Movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is accused of groping a 22-year-old Italian model he met at the red-carpet premiere of his Radio City "New York Spring Spectacular."

The model told cops that the Oscar-winning Hollywood producer sexually abused her after coaxing her to his Manhattan office on the pretext of talking business, sources told the Daily News.

The woman informed cops that Weinstein, a married 63-year-old father of five, groped her breasts and reached up her skirt around 6 p.m. Friday in his third-floor office at the Tribeca Film Center on Greenwich St., sources said.

"He asked if her breasts were real before touching them," a police source said. "She asked him to stop, and he put his hand up her skirt. He asked for a kiss; she responded 'No.'"

Once the model left Weinstein's office, she called a friend and described what happened, another police source said. The friend took her to the 9th Precinct stationhouse in the East Village, and officers there drove her to the 1st Precinct station in Tribeca to report the incident.

Since the depths of the last recession, the price of ground beef in the United States has doubled. Has your paycheck doubled since then? Even though the Federal Reserve insists that we are in a "low inflation" environment, the government's own numbers show that the price of ground beef has been on an unprecedented run over the past six years. In early 2009, the average price of a pound of ground beef was hovering near 2 dollars. In February, it hit a brand new all-time record high of $4.238 per pound. Even just 12 months ago, the price of ground beef was sitting at $3.555 per pound. So we are talking about a huge increase. And this hits American families where they really live. Each year, the average American consumes approximately 270 pounds of meat. The only nation in the world that eats more meat than we do is Luxembourg. If the paychecks of American workers were going up fast enough to deal with this increase, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But of course that is not happening. In an article just last week, I showed that real median household income is a couple thousand dollars lower now than it was during the depths of the last recession. The middle class is being squeezed, and we are rapidly getting to the point where burgers are going to be considered a "luxury" item.

The following chart was posted by the Economic Policy Journal on Wednesday, and it incorporates the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When I first saw it, I was rather stunned. I knew that the price of ground beef had become rather outrageous in my local grocery stores, but I had no idea just how much damage had been done over the past six years...

The biggest reason why the price of ground beef has been going up is the fact that the U.S. cattle herd has been shrinking. It shrunk seven years in a row, and on January 1st, 2014 it was the smallest that it had been since 1951.

The good news is that the decline appears to have stopped, at least for the moment. According to the Wall Street Journal, the size of the U.S. cattle herd actually increased by 1 percent last year...

The U.S. cattle herd expanded in 2014 for the first time in eight years, offering hope to consumers that beef prices could start to subside after soaring to a series of records.

The nation's cattle supply increased 1% in the year through Jan. 1 to 89.8 million head, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Agriculture Department, reversing a steady decline fueled by prolonged drought in the southern U.S. Great Plains and industry consolidation that encouraged many ranchers to thin herds.

But an increase of 1 percent is just barely going to keep up with the official population growth rate. If you factor in illegal immigration, we are still losing ground.

A dating website that helps people in the United Kingdom engage in extramarital affairs says that most of its members are of the Christian faith.

The website IllicitEncounters.com said there are more than ten Christian adulterers for every one atheist.

"It's incredibly ironic that atheists are more faithful than Christians," Claire Page, spokesperson for IllicitEncounters, said. "It proves the argument that what some people perceive as immoral - like adultery - isn't increased by the lack of spiritual guidance. If the only reason you don't kill someone, or steal, or covet thy neighbor's wife, is because it tells you not to in the Bible, to me, that's a lot more worrying."

"To me, that says you can't think for yourself what is right and wrong. Besides, for us and our 987,000 customers, we don't look at affairs like most people do. There are many reasons people have affairs, it's not as black and white as some people think."

The website conducted a survey of its members, and found only 6 percent described themselves as atheists, while 64 percent classified themselves as Christian.

A Canton woman is accused of stabbing her boyfriend because he ate all of their salsa.

Phyllis D. Jefferson, 50, is charged with felonious assault, a second-degree felony, and a misdemeanor count of criminal damaging. She is scheduled for an appearance Monday in Akron Municipal Court.

Jefferson complained about 5:30 p.m. to her 61-year-old boyfriend that he was eating all of their salsa, police reports say.

She yelled and jammed a pen into the left side of the man's pelvis.

She then knocked over his TV. The man jumped up and caught the TV before it hit the ground, police reports say.

While the man was catching the TV, Jefferson grabbed a small kitchen knife and stabbed the man in the left side of his stomach, according to police. Jefferson drove away, but police eventually caught up with her on Interstate 77 near U.S 224.

Akron police found the man holding his stomach outside his apartment in the 100 block of Lake Street. The man's shirt and hands were covered in blood, according to police reports.

He was taken to Akron General Medical Center for treatment.

Jefferson admitted to detectives that she stabbed the man, police reports say.

Asia Times' roving correspondent Pepe Escobar just returned from a reporting trip to the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the pro-Russian enclave in the Donetsk Oblast province of eastern Ukraine. The area's been the scene of heavy fighting between pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military.

I've just been to the struggling Donetsk People's Republic. Now I'm back in the splendid arrogance and insolence of NATOstan.

