Latest news with #Popescu
Sunday World
2 days ago
- Sunday World
Romanian man accused of sex assault deemed ‘flight risk' and refused bail
Defence counsel Katriona Keenan had she urged the court to 'give him a chance' A Romanian man who had to be extradited from the Republic to face an allegation of sexual assault, was refused bail today. Mihai Popescu appeared at Belfast Magistrates Court by video link from HMP Maghaberry where the 41-year-old applied for bail. Popescu, listed as 'current address unknown,' faces charges of sexual assault and handling stolen goods, namely the complainant's mobile phone, between 18-20 April 2019. A detective told the court it was in the early hours of 20 April 2019 when police 'received a report that a 24-year-old female had been raped.' Officers attended an address in the city and found the complainant 'extremely upset,' he said. The alleged victim recounted how she had gone back to her friend's address but because she was so tired, 'she went to bed and went straight to sleep.' Sometime later, 'she awoke to feel her trousers pulled down and a hand rubbing at the top of her leg,' said the officer, adding that 'before police arrived, she said that one of the males had taken her mobile phone.' Police rang the phone 'to try to ascertain where the phone was, a male with a foreign accent answered the phone, swore and hung up.' The victim was taken to the rape enquiry centre and endured a medical examination before recording an Achieving Best Evidence video interview with detectives. The court heard that Popescu was arrested as he matched the description of the alleged assailant, and when he was searched, officers found the complainant's stolen mobile phone. Having been interviewed by police, Popescu was freed on police bail pending further enquires and forensics examinations, 'but he failed to return.' 'We ascertained that he had left the country in breach of bail conditions,' said the officer, adding that extradition proceedings were then initiated. He told the court police were objecting to bail because 'obviously, he poses a flight risk…he was out of the country for approximately four years.' Submitting that Popescu could be granted bail with conditions, defence counsel Katriona Keenan explained how the defendant's home had been damaged. 'Police attended and told them to leave the area and at that stage, they had no jobs and no money so they went to their family home but came back around a year later,' said the barrister. Revealing that Popescu was in Belfast for a time, Miss Keenan said that since then, the couple had settled in Dublin where they both worked. Although she urged the court to 'give him a chance,' Deputy District Judge Alan White told her: 'I hear what you say but the fact remains, he was extradited.' 'He has had four or five years to hand himself in and even though he came back, he did not hand himself in,' said the judge. Refusing bail and remanding Popescu back into custody until 21 August, Judge White told the court, 'in my view he remains a flight risk.'
Belfast Telegraph
25-06-2025
- Belfast Telegraph
Man extradited to NI from Germany on human trafficking charge remanded into custody
Adrian Vasile Popescu (40) is also accused of being involved in transferring nearly £5,000 worth of criminal property. Popescu, with a previous address at Damascus Street in Belfast, was detained at Forstinning near Munich last month under an international arrest warrant. Police have been seeking the Romanian national to stand trial for alleged offences dating back to October 2017. He appeared at Belfast Magistrates' Court today after the extradition process was completed. Popescu faces a charge of trafficking a woman with a view to her exploitation, and two counts of aiding and abetting the transfer of criminal property to the value of £4,735. Defence solicitor Karl McKenna told the court his client was not seeking bail because no suitable address is available. Remanding Popescu in custody until July 22, District Judge Steven Keown indicated that a date for preliminary enquiry could be listed at that stage.
