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      Jascha Heifetz in the Case of the Violinist and the Fanatical Doorman

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      Nothing seemed amiss when a car dropped Jascha Heifetz back at the King David Hotel on April 16, 1953, after a recital at Edison Hall in Jerusalem.Heifetz had played the program, which included Richard Strauss’s E flat violin sonata, to his usual exacting standards and to thunderous applause.A lone doorman greeted his car, sandwiched between two police Jeeps, when it arrived at the hotel just after midnight. Having safely ferried Heifetz and his entourage — his bodyguard, his son, his accompanist — to the King David, the Jeeps drove away.The bodyguard got out of the car first and went through the hotel’s revolving door. Heifetz, carrying his violin case, was next. But before he could enter, the doorman rushed up to him, speaking Hebrew words Heifetz couldn’t understand.This was no doorman. He held an iron bar in his hand and brought the weapon down on Heifetz’s right arm, smashing his hand.Though Heifetz’s violin case deflected the blow, he clutched his hand in pain. As he entered the lobby, his bodyguard ran in pursuit of the attacker but found only the bar, wrapped in newspaper, a few feet from the hotel.Heifetz in Beersheba in April 1953. His next stop was Edison Hall in Jerusalem. A week before the Jerusalem recital, he received a note warning him not to play Strauss.via Getty ImagesSeventy years later, the man who attacked Jascha Heifetz has not been identified. A faction called Han oar Haivri (or Hebrew Youth), later linked to several right-wing extremist groups, took responsibility, but no one has ever been held accountable.Later, one man said he knew the assailant’s identity. This man, a future speaker of the Knesset, had good reason for his knowledge, having direct ties to the underground group that had sent Heifetz a threatening note about his choice of repertoire.An unsolved mystery involving a world-renowned violinist, the State of Israel’s early years, the shadows of collective trauma, and the uneasy mix of art and politics — this story ticked all of my professional and personal boxes.Figuring out what happened — through interviews with historians and those who knew Heifetz, looking at contemporary newspaper accounts and digging in archives — helped me make sense of this historical moment at a time when Israel is once again at a critical inflection point.HEIFETZ WAS ATTACKED because he had dared on this tour to play the sonata by Strauss, a composer then banned in Israel for his Nazi collaborations. In 1953, the State of Israel was just five years old and the Holocaust was still a very live memory. Playing the work of German composers — particularly Wagner — could still provoke extreme emotional reactions.A week before the Jerusalem concert, Heifetz had received a letter from an underground terrorist group: “You ought to know, as we do, that you dared play a Nazi melody in the Holy Land on the eve of Yom Hashoah” — or Holocaust Remembrance Day — “music composed by a partner to the destruction of our people.”The note warned: “Beware and never again repeat this crime.”A compilation of Heifetz’s program lists, which includes the April 16, 1953, concert in Jerusalem.Library of CongressTop government officials implored Heifetz to drop the Strauss from his repertoire. But no one could tell Heifetz, who was born in Vilnius and moved to the United States in 1917, what music to play, and the Strauss sonata was a particular favorite. “There are only two kinds of music — good music and bad music,” Heifetz told the officials.Audiences had applauded the sonata in Haifa, The New York Times reported, but in Tel Aviv, responded with stony silence.After the threatening note, Heifetz decided the Jerusalem recital would go on as planned but with tightened security. And any whiff of pickets or protests would scuttle the Strauss from the program.THE MAN WHO CLAIMED to know who attacked Heifetz was Dov Shilansky. A Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, he was determined never to let himself, or Israel, forget. In 1989, a year after his election as Knesset speaker, Shilansky urged lawmakers to read the names of each Holocaust victim, as six million felt like an incomprehensible number. “Every Person Has a Name” is now part of Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies all across Israel.Shilansky arrived in Israel in 1948 on the Altalena, a ship that sank when Israeli Defense Forces opened fire, killing 19 people. Most on the ship, Shilansky included, were members of Irgun, the right-wing underground resistance group.Shilansky maintained close ties to the group when Irgun morphed into a political party headed by Menachem Begin. In September 1952 the group was concerned with protesting Israel’s intent to receive 3 billion marks (or about $715 million) in reparations from Germany. Israel desperately needed the money to absorb the enormous number of Holocaust refugees.Both the right and left criticized the agreement, but consensus was that reparations could spur Israel forward rather than keep it focusing on an unspeakable atrocities. Shilansky, now 28 and married with a son, could not abide this. “I found no rest,” he wrote in his memoir “Diary of a Hebrew Jail.” “Whatever I did, that fact pierced my brain and pierced it again. I was a citizen of a treasonous nation; my inaction was one endorsement of that treason.”A month after the reparations agreement was signed, Shilansky brought a briefcase containing a device made out of six pounds of explosives to the office of the Israeli Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv. Police arrested him before the device detonated, and he received a 21-month prison sentence.He was in jail when the agreement went into effect on March 27, 1953 — three weeks before the attack on Heifetz outside the King David Hotel. And he would still be in prison when a dozen members of another extremist group, Malchut Yisrael, were convicted in August of attempting to bomb the Ministry of Education building.