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‘Harry Potter' star Emma Watson banned from driving for six months

‘Harry Potter' star Emma Watson banned from driving for six months

Yahoo4 days ago
Former 'Harry Potter' star Emma Watson has been banned from driving for six months after being caught speeding.
The 35-year-old British actress and activist was clocked driving her blue Audi at 38 miles per hour in a 30-mph zone in Oxford, England, on the evening of July 31 last year.
She did not appear for the brief hearing at High Wycombe Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, where she was fined £1,044 ($1,400) and disqualified from driving, according to PA Media.
Shortly after Watson's case was heard, the court considered a separate speeding offense involving her former 'Harry Potter' co-star, Zoë Wanamaker.
The celebrated stage actress, who played Quidditch referee Madam Hooch in the franchise's first film, received the same sentence as Watson after she was caught driving at 46 mph in a 40 mph zone in Berkshire, southeast England in August last year, PA reported.
According to the news agency, both actresses had nine penalty points on their licenses before the speeding incidents occurred.
On Wednesday, District Judge Arvind Sharma endorsed three further points on their licenses for the latest offences, which triggered automatic six-month bans under UK law.
CNN has reached out to Watson's representatives for comment. A representative for Wanamaker declined to comment.
The parallel rulings mark a curious convergence for two actors whose careers once intersected in the halls of Hogwarts, and who now find themselves off the road at the same time.
Watson, who rose to global fame playing Hermione Granger across all eight 'Harry Potter' films, has since pursued a parallel path in academia, filmmaking and women's rights advocacy.
Her post-'Potter' screen work includes leading roles in 'Beauty and the Beast' and Greta Gerwig's 'Little Women.'
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Britain waves the white flag to Islamization and illegal immigration
Britain waves the white flag to Islamization and illegal immigration