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
UTA Agent Chloe Popescu Joins Oscar de la Renta As New Chief Marketing Officer
Oscar de la Renta has named former UTA agent Chloe Popescu as their new Chief Marketing Officer. In her new position, Popescu will be responsible for the brand's marketing and content strategy, partnerships and new category previously led Brand Consulting for UTA's Luxury practice. More from Deadline 'The Queen's Gambit' Actor Bill Camp Signs With UTA UTA Signs Cannes Best Actor Winner Caleb Landry Jones Michael Douglas, Channing Dungey, Greg Berlanti, Steve Levitan & Many More Offer Jay Sures Support After Protesters Vandalize UTA Chief's Home The newly created position of Chief Marketing Officer was designed to bring Popescu's talents in-house after the agent's successful partnership when it came to consulting for the brand. UTA's fashion and luxury divisions represents creative directors, models, and cultural icons – as well as brands across luxury fashion, beauty and hospitality. Popescu helped grow the division into a competitive force in the luxury space. Throughout her decade long career at UTA, Popescu led brand consulting for Byredo, Toteme, Baccarat, the OTB portfolio (Jil Sander, Marni, Margiela), MONSE, Oscar de la Renta and PS The Private Suite, among others. Popescu's expertise includes building original marketing programs (both b2b and b2b2c), relationship building, business development, strategic brand partnerships and talent acquisition. 'Over the last several years, we have focused on telling our brand story, our way, directly to our customers,' said Oscar de La Renta CEO, Alex Bolen in a statement. 'Chloe has brought tremendous creativity and clear-thinking to the development of our strategies. We are thrilled that she has joined us to now execute them.' Says Popescu, 'I am looking forward to working with Alex Bolen and the incredible team at Oscar de La Renta. The expansion of the brand's connection to culture and content is uniquely exciting, not solely for me in this new role but most importantly for the ODLR customer.' Prior to UTA, Popescu was an agent at WME. New York-based luxury goods icon Oscar de la Renta was established in 1965, and encompasses a full line of women's accessories, bridal and fragrance in addition to its internationally renowned women's ready-to-wear collection. Best of Deadline 'Severance' Season 2 Release Schedule: When Do New Episodes Land On Apple TV+? 'Captain America: Brave New World' Primer: What To Remember Ahead Of The First Marvel Film Of 2025 The 25 Highest-Grossing Animated Films Of All Time At The Box Office
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
UTA Agent Chloe Popescu Named Oscar de la Renta Chief Marketing Officer
UTA agent Chloe Popescu has been named chief marketing officer at Oscar de la Renta. In her newly created role, Popescu will split her time between New York and Los Angeles and focus on brand management, content strategy, partnerships and new category development. During her 10-year run at UTA, Popescu led the brand consulting practice where she worked with clients like Byredo, Toteme, Baccarat, Monse, The Private Suite and de la Renta, among other popular brands. Marketing, talent acquisition and strategic brand partnerships were her purview, helping embed companies into important cultural moments in media. More from Variety WME's Caitlin Mahony, Agent Behind SenLinYu's 'Alchemised' and Callie Hart's 'Quicksilver,' Talks Rise of Romantasy Amid Promotion to Partner (EXCLUSIVE) UTA Promotes 114 Employees Across Company UTA Names Cassandra Bujarski Chief Communications Officer 'Over the last several years, we have focused on telling our brand story, our way, directly to our customers,' Oscar de la Renta CEO Alex Bolen said. 'Chloe has brought tremendous creativity and clear-thinking to the development of our strategies. We are thrilled that she has joined us to now execute them.' Before her time at UTA, Popescu was an agent at WME. In a statement, Popescu said she was 'looking forward to working with Alex Bolen and the incredible team at Oscar de la Renta. The expansion of the brand's connection to culture and content is uniquely exciting, not solely for me in this new role, but most importantly for the ODLR customer.' Oscar de la Renta is a leading luxury goods firm based in New York that focuses on full lines of women's accessories, bridal and fragrance. Since the company was established in 1965, they have focused on making 'women look and feel extraordinary.' Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Grammy Predictions, From Beyoncé to Kendrick Lamar: Who Will Win? Who Should Win? What's Coming to Netflix in February 2025 Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Bad Could Trump's Assault on Public Health Get?
Five years after a novel virus rocked the world, killed millions, and continues to sicken people, amidst ongoing outbreaks of bird flu and mpox and tuberculosis, public health and scientific research are being gutted in America—and it's happening more quickly than even experts thought possible. In its first days, the Trump administration ordered a communications blackout for all U.S. health agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). For some departments and agencies, the order amounted to a shutdown. Trump officials have attempted to halt all meetings, travel, and external communication, and the agencies are exercising extreme scrutiny over all publications, including the revered Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), which alerts the world to new and ongoing outbreaks and other major health issues. The NIH shut down new research projects—a multi-billion-dollar industry with deep economic implications across the nation—unless they are 'mission critical.' Employees at the CDC and NIH were told on Friday they can't even buy basic supplies to continue their work. The CDC was ordered on Sunday night to immediately stop working with the World Health Organization (WHO), in an apparent breach of the one-year notice required to leave the organization. Trump also signed orders to halt global health funding immediately, reinstate a gag order on abortion among global partners, and attempt to define gender in a way that excludes trans and intersex people. On Tuesday, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management offered federal workers a buyout: salary paid until September 30 for anyone who resigns before February 6—a tempting offer for those who already fear for their jobs, but one that could leave some agencies barely functional. (That's if the buyouts even hold up, since it's not clear the administration is allowed to make such an offer.) 