“There are only two kinds of music — good music and bad music,” Heifetz told top government officials when they asked him to drop the Strauss from his program.via Getty ImagesHEIFETZ WASN’T SERIOUSLY INJURED in the attack beyond bruising and an eventual scar. Nor did his violin sustain any damage. But his assault seemed to chasten Israel’s media and chattering classes.Before, the Israeli press had seemed almost gleeful in its attacks on Heifetz for daring to play music by a banned composer. But as international papers, including The Times, hotly took notice, the tone became more conciliatory. Even the group that took responsibility for the attack, in a call to the Voice of Israel radio station, said it intended to damage Heifetz’s violin, not him.Heifetz now had to decide: should he continue his tour or leave Israel? His instinct was to flee, enraged, “that music had been made a political pawn,” as his son Robert recalled in a 1988 article for The Strad magazine. But the same officials who had implored Heifetz to nix the Strauss sonata now urged him to carry on. So, too, did David Ben-Gurion, the prime minister.Two days after the assault, over tea, Ben-Gurion apologized to Heifetz on behalf of the nation. As he later wrote in his diary, he asked Heifetz to continue, and “to play Strauss as well.”Heifetz continued. But the Strauss sonata was not on the program of his next concert, a benefit in Rehovot for the Chaim Weizmann Institute. Still, security guards and police filled the concert hall, though the only misadventure was when police noisily tried to break up a band of pigeons cooing on the rooftop.Despite having to hold his bow “rather gingerly between thumb and forefinger,” Heifetz was his usual near-flawless self. The audience applauded enthusiastically. But his bowing hand still hurt, and he canceled his final appearance in Tel Aviv.Three days later, hand still bandaged, Heifetz was back on tour, playing in Italy.DOV SHILANSKY BECAME A LAWYER and started his own firm. When the Likud party swept into power in 1977, making Menachem Begin prime minister, Begin rewarded his longtime friend Shilansky with a deputy minister post.In 1982, Shilansky told the historian Tom Segev that he knew who had attacked Heifetz, but would not say who it was. By then, Shilansky was embroiled in another music-related controversy.At the end of a concert by the Israeli Philharmonic in 1981, the orchestra’s conductor, the Indian-born Zubin Mehta, told the audience that the encore would be by Richard Wagner; anyone who felt uncomfortable was free to leave, he said, and the musicians would not take offense. (A violinist and trombonist, both Holocaust survivors, walked out.)It was the first time Wagner had been played officially in Israel since 1938, and reactions quickly turned ugly. Press attacks brought up all the old arguments, but Shilansky added something new.In a radio interview, he grew angry at Mehta’s chutzpah and suggested that he “go back to India.” He later said his comments had been taken out of context: he’d meant that Mehta should “leave Israelis in peace.”Begin said little publicly, but privately defended Shilansky in a letter to the Israel Philharmonic: “He saw our people in the process of annihilation. He himself was in a Nazi concentration camp.”WAS SHILANSKY RESPONSIBLE for the attack on Heifetz? The time frame doesn’t seem to work; Shilansky wasn’t released from prison until months after the assault. And he didn’t match the assailant’s description: a “tall, dark thug.”But several newspaper reports say that on April 12, Shilansky received a 10-day furlough for his second son’s birth. (That son, Shafir Shilansky, also a lawyer, did not return requests for comment.) Begin was the boy’s godfather. Shilansky would have been free when Heifetz received the blow to his bowing arm.When I brought this up to Segev, he insisted Shilansky wasn’t the attacker, that it wasn’t his style. It “makes absolutely no sense,” Segev said. I’m inclined to agree. A more plausible culprit might be a Malchut Yisrael member convicted in August 1953. Most were minors; their whereabouts at the time could not be definitively established.As Shilansky rose to power, his vociferous criticism of efforts to play German composers, and his passionate arguments that even speaking the German language could cause tremendous harm, never wavered. But whatever he knew about the Heifetz attack he took to the grave.FOR ME, THE ATTACK on Heifetz became less a mystery to solve than a thorny emotional and political journey to the heart of Israel’s founding, a reminder of its contradictions and aspirations. For Heifetz, it was simpler.“He just thought it was a stupid thing this man did,” Ayke Agus, the author of “Heifetz as I Knew Him” and a close friend, said in an interview. “He would tell anybody who called him up for an interview that he didn’t like to mix politics and music.”Anna Lou Dehavenon, the widow of pianist William Kapell, told Heifetz’s biographer John A. Maltese about meeting Heifetz for dinner in Paris during his 1953 tour. “I said to Jascha, ‘What has happened to your hand?’ And, of course, he didn’t want to talk about it.”Heifetz remained an active supporter of Israel. He visited a final time in 1970 for a five-week tour with the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky. Upon meeting prime minister Golda Meir, Heifetz handed her a check for about $25,000 and told her “to do with it as she sees fit.”This trip may have been more harmonious because of another decision Heifetz made: Early drafts of his recital programs included a Strauss piece, but he chose not to play it. More

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      Advice From Pelosi’s Daughter: ‘Every Woman Needs a Paul Pelosi'

