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News Digest provides a definitive summary of all the important, need-to-know news. All the top stories are summarized and presented with the key information that you need to stay on top of what’s happening.
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A jury from outside the Philadelphia suburbs will be brought in to decide the sexual assault case against Bill Cosby, a judge ruled Monday, rejecting a defense request to move the trial itself because of worldwide media reports that brand the actor a “serial rapist.” Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said jurors will remain sequestered during Cosby’s June trial on charges that he drugged and molested a former Temple University employee in 2004. Prosecutors accused the defense of trying to shop for a jury.
The Best Picture mixup wasn’t the only mistake at Sunday night’s Academy Awards. An Australian film producer says she’s “alive and well” despite her photo’s inclusion in the “In Memoriam” tribute at the Oscars. Jan Chapman’s photo was shown during the montage next to the name of Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer who died in 2015. Patterson and Chapman worked together on the 1993 film “The Piano,” which won three Academy Awards. Chapman is also known for “The Last Days of Chez Nous” (1992).
The Philippines and Germany condemned on Monday the beheading of an elderly German captive by Islamic State-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, who posted a video of the killing after a ransom deadline lapsed. The video showed a machete-wielding militant beheading Jurgen Kantner. The German had appealed for help twice in short video messages, saying he would be killed if ransom were not paid. Kantner, 70, and his companion were taken captive in November while sailing on a yacht near Sabah, eastern Malaysia. His companion was shot dead when she tried to resist the militants.
The White House says President Trump’s upcoming budget will propose a whopping $54 billion increase in defense spending and impose corresponding cuts to domestic programs and foreign aid. White House budget officials outlined the information during a telephone call with reporters Monday given on condition of anonymity. The budget officials on the call ignored requests to put the briefing on the record, though Trump has decried the use of anonymous sources by the media. The senior budget official said that most domestic agencies will have to absorb cuts. He did not offer details, but the administration is likely to go after targets like the Environmental Protection Agency. In Congress, Democrats and some Republicans are certain to resist the cuts, and any legislation to implement them would have to overcome a filibuster threat by Senate Democrats. A government shutdown is a real possibility.
SpaceX made good on a 250-mile-high delivery at the International Space Station on Thursday, after fixing a navigation problem that held up the shipment a day. Everything went smoothly the second time around, as a station astronaut captured the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship while the two craft sailed over Australia. On Wednesday, a GPS system error prevented the capsule from getting close enough to be grabbed by the station’s big robot arm.
More than 100 headstones have been broken and toppled in a Jewish cemetery in Philadelphia, police said on Sunday, the latest apparent vandalism at a Jewish burial ground in the United States. A Mount Carmel Cemetery visitor called police on Sunday morning to say the gravestones of three of his relatives had been toppled. The incident apparently took place after dark on Saturday, police said.
From all over the world, people flocked to Spindale, N.C., in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, lured by promises of inner peace and eternal life. Instead they found years of terror waged in the name of the Lord, according to an investigative report by the Associated Press. Word of Faith Fellowship members were regularly punched, smacked, choked, slammed to the floor or thrown through walls in a violent form of deliverance meant to “purify” sinners by beating out devils, according to interviews with 43 former members. Victims of the violence included preteens and toddlers — even crying babies, who were vigorously shaken, screamed at and sometimes smacked to banish demons.
President Trump toasted the nation’s governors Sunday night, welcoming state leaders to a black-tie ball at the White House ahead of discussions about his plans to repeal and replace the so-called Obamacare law. Trump welcomed 46 governors and their spouses to the annual Governors’ Ball at the White House. Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat and longtime ally of Trump’s campaign rival, Hillary Clinton, led the governors in a toast of Trump. McAuliffe, the chairman of the National Governors Association, said they all shared the common goals of jobs, education, quality health care and infrastructure across the nation.
Going into this year’s Oscars, it seemed that President Trump would dominate the show. Presenters were expected to unleash an outpouring of criticism of his immigration ban, his criticism of the media, and his use of Twitter. While the new president certainly was the butt of a few jokes and some indirect jabs during acceptance speeches, Trump didn’t get the skewering many prognosticators and viewers assumed he would. Still, Oscars host Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue was studded with Trump slaps.
“Moonlight” won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in a historic upset and an unprecedented fiasco. Presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced “La La Land” as the big winner of Sunday night. That film’s team came up onstage and began making speeches. Then, in a moment of confusion, “La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz told the world that there was a mistake; “Moonlight” was the real winner. PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm that tallies the Oscars voting, said that Dunaway and Beatty were given the wrong envelope when they went onstage.
