Only a few weeks ago, Hamdan Ballal stood on a stage in Los Angeles accepting an Oscar for the film No Other Land , a documentary depicting his West Bank village’s struggle against Israel’s occupation. Ballal was heavily beaten by an Israeli settler and soldiers who detained him and two other Palestinians. Ballal said he was kept blindfolded, kicked and punched.
Ballal doesn’t speak Hebrew, but he said he heard them saying his name and the word “Oscar.” “I realized they were attacking me specifically,” he said in an interview at a West Bank hospital after his release . Co-filmmaker Yuval Abraham called out the Academy for not publicly supporting Ballal.
“You’re going to declare Gérard Depardieu guilty of these sexual assaults,” the prosecutor told the court. The disgraced French actor was on trial this week over accusations by two women of sexual assault on a film set. Paris' public prosecutor has requested that Depardieu be found guilty and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence.
He was being tried by a panel of three judges, not a jury. The judges don’t issue their verdict straight away but generally deliberate for weeks or months. If he is convicted, he faces up to 5 years in prison and a fine of €75,000.
Read more about it here . Catholics celebrated Pope Francis’s release from hospital not only with a shout of “Hallelujah,” but also perhaps a cone – a new gelato flavour launched this week in Rome, in a coincidental nod to the pontif.