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      Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, a multimillionaire venture capitalist recovering from a brutal attack, has long taken care of the couple’s “business of living,’’ including shopping for the speaker’s clothes.WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was glued to CNN the night after the 2020 election, while her husband, Paul Pelosi, sat nearby unwrapping a package.“What is that?” she asked him in a scene from the new HBO documentary, “Pelosi in the House,” directed by their daughter Alexandra Pelosi.“Dish towels,” Mr. Pelosi responded with a hint of irony as he popped the bubble packing. Ms. Pelosi smiled and then turned her attention back to the election coverage.It was just one instance of a dynamic on display throughout the film: Mr. Pelosi, who was brutally attacked at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker, takes care of what their family refers to as the “business of living.” That leaves his wife, who will step down as speaker when Republicans assume the House majority on Jan. 3, free to focus on her work.It is the kind of relationship that women in politics rarely talk about, but can sometimes help make the difference between success and failure: a partner willing to take on the mundane tasks and supportive role that traditionally fell to political wives. And although the Pelosis are wealthy and can get all the household help they need, the documentary captures that being a political spouse can mean simply showing up, and then standing off to the side.Throughout the film, as Ms. Pelosi does business on the phone with Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Chuck Schumer or Joseph R. Biden Jr., who was then a presidential candidate, Mr. Pelosi, 82, a multimillionaire businessman who founded a venture capital investment firm, is often in the same room dealing with the day-to-day necessities of their lives.In one scene, Ms. Pelosi was in her pajamas strategizing on a call with Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, about the first impeachment of President Donald J. Trump while Mr. Pelosi, sitting across from her, was on his cellphone dealing with a contractor trying to access their San Francisco home to fix a broken shower.A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Who Is George Santos?: The G.O.P. congressman-elect from New York says he’s the “embodiment of the American dream.” But his résumé appears to be mostly fiction.McCarthy’s Fraught Speaker Bid: Representative Kevin McCarthy has so far been unable to quash a mini-revolt on the right that threatens to imperil his effort to secure the top House job.The G.O.P.’s Fringe: Three incoming congressmen attended a gala that drew white nationalists and conspiracy theorists, raising questions about the influence of extremists on the new Republican-led House.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.“I don’t know what happened to that key,” Mr. Pelosi said, using an expletive.Paul and Nancy Pelosi met as college students while taking a summer class at Georgetown University in 1961. They married two years later and had five children in six years. Ms. Pelosi spent her early years in the marriage as a stay-at-home San Francisco mother and did not run for Congress until she was in her 40s. What followed was nothing that Mr. Pelosi ever pictured for his wife, or his family, according to his daughter.“I don’t think this is what he signed up for in 1987,” Alexandra Pelosi said in an interview, referring to the year Ms. Pelosi was first elected to Congress. “He just had to get over it.”The couple had five children in six years.Peter DaSilva for The New York TimesMr. Pelosi, according to his daughter, never caught the political bug. He forbids political talk at the dinner table. But over the years he has been at his wife’s side at her big political moments, and has taken on many of the duties of the homemaker. He does the dishes, deals with contractors, pays the bills and shops for Ms. Pelosi’s clothes.“She’s never ordered dish towels in her life,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “That’s what he’s been doing forever. He does the shopping for her, from the dish towels to the Armani dress.’’“He’s got Armani on speed dial,’’ she added, referring to the Italian designer Giorgio Armani, one of the speaker’s favorites. “He’s the full-service husband.”Ms. Pelosi had more to say: “The dress she wore to the state dinner; he ordered it for her, and he sent my sister to go try it on.” (Ms. Pelosi was referring to a gold sequin gown by another Italian designer, Giambattista Valli, that her mother wore to a White House state dinner early this month for President Emmanuel Macron of France.)The documentary, focused on Ms. Pelosi’s rise and professional accomplishments, offers glimpses into how a marriage to a supportive spouse helps create the space for a woman’s work — in her case, operating years as the most powerful political force in the Democratic Party in recent years.Other than Hillary Clinton, few women in politics have risen to Ms. Pelosi’s stature, and there are not many male spouses like her husband. Former President Bill Clinton played the role of supportive spouse during Mrs. Clinton’s two presidential campaigns, but after he had already had his turn.Doug Emhoff has assumed a supporting role to Vice President Kamala Harris, but that has also meant becoming a public figure in his own right. Mr. Pelosi never wanted anything close to that.“He’s a private person with a private life with a very interesting collection of friends, including Republicans,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “He didn’t sign up for this life.”But, she said, he has made it work. “Every woman needs a Paul Pelosi.’’The Pelosis met in 1961, while taking a summer class at Georgetown University. Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn one scene in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi was scraping breakfast dishes in a robe while his wife spoke on the phone to Mr. Pence. At one point, she put herself on mute and blew kisses at her husband.In a scene shot during the 2020 presidential campaign, Ms. Pelosi was on the phone with Mr. Biden advising him “don’t go too far to the left.” Mr. Pelosi was sitting next to her, reading his iPad, only half paying attention to his wife’s conversation.Mr. Pelosi appeared at ease in his supporting character role.“Are you in line to get a picture with the speaker?” his daughter shouted at him from behind the camera at a gathering at the U.S. Capitol ahead of one of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union addresses, while Ms. Pelosi was working a photo line.“Oh I am,” he joked.The following year, there he was again, sitting and snacking while Ms. Pelosi worked the room.“I heard Paul Pelosi was here,” his daughter joked.“I just came for the pistachios,” he said.As Ms. Pelosi prepared to enter the House chamber — where she would eventually tear up Mr. Trump’s speech and dismiss it as a “manifesto of mistruths” — her husband was with her in her office offering moral support.“You look great, hon,” Mr. Pelosi told her.Despite his appearances in the documentary, Mr. Pelosi is not always at the speaker’s side, including in May, when he was in a car accident in Napa County, Calif., and afterward pleaded guilty to a single count of driving under the influence of alcohol. Ms. Pelosi was across the country, preparing to deliver a commencement address at Brown University.“He’s there for the days that matter,” Alexandra Pelosi said. “It’s really just because she says you have to come. These kinds of people need a family to be there for support on days that matter.”In October, Mr. Pelosi was beaten with a hammer at the couple’s San Francisco home by an assailant who was said to have been targeting the speaker. He suffered major head injuries, but has appeared in recent days by Ms. Pelosi’s side, including her portrait unveiling at the Capitol and at the Kennedy Center Honors celebration.Still, his daughter said he was on a long road to recovery. “He has good days and bad days,” she said, noting that he has post-traumatic stress and tires quickly.The attack on the man who has been a quiet pillar of the Pelosi family life has taken a toll on all of them. The speaker told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in a recent interview that “for me this is really the hard part because Paul was not the target, and he’s the one who is paying the price.”“He was not looking for Paul, he was looking for me,” she added.His daughter said one of the most uncomfortable parts of the ordeal has been the glare of the public spotlight on a person who has tried to avoid it.“He’s remained out of the limelight as much as he could,” she said. “He almost got to the end without anyone knowing who he was.” More

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      Tory Lanez Found Guilty of Shooting Megan Thee Stallion

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      Mr. Lanez, a Canadian rapper, fired at the Houston hip-hop star after an argument in 2020. The matter became the subject of speculation and gossip on social media and in songs.LOS ANGELES — A Los Angeles jury on Friday found Daystar Peterson, the Canadian rapper better known as Tory Lanez, guilty of shooting a fellow artist, Megan Thee Stallion, in both of her feet following an argument about their romantic entanglements and respective careers in the summer of 2020.Mr. Lanez, 30, was convicted of three felony counts: assault with a semiautomatic handgun, carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle and discharging a firearm with gross negligence. He faces more than 20 years in prison and could be deported.Jurors reached a verdict after about seven hours of deliberation across two days, following a trial that lasted nearly two weeks. Mr. Lanez, who had been free on bail during the trial following a period of house arrest, was immediately taken into custody. Sentencing was scheduled for Jan. 27.Megan Thee Stallion was not present in court. As the verdict was read, Mr. Lanez appeared motionless and stared straight ahead until his father stood up and began shouting at the judge and prosecutors. “God will judge you,” he said, as bailiffs moved to block his path.Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Megan Thee Stallion, said in a statement: “The jury got it right. I am thankful there is justice for Meg.”The case, which played out as both a tawdry tabloid narrative and a weighty referendum on the treatment of Black women in hip-hop and beyond, was closely watched for both its famous characters and what it said about the recent adjudication of alleged abuse by notable men, such as Johnny Depp and Harvey Weinstein, in court and in public.Mr. Lanez, though not a household name before the case, has seen his celebrity profile rise since the shooting, earning explicit and implied support from various corners of the hip-hop universe, including influential blogs, social media accounts and the rappers-turned-talking heads 50 Cent and Joe Budden.In court, Mr. Lanez’s defense had raised the possibility of another shooter, a friend of Megan Thee Stallion’s who was also involved in the argument, which occurred on the way home from a gathering at the home of the reality star and beauty mogul Kylie Jenner.But Megan Thee Stallion, who testified in the case, identified Mr. Lanez as her assailant, tearfully recounting how he had shouted “dance” and a sexist slur at her before firing several times from the passenger seat of a sport utility vehicle.She said Mr. Lanez then apologized and offered her and the friend, Kelsey Harris, a million dollars each to keep quiet about what had occurred.In his closing argument, Alexander Bott, a deputy district attorney, said that Mr. Lanez had been pushed to a breaking point when Megan Thee Stallion demeaned his artistic stature, noting that she had been reluctant to come forward after the traumatic event.