Quite a few people - in Donbass, in Moscow, and now in Europe - have asked me what struck me most about this visit.

I could start by paraphrasing Allen Ginsberg in Howl - "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness".

But these were the Cold War mid-1950s. Now we're in early 21st century Cold War 2.0 .

Widespread power outages have struck Turkey, with rail networks and air traffic radars crippled. The nation is facing the worst event of its kind in 15 years. The possibility of a terrorist attack is being investigated.

The outage was confirmed in some 23 provinces, including Ankara and Istanbul, by news agency Anadolu. Later information from Broadcaster NTV put the number at 40. An energy official at the ministry has offered no immediate comment, while the power supplier TEIAS likewise did not respond to questions.

The subway system is at a standstill and flights across the country have also suffered setbacks.



Turkey's Anadolu agency reports that the outages struck around 10:36am Turkish time, according to officials. Flights in and out of the capital have been grounded.

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu says all potential causes are being investigated currently, "including the possibility of a terror attack."


This is the first outage event of such magnitude in 15 years, according to the daily Hurriyet paper.

Eleven out of 16 flight radar receivers are reported to be down, according to Turkish air traffic control.

A Turkish Airlines flight carrying 256 passengers was diverted Monday after a note with the word "bomb" written on it was found in a lavatory, the airline said.

Turkish Airlines Flight 15 departed Istanbul en route for Sao Paulo, Brazil, until the note was found.

The plane, a Boeing 777, landed safely in Casablanca, Morocco, the airline said.

No explosives were found on the plane, the airline said.

The airline said this was the second time in two days that a flight was diverted because of a similar threat.

On Sunday, a Turkish Airlines flight that took off from Istanbul turned around and returned to the airport after a note that said "C-4 cargo" was found in a bathroom. C-4 is a common type of explosive.

No explosives were found on that flight, either, the airline said.

A 12-year-old girl was recently arrested at school for the "crime" of throwing a book in class. Lacreshia Preston Garrett explains that her daughter was apprehended by the Dallas school district police for something that should have been dealt with by simply sending her to the principal's office. It all happened last fall at the Thomas Edison Middle School Garrett says. Little Zyria Grizelle was tired of the teasing coming from the class clown. He continuously slapped her arm. As a result, she lashed out and threw a book at him.

"I hit the computer, and the computer fell," she recounted.

Knocking over that computer apparently made all the difference in the world. While the class clown was permitted to assault her repeatedly, once she accidentally broke school property, she was treated like a hardened criminal.

"The officer came in the classroom, told her to come outside the class, and to put her hands behind her back," Zyria's mom, Lacreshia said.

Garrett follow the police cruiser with her daughter handcuffed in the back, all the way to the holding cell where she remained for some time, traumatized by the police state interaction.

"She was just crying," Garrett continued. "She said 'I just know the police come for bad people.' She was terrified."

Appearing at Baltimore's Modell Center for the Performing Arts, comedian Bill Cosby followed the removal of a heckler accusing him of rape with an anecdote about sin, concluding, "Jesus would give you a little wiggle room."

The former television star has continued a stand-up comedy tour despite accusations of doping and sexually assaulting women, with two more women coming forward leveling accusations at the comedian on Friday, bringing the total to over three dozen.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Cosby fans were greeted outside the performing arts center on Friday night by protesters organized by the advocacy group SlutWalk Baltimore, holding signs and demonstrating against a man they described as a "serial rapist."

Cosby, who entered the half-full hall to a loud ovation, was 10 minutes into his routine when a man in the balcony stood up and yelled, "Thirty-eight women spoke up and called you a rapist. Thirty-eight women!"

This column is adapted from a talk Chris Hedges gave Friday night at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

The scourge of male violence against women will not end if we dismantle the forces of global capitalism. The scourge of male violence exists independently of capitalism, empire and colonialism. It is a separate evil. The fight to end male violence against women, part of a global struggle by women, must take primacy in our own struggle. Women and girls, especially those who are poor and of color, cannot take part in a liberation movement until they are liberated. They cannot offer to us their wisdom, their leadership and their passion until they are freed from physical coercion and violent domination. This is why the fight to end male violence across the globe is not only fundamental to our movement but will define its success or failure. We cannot stand up for some of the oppressed and ignore others who are oppressed. None of us is free until all of us are free.

On Friday night at Simon Fraser University—where my stance on prostitution, expressed in a March 8 Truthdig column titled "The Whoredom of the Left," had seen the organizers of a conference on resource extraction attempt to ban me from the gathering, an action they revoked after protests from radical feminists—I confronted the sickness of a predatory society. A meeting between me and students arranged by the university had been canceled. Protesters gathered outside the hall. Some people stormed out of the lecture room, slamming the doors after them, when I attacked the trafficking of prostituted women and girls. A male tribal leader named Toghestiy stood after the talk and called for the room to be "cleansed" of evil—this after Audrey Siegl, a Musqueam Nation woman, emotionally laid out what she and other women face at the hands of male predators—and one of the conference organizers, English professor Stephen Collis, seized the microphone at the end of the evening to denounce me as "vindictive." It was a commercial for the moral bankruptcy of academia.