New York Post

timean hour ago

  • New York Post

Britain waves the white flag to Islamization and illegal immigration

With almost every day that passes, Britain is progressively embracing its own destruction by groveling to its mortal foes and dumping big-time on its most loyal friends. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour government is increasingly surrendering to Islamization while presiding over a poisonous culture of antisemitism that's roaring out of control. For the past decade, more than 170,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the English Channel from France in small inflatable boats. Successive governments have failed to deal with this people-smuggling trade, which has provoked fury among the British public aghast at the unsustainable levels of immigration, both legal and illegal. Brits are also horrified by the impact of large numbers of Muslim migrants who refuse to integrate into British society. 4 Abu Wadei, a pro-Hamas Gazan, captured his arrival in Britain via the English Channel in a Facebook post. While most UK Muslims sign up to Western values, a very large minority do not. Of the 43,000 active terrorists on the books of security service MI5, some 90% are Muslim — a community that's a mere 6% of the population. And now the illegal immigrant trade poses an acute danger to British security. With MI5 issuing urgent warnings of an imminent threat of Iranian terrorism within Britain, there are indications the all-too-obvious risk of terrorists coming in across the Channel is real. In May, three Iranian men who arrived in Britain on small boats and a truck to claim asylum were charged with spying for Tehran. 4 Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, and Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, appear in May at Westminster Magistrates' Court after their arrests on spying charges. Julia Quenzler / SWNS In March, an Arab from Gaza who arrived in southern England on a small boat and posted on social-media support for Hamas and calls for the death of Jews was arrested and jailed after pleading guilty to attempting to enter Britain illegally. The UK TV station GB News revealed this month that cross-Channel smuggling gangs are marketing themselves with ISIS recruitment videos and execution footage on social media. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Courage Media reported a 'credible' intelligence source warns people-smuggling gangs are facilitating trained Islamic militants' passage across the Channel and have trafficked arms across Europe and into Britain. Intercepted 2015 telephone calls and letter correspondence between ISIS members divulged their ambition to use migrants in boats crossing the Mediterranean as a 'psychological weapon' against Europe. Britain already has an estimated 1.2 million illegal migrants, with one in every 13 people in London thought to be there illegally. Despite all this, Starmer's attempts to deal with the small-boats crisis have been feeble in the extreme. He just agreed a 'one migrant in, one migrant out' deal with French President Emmanuel Macron. This deal will reportedly be limited to just 50 illegal migrants a week, or 1.5% of all those who've arrived in Britain since the crisis began. On the very day the deal was agreed, some 573 illegal migrants landed on British shores in small boats from France. The Starmer-Macron agreement provoked ridicule and fury in equal measure among the British public as a hopelessly inadequate response to a national-security emergency. 4 Inflatable dinghies and outboard motors illegal migrants used to cross the English Channel from France are displayed in Dover. Getty Images This must be set in the context of the British state's craven response to the growing political power of British Muslims intent upon Islamizing British society. Britain commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 7/7 human-bomb attacks on the London Underground and a bus in which 52 people were murdered with wreaths laid and solemn speeches made. Yet no one — not the prime minister nor the king nor London Mayor Sadiq Khan — mentioned these were Islamist atrocities. Ludicrously, Starmer hailed 'the unity of Londoners in the face of terror,' saying 'those who tried to divide us failed.' But the bombers didn't try to divide Londoners. They tried to murder as many as possible and in the name of Islam. Starmer tries to pretend there are no divisions between Muslims and the rest of the public by shutting down all criticism of the Muslim world. Accordingly his government is busily working out ways to give the pseudo-offense of 'Islamophobia' real teeth. While seeking to stifle any mention of Islamist terror, the government is trying to criminalize those seeking to defend the British way of life. Thus an online training course hosted on the government's website for the anti-extremism body Prevent lists concern about mass migration as 'cultural nationalism' that could lead to an individual being referred to the deradicalization scheme for subscribing to a 'terrorist ideology.' Starmer has been much criticized for his reluctance to set up a national inquiry into the pimping gangs, composed overwhelmingly of Pakistani-heritage Muslims, that have kidnapped, raped, prostituted and otherwise abused thousands of very young white girls over the past two decades. Yet astoundingly, Muhbeen Hussain, who led a Muslim-community boycott of South Yorkshire police over its admission it had failed to act on rape-gang allegations 'because of fears of being called racist' — which he said attempted to 'scapegoat' Muslims — has been awarded the MBE, a prestigious national honor, for 'services to integration' and 'cohesion.' 4 London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Prime Minister Keir Starmer commemorate the 7/7 terror attacks. Getty Images Compare all this with the treatment meted out to Britain's inoffensive, law-abiding Jewish community, which is experiencing epidemic antisemitism that's off the scale. Lord Mann and Dame Penny Mordaunt, respectively a Labour and a Conservative politician, this month expressed deep shock in their government-backed report that antisemitism has become 'normalised' in middle-class Britain. The report, commissioned by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the country's largest Jewish-community organization, found antisemitism to be pervasive in the health service, universities and the arts. Mann and Mordaunt said what really scared them is 'the increasing normalisation of far more extreme, personalised and sometimes life-changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish.' Ever since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led atrocities against Israelis, British Jews have run a gauntlet of hatred, intimidation and attacks, both verbal and physical, as the direct result of incitement based on a systematic campaign of demonization and eye-watering falsehoods about Israel's behavior in Gaza. Through distortion, decontextualization and outright lies, Britain's media — led by the BBC and Sky — have channeled Hamas propaganda day in, day out. They have wickedly misrepresented Israel's just and agonizing war to defend itself against extermination and its attempts to safeguard as far as possible the lives of Gazan civilians being used as human shields and cannon fodder as genocide and war crimes. With Israelis being painted as diabolical child-killers, British Jews find themselves being personally accused of 'killing babies' and restaurants and pubs refusing to serve 'Zionists.' No other group is spoken of in such a vile manner. No other people is subjected to such profound and obsessional injustice. No other nation is told it has no right to its own country and its national-liberation movement is a source of evil. Yet instead of defending the country's Jews against this pre-pogrom incitement, the Starmer government has poured petrol on the flames by parroting the same Hamas lies about Israelis killing 'too many' civilians or depriving Gazans of food — this while Israel and America are providing millions of meals to Gazans for the first time receiving food aid that's not being stolen from them by Hamas. Starmer's behavior displays the dire effects of the alliance that's been forged between Western liberals and Islamist radicals. It's laying waste to America's Democratic Party and found its most alarming expression in Zohran Mamdani, the Islamist poised to become New York mayor. He too channels Hamas lies about Israel; he too will make his city's Jewish community more unsafe; he too will undermine America's security. Americans should gaze upon Britain and be warned. Melanie Phillips' latest book is 'The Builder's Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It.'