“Megan did find the courage to come and tell you what the defendant did to her,” Mr. Bott told jurors. “Was Megan telling the truth? I think everyone in the courtroom knows the answer to that question.”The lawyer added, of Mr. Lanez, “Hold him accountable for shooting the victim for nothing more than a bruised ego.”Mr. Lanez’s defense team argued that the two women were fighting that night over the male rapper, implying that Ms. Harris might have been motivated to shoot her friend out of jealousy when she learned that Mr. Lanez and Megan Thee Stallion had been intimate behind her back.George Mgdesyan, a lawyer for Mr. Lanez, said that the case “was about jealousy and a sexual relationship,” calling the prosecution’s case “full of holes and speculation.” Megan Thee Stallion “lied about everything in this case,” he told jurors.Some eyewitnesses provided muddled accounts of the shooting at trial, though most testified to seeing Mr. Lanez with a gun. Ms. Harris, who was offered immunity in exchange for her testimony, denied pulling the trigger or receiving hush money from Mr. Lanez, The Los Angeles Times reported. But on the stand, she also backtracked on her previous statements to the police that identified Mr. Lanez as the shooter, testifying that amid the drunken scuffle, she did not see who shot Megan Thee Stallion.Megan Thee Stallion, who testified in the case, identified Mr. Lanez as her assailant.Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesProsecutors then received the judge’s permission to play Ms. Harris’s entire 80-minute interview with detectives from September, in which she implicated Mr. Lanez. They also presented a text message Ms. Harris sent to Megan Thee Stallion’s bodyguard the night of the shooting, writing, “Help” and “Tory shot Meg.” (In response to her conflicting accounts, Ms. Harris said she could not remember what she had said previously and had not been entirely truthful with prosecutors in the past.)Another eyewitness, who saw the encounter from the window of a nearby home, said that he observed a violent, chaotic fight and that the first “flashes” — which he initially believed were fireworks, noting that he never saw a gun — came from a woman. But the witness added that he then saw a short man, believed to be Mr. Lanez, “firing everywhere” four or five times, Rolling Stone reported.Experts testified that gunshot residue was found on both Mr. Lanez and Ms. Harris, who were in close proximity, though DNA evidence tying Mr. Lanez to the weapon was inconclusive. (The police did not collect a DNA sample from Ms. Harris.)Ahead of the trial, the case had played out on social media, gossip sites and in music released by both rappers.Megan Thee Stallion, who had collaborated with Beyoncé shortly before the shooting and went on to win three Grammy Awards, including best new artist, in 2021, was initially circumspect about what had occurred.“Look what coming forward has done to her life, her reputation and her career,” Mr. Bott, the deputy district attorney, said in his closing remarks, raising his voice at times for emphasis. “Do you think she wants to be here?”In her testimony, the rapper said she did not tell police officers that she had been shot that night in July — claiming instead that she had stepped on glass — because tensions between Black people and law enforcement were high after the murder of George Floyd. “I didn’t want to see anybody die,” she said. “I didn’t want to die.”She was also worried about her career. “I didn’t want to talk to the officers because I didn’t want to be a snitch,” the rapper added. “Snitching is frowned upon in the hip-hop community,” which she identified as a boys’ club.In a statement after the verdict, George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney, highlighted what he called Megan Thee Stallion’s bravery in court. “You showed incredible courage and vulnerability with your testimony despite repeated and grotesque attacks that you did not deserve,” he said. “Women, especially Black women, are afraid to report crimes like assault and sexual violence because they are too often not believed.”At first, Mr. Lanez was arrested and charged only with concealing a firearm in the vehicle. But in the days and weeks that followed, Megan Thee Stallion revealed online and in an interview with a detective that she had been shot, eventually naming Mr. Lanez as her assailant. That October, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Mr. Lanez with assault.Still, for years since, some skeptics and conspiracy theorists have questioned whether Megan Thee Stallion was shot at all. At trial, a surgeon testified to removing bullet fragments from both of the rapper’s feet, with X-rays presented in court showing tiny fragments that remained.Mr. Lanez, who opted not to testify in his own defense, has not detailed his version of events, though he released an album barely two months after the encounter in which he denied shooting Megan Thee Stallion, focusing instead on their personal relationship.“We both know what happened that night and what I did/But it ain’t what they sayin’,” he rapped.Megan Thee Stallion later responded in her own track, titled “Shots Fired,” in which she seemed to recount what led to the shooting — “He talkin’ ’bout his followers, dollars,” she raps, adding, “I told him, ‘You’re not poppin’, you just on the remix’” — as well as its aftermath. (“You offered M’s not to talk, I guess that made my friend excited, hmm/now y’all in cahoots.”)On the stand, Megan Thee Stallion said she had initially lied about the extent of her personal involvement with Mr. Lanez, including in a television interview with Gayle King, because it was “disgusting,” she said. “How could I share my body with somebody who could shoot me?”Even as her career skyrocketed, the assault had caused her to “lose my confidence, lose my friends, lose myself,” she said in court. “I wish he had just shot and killed me.” More

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      Megan Thee Stallion Testifies in Tory Lanez Trial. Here’s What to Know.