President Trump’s first budget proposal will spare big social welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare from any cuts, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Mnuchin said Trump would use a major policy speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night to preview some elements of his sweeping plans to cut taxes for the middle class, simplify the tax system and make American companies more globally competitive with lower rates and changes to encourage U.S. manufacturing.
Germany saw more than 3,500 attacks against refugees and asylum shelters last year, interior ministry data showed, amounting to nearly 10 acts of antimigrant violence a day as the country grapples with a record influx of newcomers. A total of 2,545 attacks against individual refugees was reported last year, the ministry wrote, citing police statistics. There was no immediate comparison with previous years, as it was only introduced as a separate category under politically motivated crimes in 2016. The government “strongly condemns” the violence, the ministry said in a written reply to a parliamentary question.
Joseph Wapner, the retired Los Angeles judge who presided over “The People’s Court” with steady force during the heyday of the reality courtroom show, died Sunday at age 97. Son David Wapner told the Associated Press that his father died at home in his sleep. Joseph Wapner was hospitalized a week ago with breathing problems and had been under home hospice care.
The red carpet has been rolled out and the champagne is on ice for Hollywood’s big night on Sunday, but the biggest question may not be who will win but how much politics will rain on the “La La Land” Oscar parade. The movie industry’s premier celebration gets underway torn between escapism and reality. The conflict is reflected in the wide range of best picture Oscar hopefuls and an awards season marked by fiery outbursts from Hollywood A-listers on immigration, civil rights and the rhetoric of President Trump.
Kurt Busch had a monster start to the season with a last-lap pass to win the crash-filled Daytona 500. It wasn’t NASCAR finest moment, though, as multiple accidents pared down the field and had a mismatched group of drivers racing for the win at the end. It appeared to be pole-sitter Chase Elliott’s race to lose, then he ran out of gas. So did Kyle Larson, Martin Truex Jr. and Paul Menard. As they all slipped off the pace, Busch sailed through for his first career Daytona 500 victory.
President Trump unloaded on the news media for using anonymous sources — just hours after members of his own staff insisted on briefing reporters only on condition their names be concealed. Unleashing a line of attack that energized an enthusiastic crowd at the nation’s largest gathering of conservative activists, Trump said Friday that unethical reporters “make up stories and make up sources.” Trump didn’t expand on what he had in mind or which news organizations he was talking about, but his broadsides represented an escalation of his running battle against the press, which he has taken to calling “the opposition party.”
Lawmakers typically get one guest ticket apiece for presidential addresses, as they will for Tuesday’s prime-time speech. Although often the invites often go to family, friends or someone from back home, to send a message to Trump, Democrats have invited the Iraqi-American doctor who discovered elevated levels of lead in the blood of many children living in Flint, Mich.; a Pakistani-born doctor who delivers critical care to patients in Rhode Island and an American-born daughter of Palestinian refugees who aids people like her family in their quest to come to the United States.Soon after taking office, Trump issued an executive order temporarily banning all entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority nations and pausing the entire U.S. refugee program. The order, which has been blocked by a federal appeals court, sparked worldwide confusion about who was covered by the edict.
At least six assailants attacked the two security compounds the al-Ghouta and al-Mahata neighborhoods in the central Syrian city of Homs on Saturday, clashing with security officers before at least two of them detonated explosive vests. The attackers killed the head of military security and 29 others at one of its headquarters in the city and 12 more people at a branch of state security in attacks that began early in the morning, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The jihadist rebel alliance Tahrir al-Sham stopped short of explicitly claiming responsibility.
When the NFL announced its compensatory picks on Friday, it also closed the book on the New York Giants illegally using walkie talkies during a win over the Dallas Cowboys last season. And, it wasn’t much of a punishment: The Giants dropped 10 spots in the fourth round, from pick No. 130 to pick No. 140. While it’s not nothing, there’s also a pretty good chance it doesn’t hurt the Giants in the slightest. By that point in the fourth round, it’s quite possible whoever the Giants wanted at 130 will still be on the board at 140.
The Department of Homeland Security has decided at the last minute to block Khaled Khateeb, the 21-year-old Syrian cinematographer who worked on a harrowing film about his nation’s civil war, “The White Helmets,” from traveling to Los Angeles for the Oscars on Sunday. Khateeb was scheduled to arrive Saturday in Los Angeles on a Turkish Airlines flight departing from Istanbul. But his plans have been upended after U.S. officials reported finding “derogatory information” regarding Khateeb. Derogatory information is a broad category that can include anything from terror connections to passport irregularities.
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