AI-generated nude images to come to light. The boys…

A broadcaster who identifies as the “world’s first transgender newsreader” reported J.K. Rowling to British police over “hateful” comments the author made on social media, sparking debate on misgendering issues and women’s rights.British police said that on Thursday (March 7), they had received a complaint from India Willoughby, who often uses her platform to advocate for trans rights, alleging J.K. Rowling had committed a hate crime for misgendering her.Willoughby made the accusation after Rowling posted on X (formerly…

San Francisco made history in 2019 when its Board of Supervisors voted to ban city agencies including the police department from using face recognition. About two dozen other US cities have since followed suit. But on Tuesday San Francisco voters appeared to turn against the idea of restricting police technology, backing a ballot proposition that will make it easier for city police to deploy drones and other surveillance tools.Proposition E passed with 60 percent of the vote and was backed by San Francisco Mayor London…

The question of whether Luc Besson has got his groove back is only going to annoy those who dispute any former groove-ownership. Besson himself might contend that box office success is in any case the sole criterion for assessing groove. At all events, this bizarre and macabre drama-thriller is watchable and Caleb Landry Jones gives an oddly engaging performance as Douglas Munrow, a wheelchair-using “Dogman”, questioned by police psychologist Evelyn (Jojo T Gibbs) after being arrested in full drag gear, smeared with…

Born in 2000 in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Chukwuebuka Ibeh is the product of a well-deserved American MFA studentship, the ultimate finishing school for new authors who want to attain – as Ibeh does with this first novel – a blend of the particular and the universal, glossing traditional storytelling with a literary finesse that adds style without scaring the horses.Blessings is the poignant tale of a talented and sensitive Nigerian boy, Obiefuna, who is caught by his conservative father in a clinch with another young man.…