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      Megan Thee Stallion testified on Tuesday in the assault trial against Mr. Lanez. The case had previously played out on social media and in music released by the rappers.LOS ANGELES — Megan Thee Stallion, the Grammy-winning rapper, took the stand on Tuesday during the assault trial against the rapper Tory Lanez, testifying that she still had nerve damage after he shot her in the feet in the wake of an argument two years ago.The case has played out on social media and in music released by both rappers. On an album released in 2020, more than two months after the encounter, Mr. Lanez rebutted Megan Thee Stallion’s account; she has defended herself on Instagram, in interviews and with her own defiant track.Mr. Lanez, whose real name is Daystar Peterson, could face nearly 23 years of prison if convicted. He faces charges of assault with a semiautomatic handgun; of carrying a loaded, unregistered firearm in a vehicle; and of discharging a firearm with gross negligence.Prosecutors say that in July 2020, in the early morning hours after a party in Los Angeles, Mr. Lanez lashed out at Megan Thee Stallion after she had criticized his rap abilities, firing toward her feet as she walked away from the vehicle they had both been riding in. The defense has disputed that Mr. Lanez fired the shots, suggesting it could have been another woman who they claim was upset that the two rappers had been intimate with each other.On Tuesday, Megan Thee Stallion largely reiterated what she had told reporters and recounted on social media about the encounter, testifying that she had initially misrepresented the events of that night to the police because tensions were high after the murder of George Floyd and she was afraid of how they would respond.“I didn’t want to talk to the officers because I didn’t want to be a snitch,” she testified.Megan Thee Stallion also testified about how the fallout from the encounter has made her depressed and hindered her career. She said that she was a private person who spoke out to defend her name, and that she had been the target of abusive comments on social media.“Because Tory has come out and told so many lies about me, and making this all a sex scandal, people don’t want to touch me,” she said. “It feels like I’m a sick bird.”The shooting occurred just as Megan Thee Stallion’s fame was growing. Months earlier, her collaboration with Beyoncé on a remix of “Savage” became her first No. 1 Billboard hit. That year, the blockbuster song “WAP” — a viral collaboration with Cardi B — turned her into an even bigger star.Here’s what to know about the case.What happened after the shooting?Initially, the details around what happened that night were hazy.Days after the shooting, Megan Thee Stallion — who was born Megan Pete — posted on her Instagram account that she had “suffered gunshot wounds” that required surgery but did not provide more details. But amid surging gossip and speculation, she later said the shooter was Mr. Lanez, who had been arrested and charged with concealing a firearm in the vehicle.Mr. Lanez addressed the situation in rap lyrics that suggested a conflicting account, including, “We both know what happened that night and what I did/But it ain’t what they sayin’.”In October 2020, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office charged Mr. Lanez with assault.Megan Thee Stallion’s career ascended in 2020 thanks to collaborations with Beyoncé on a remix of “Savage” and with Cardi B on the blockbuster “WAP.”Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressWhat has Megan Thee Stallion said?In an interview with CBS’s Gayle King this year, Megan Thee Stallion said that she and a friend had been driving with Mr. Lanez after a party at the home of Kylie Jenner, the beauty mogul, when an argument broke out in the S.U.V.After she exited the vehicle, she said, Mr. Lanez shouted “Dance!” and a sexist slur before shooting at her. He then apologized and offered her and the friend, Kelsey Harris, a million dollars for them to keep quiet about what had happened.When the police arrived, she said, she told officers that her foot injuries had been caused when she stepped on glass.She later addressed her initial decision to withhold information from the police in her song “Shots Fired,” rapping, “If it weren’t for me/Same week, you would have been indicted.”Megan Thee Stallion, 27, has been outspoken about the shooting and what she sees as the broader issues at play, writing in a guest essay in The New York Times that the “skepticism and judgment” that followed her allegations were emblematic of how Black women were “disrespected and disregarded in so many areas of life.”Outside the courthouse on Tuesday, several fans of the rapper voiced their support with a banner that read, “We stand with Megan.”What has Tory Lanez said?Mr. Lanez, 30, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, has not given interviews about his specific account of that night. But at the start of the trial, his lawyer, George Mgdesyan, said the argument in the car had involved Ms. Harris, a friend of Megan Thee Stallion’s; he said Ms. Harris was angry when she learned that Megan Thee Stallion had been intimate with Mr. Lanez, Rolling Stone reported.On the 2020 album on which he addressed the shooting, which was called “Daystar,” Mr. Lanez rapped, “If you got shot from behind, how can you identify me?”It is unclear whether Mr. Lanez plans to take the stand.What evidence is at the center of the case?Prosecutors have homed in on a text message that they say Ms. Harris sent to Mr. Lanez’s bodyguard that night, writing, “Help” and “Tory shot Meg.” They are also expected to present a text message in which Mr. Lanez apologizes to Megan Thee Stallion after the shooting. The defense has countered that Mr. Lanez did not directly admit to carrying out the shooting, according to The Los Angeles Times.Mr. Mgdesyan also suggested that there was a lack of physical evidence to prove the case against Mr. Lanez beyond a reasonable doubt. He told jurors, The Los Angeles Times reported, that Mr. Lanez’s DNA had not been found on the gun. More