'This is less than a week into it all,' Saskia Popescu, assistant professor of epidemiology and public health at University of Maryland School of Medicine, told me over the weekend. As millions wait to see whether the communications and funding restrictions are lifted, the halts are already having significant implications for those who work in public health and research. 'I have friends already being let go,' Popescu said. At the health agencies, staffers are holding their breaths to see if their jobs or contracts are cut. 'I'm deeply concerned we're going to entirely scrap so much of the funding for this work, that there's virtually nothing left,' she said. When Popescu decided to enter the field of public health, she knew the difficult, often underpaid work was vulnerable to political interference. But she never expected an attack of this scale—and speed. The people Trump has nominated to lead these agencies haven't even been confirmed by the Senate yet, which means the greatest changes may be yet to come. 'I did not expect the current changes. I thought the issue will be if and after Kennedy is confirmed,' Dorit Reiss, professor at UC Hastings College of Law, told me—referring to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's strongly anti-vaccine pick for head of Health and Human Services. The sheer speed and breadth of the changes already witnessed has astonished many in the field. It's a seismic disruption to life in the United States, with immense immediate and long-term risks. And there could be more on the the health agencies went dark, those who work within were just as confused as those on the outside. The halt on communications was especially bewildering. 'That's what we do, we communicate with the public about health matters,' said one HHS contractor who asked for anonymity given the communications restrictions. The MMWR, for example, offered the first warning of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, revealing an unusual cluster of infections in gay men back in 1981. The weekly chronicle is one of the most respected research publications in the world. When the Trump White House, during the first administration, sought to control the publication, the scientific community objected loudly: If the MMWR is compromised, how can the public trust anything agencies say? Yet now, the MMWR's message hasn't been altered so much as silenced entirely, and for an indeterminate amount of time. Last week, a planned issue including an update on the bird flu outbreak was spiked, and it's not clear when publication will resume. The ban has also thrown meetings between federal officials and regional, state, and local health departments into question, the contractor said. 'Can I do any support work when a health department has a question? It's unknown.' It's also not clear how HHS would communicate the emergence or intensification of an outbreak, since publications like the MMWR are a major avenue for doing so, they said. 'But like I said, the directive was so poorly communicated, no one knows what we're allowed to say or do.' Even internal communications are truncated, because the potential for having those conversations revealed through the Freedom of Information Act looms over every interaction. The atmosphere is grim and terrified. 'Most of us get into this work because we want to help people,' the contractor said, and 'this is more than just a job. So this is hard for a lot of us.'These striking moves in the administration's opening days have left people questioning attempts during the transition period to downplay nominees' radicalism and quell panic about possibly public health disruptions. Brown University School of Public Health dean Ashish Jha raised eyebrows two days before the inauguration when he argued, with numerous inaccuracies, that while leaving the WHO entirely would be the wrong choice, Trump allies were right to want to pressure the organization into 'reforms.' When Trump nominated RFK Jr. to oversee HHS in November, multiple news stories insisted that he would not be able to ban or take away vaccines, highlighted Kennedy's recent de-escalation in rhetoric, or reported reassurances from Trump himself that vaccines wouldn't be touched. (Further reporting revealed that he could, in fact, strip protections from vaccine-makers, effectively undermining the market.) The main question now is how far Kennedy will go, Politico reported on Friday: Will he limit or ban vaccines, or will he only undermine confidence and undertake lengthy, expensive studies on disproven theories? One source told Politico that Kennedy's anti-vax base is angling for him to 'totally take away vaccines.' They're also clamoring to replace or entirely disband vaccine advisory committees, change or remove routine childhood vaccination recommendations, and gut legal protections for vaccine-makers. 'I can say that Kennedy has been aggressively anti-vaccine for twenty years, that that is where he put his efforts, that is where his heart seems to be, and that is unlikely to change—he is an anti-vaccine zealot, and will do what harm he can to the vaccination program,' said Reiss.'I certainly expect him to aggressively target vaccines, which is why I hope he won't be confirmed,' Kennedy's confirmation hearing starts on Wednesday. While Kennedy is still reportedly considering his options on vaccines, his approach to infectious disease seems unchanged. 'We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years,' Kennedy has said, talking about research done at NIH. He already seems to be proving true to his word: Last week, he skipped the meeting where Trump transition officials and Cabinet nominees planned how to respond to crises—including new pandemics. On Tuesday, the portals for Medicaid in all 50 states went down as officials implemented a new ban on federal grants and loans. The program covers 70 million Americans—but if any of them were concerned about what was going on, they wouldn't find any answers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is still under the communications blackout. Its news releases haven't been updated since January 17.