Request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts likely to disappoint, ex-prosecutors say
Request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts likely to disappoint, ex-prosecutors say

Hamilton Spectator

timean hour ago

  • Hamilton Spectator

Request to unseal Epstein grand jury transcripts likely to disappoint, ex-prosecutors say

NEW YORK (AP) — A Justice Department request to unseal grand jury transcripts in the prosecution of chronic sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend is unlikely to produce much, if anything, to satisfy the public's appetite for new revelations about the financier's crimes, former federal prosecutors say. Attorney Sarah Krissoff, an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan from from 2008 to 2021, called the request in the prosecutions of Epstein and imprisoned British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell 'a distraction.' ' The president is trying to present himself as if he's doing something here and it really is nothing,' Krissoff told The Associated Press in a weekend interview. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche made the request Friday, asking judges to unseal transcripts from grand jury proceedings that resulted in indictments against Epstein and Maxwell, saying 'transparency to the American public is of the utmost importance to this Administration.' The request came as the administration sought to contain the firestorm that followed its announcement that it would not be releasing additional files from the Epstein probe despite previously promising that it would. Epstein is dead while Maxwell serves a 20-year prison sentence Epstein killed himself at age 66 in his federal jail cell in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges, while Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed after her December 2021 sex trafficking conviction for luring girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. Krissoff and Joshua Naftalis, a Manhattan federal prosecutor for 11 years before entering private practice in 2023, said grand jury presentations are purposely brief. Naftalis said Southern District prosecutors present just enough to a grand jury to get an indictment but 'it's not going to be everything the FBI and investigators have figured out about Maxwell and Epstein.' 'People want the entire file from however long. That's just not what this is,' he said, estimating that the transcripts, at most, probably amount to a few hundred pages. 'It's not going to be much,' Krissoff said, estimating the length at as little as 60 pages 'because the Southern District of New York's practice is to put as little information as possible into the grand jury.' 'They basically spoon feed the indictment to the grand jury. That's what we're going to see,' she said. 'I just think it's not going to be that interesting. ... I don't think it's going to be anything new.' Ex-prosecutors say grand jury transcript unlikely to be long Both ex-prosecutors said that grand jury witnesses in Manhattan are usually federal agents summarizing their witness interviews. That practice might conflict with the public perception of some state and federal grand jury proceedings, where witnesses likely to testify at a trial are brought before grand juries during lengthy proceedings prior to indictments or when grand juries are used as an investigatory tool. In Manhattan, federal prosecutors 'are trying to get a particular result so they present the case very narrowly and inform the grand jury what they want them to do,' Krissoff said. Krissoff predicted that judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases will reject the government's request. With Maxwell, a petition is before the U.S. Supreme Court so appeals have not been exhausted. With Epstein, the charges are related to the Maxwell case and the anonymity of scores of victims who have not gone public is at stake, although Blanche requested that victim identities be protected. 'This is not a 50-, 60-, 80-year-old case,' Krissoff noted. 'There's still someone in custody.' Appeals court's 1997 ruling might matter She said citing 'public intrigue, interest and excitement' about a case was likely not enough to convince a judge to release the transcripts despite a 1997 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that said judges have wide discretion and that public interest alone can justify releasing grand jury information. Krissoff called it 'mind-blowingly strange' that Washington Justice Department officials are increasingly directly filing requests and arguments in the Southern District of New York, where the prosecutor's office has long been labeled the 'Sovereign District of New York' for its independence from outside influence. 'To have the attorney general and deputy attorney general meddling in an SDNY case is unheard of,' she said. Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor and Fordham Law School criminal law professor, said judges who presided over the Epstein and Maxwell cases may take weeks or months to rule. 'Especially here where the case involved witnesses or victims of sexual abuse, many of which are underage, the judge is going to be very cautious about what the judge releases,' she said. Tradition of grand jury secrecy might block release of transcripts Bader said she didn't see the government's quest aimed at satisfying the public's desire to explore conspiracy theories 'trumping — pardon the pun — the well-established notions of protecting the secrecy of the grand jury process.' 'I'm sure that all the line prosecutors who really sort of appreciate the secrecy and special relationship they have with the grand jury are not happy that DOJ is asking the court to release these transcripts,' she added. Mitchell Epner, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice, called Trump's comments and influence in the Epstein matter 'unprecedented' and 'extraordinarily unusual' because he is a sitting president. He said it was not surprising that some former prosecutors are alarmed that the request to unseal the grand jury materials came two days after the firing of Manhattan Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey, who worked on the Epstein and Maxwell cases. 'If federal prosecutors have to worry about the professional consequences of refusing to go along with the political or personal agenda of powerful people, then we are in a very different place than I've understood the federal Department of Justice to be in over the last 30 years of my career,' he said. Krissoff said the uncertain environment that has current prosecutors feeling unsettled is shared by government employees she speaks with at other agencies as part of her work in private practice. 'The thing I hear most often is this is a strange time. Things aren't working the way we're used to them working,' she said. ___ Associated Press Writers Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report Error! 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