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      Omega X Members Say Their K-pop Agency Mistreated Them

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      A public dispute between band members and the head of their agency has revived concerns about whether South Korean entertainment agencies exploit young musicians.Members of the K-pop group Omega X seemed to be riding high a few weeks ago when their first international tour ended with a successful gig in Los Angeles.But that feeling of triumph was short lived.After the October show, an executive from their management agency screamed at the group at an L.A. hotel and pushed one band member to the ground, footage of the encounter appeared to show. The band members then flew home to Seoul at their own expense and later took their entertainment agency to court.At a hearing on Wednesday, a South Korean judge will consider the request of the group’s 11 members to be released from their multiyear contracts with the agency, Spire Entertainment. Lawyers for the band have said the executive’s behavior in Los Angeles was the latest episode in a yearlong pattern of verbal, physical and sexual abuse. The executive, Kang Seong-hee, resigned last month but has denied any wrongdoing.“I took care of all of them like their mother,” Ms. Kang told The New York Times in a phone interview, adding that Kim Jaehan, 27, the band member who fell at the hotel, had collapsed on his own. She said she hoped the band would resume its normal activities with the agency.Experts on K-pop say the band’s accusations against their agency, if true, would be consistent with other stories from industry insiders and whistleblowers. They say some management companies, especially smaller ones, routinely exploit young artists who are desperate to become K-pop idols by imposing strict controls on their behavior and in some cases subjecting them to verbal and physical abuse.Since the 1990s, “the level of exploitation has been systematized and also normalized because the K-pop industry has become dominant” and more ambitious young people have been drawn to it, said Jin Lee, a scholar of Asian pop cultures and a research fellow at Curtin University in Australia.“Everyone wants to be an idol,” she said.The Fine PrintWorkers in South Korea, a deeply hierarchical society, are increasingly speaking up about bosses who abuse their authority. But experts say that most working K-pop artists don’t publicly criticize their agencies because they fear the consequences of violating their contracts.Omega X onstage during their international tour in October.Omega XKim Youna, an entertainment lawyer in Seoul, said smaller agencies in particular have tended to sign rising musicians to contracts that don’t define work hours or set limits on what the artists can be reasonably asked to do.Regulations governing contracts between artists and their agencies have been around for only about 25 years in South Korea, Ms. Kim said. Other industries in the country have robust labor laws. “In this context, it seems that idols, considered the less powerful parties, have no choice but to suffer a little loss,” she said.Some of the losses are financial. It is common, for example, for agencies to ask artists to pay back the costs of the training they received, such as dance lessons, vocal coaching and other preparation. But there are often questions about how transparently those debts are calculated, said Lee Jongim, a scholar of South Korea’s entertainment industry and the author of “Idol Trainees’ Sweat and Tears.”Aspiring K-pop stars “debut in their teens, but entertainment agents are adults,” she said. “So they start out in a structure in which it is difficult to establish an equal relationship.”Speaking OutSome K-pop musicians have waited until their contracts ended to accuse their agencies of mistreatment.In one example, Heo Min-sun, a member of the former group Crayon Pop, told the YouTube channel Asian Boss in 2019 that the band’s agency had withheld band members’ salaries for a year and half after their debut. She said it had also forced them to go on diets and prohibited them from socializing without the agency’s permission.“Our private lives were strictly controlled. Even if I wanted to make a new friend, I couldn’t,” Ms. Heo said in the 2019 interview. Crayon Pop’s agency, Chrome Entertainment, did not respond to a request for comment.In a 2019 criminal case, two K-pop musicians successfully took legal action against their agency before their contracts had expired.Those musicians — Lee Seok-cheol, now 22, and Lee Seung-hyun, now 20 — are brothers who performed in the boy band The East Light as teenagers. They accused their producer, their agency and its chief executive of assaulting and verbally threatening them. A court fined the agency, Media Line Entertainment, about $15,000 and sentenced the producer to 16 months in prison for child abuse. The chief executive received eight months for aiding and abetting child abuse.Another case, though technically successful, is widely seen as a cautionary tale.Three former members of the group TVXQ struggled for years to appear on television after ending their contract with SM Entertainment, one of South Korea’s most powerful agencies.. The country’s antitrust regulators eventually ordered SM Entertainment to stop pressuring cable channels to blacklist members of the band from appearing on TV.The agency denied the commission’s findings. But CedarBough T. Saeji, an expert on the K-pop industry at Pusan National University, said that the band members had been “unofficially blacklisted from the K-pop industry.” The episode sent “a chilling message to younger idols that crossing a powerful company could be the end of their career, even if they achieve a legal goal,” she added.‘A Lot of Anxiety’After Kim Jaehan’s altercation with Ms. Kang at the hotel in Los Angeles on Oct. 22, a South Korean television network published blurred-out footage of the episode that a bystander had filmed. When the band returned to Seoul, its members took the rare step of creating an Instagram account without permission from their agency, as would normally be required. In another rare step, they aired their allegations of abuse at a news conference.“Every one of us is experiencing a lot of anxiety,” Mr. Kim said at the news conference last month. The band members say that a few months after Omega X debuted in June 2021, Ms. Kang, Spire Entertainment’s chief executive at the time, began habitually making sexual remarks, touching their thighs, hands and faces against their wishes, and regularly forcing them to drink alcohol after rehearsals. Lawyers for the band have also said that Spire, a small agency founded in 2020, ordered each band member pay the agency about $300,000 in debt incurred from their training. ‌So far the band’s lawyers have not filed a criminal complaint or presented any physical evidence to corroborate their accusations, citing concerns that doing so would suggest they were trying to influence the civil proceedings that begin on Wednesday. They said their current focus was on getting the band out of their contract, not pressing charges.In an interview last week, Ms. Kang denied the band members’ accusations. Her request for them to cover her agency’s debts was justified, she added, and she believes that the band members have accused her of abuse in order to justify moving to a larger agency.“In their opinion, our company does not have enough to nurture them,” Ms. Kang said, referring to the company’s financial resources. “So they are conducting a witch hunt.”Looking AheadOmega X’s fate may depend on how the South Korean public reacts to the band’s side of the story, said Ms. Lee, the pop culture scholar. If the dispute escalates and its members can rally more public support, she said, Spire Entertainment may allow them to break their contract.At least two companies that work with Spire abroad have cut ties since the scandal broke: Helix Publicity, which had been responsible for Omega X’s public relations in the United States, and Skiyaki, the company that held the license for Omega X’s activities in Japan. A number of people who worked or volunteered at concert venues on its recent two-month, 16-city tour of the United States and Latin America have also spoken up for Omega X. Gigi Granados, 25, a cosmetologist who attended a show at Palladium Times Square in New York City, said she had witnessed Ms. Kang screaming at members of the band at their hotel after the performance. “No one deserves to be yelled at that way,” she said. More

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      Cardi B Pleads Guilty to Two Misdemeanors in 2018 Strip Club Attacks

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      Four years after being charged, the Bronx rapper, 29, was sentenced to 15 days of community service for her role in two fights at a Queens club.Four years after being charged with felony assault stemming from a pair of strip club brawls, Cardi B, the Bronx rapper and pop star born Belcalis Almanzar, pleaded guilty on Thursday in a Queens court to two misdemeanors.Ms. Almanzar, 29, admitted to orchestrating and participating in the attacks on two employees of Angels in Flushing after offering $5,000 to an associate over Instagram to help her and others confront the pair. The authorities said at the time that the victims, who are sisters, were romantic rivals possibly involved with Ms. Almanzar’s husband, the rapper Offset.With the trial set to begin on Thursday, prosecutors said in court that they had reached a deal with the musician and two co-defendants. Ms. Almanzar agreed to a discharge conditional on 15 days of community service, as well as a three-year order of protection for the victims.“Part of growing up and maturing is being accountable for your actions,” Ms. Almanzar said in a statement sent by a representative after the hearing. “As a mother, it’s a practice that I am trying to instill in my children, but the example starts with me.”She added: “I’ve made some bad decisions in my past that I am not afraid to face and own up to. These moments don’t define me and they are not reflective of who I am now. I’m looking forward to moving past this situation with my family and friends and getting back to the things I love the most — the music and my fans.”Melinda Katz, the Queens district attorney, said in a statement, “No one is above the law. In pleading guilty today, Ms. Belcalis Almanzar and two co-defendants have accepted responsibility for their actions.”As part of her plea, which covered one count of third-degree assault and one count of second-degree reckless endangerment, the rapper was made to confirm details of the fights, which she did quietly.Prosecutors said that on two separate nights in August 2018, Ms. Almanzar arrived at the club after 3 a.m. with others in tow. On one occasion, the group struck the victim, a bartender, pulling her hair, punching her and slamming her head into the bar. Two weeks later, they returned, throwing alcohol and bottles at the first victim’s sister, another bartender.The original indictment in the case included two felonies and 12 charges in all, including harassment, criminal solicitation and conspiracy; the other 10 counts were dismissed on Thursday.A redheaded Ms. Almanzar, wearing a cream-colored Proenza Schouler dress and red-bottomed Louboutin high heels, was joined in court by multiple lawyers, including Drew Findling, a prominent figure in hip-hop circles who is also defending former President Donald J. Trump in a criminal inquiry into election interference in Georgia.Mr. Findling, known to his many rapper clients as the #BillionDollarLawyer, said on the courthouse steps following the plea deal that the resolution allowed Ms. Almanzar to move on.“We’re talking about a life of being happily married with two beautiful children,” he said, pointing also to her charitable giving and commercial success. “There are too many things that she has planned for her family, for her career and for the community. She just felt quite honestly that a three-week jury trial was going to be a distraction.”As for her take on his recent association with former President Trump, Mr. Findling said that the rapper, a vocal Democrat, was one of the first phone calls he got after the news broke. “She is supportive of everything I do,” he said. More

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      Paul Haggis Arrested on Sexual Assault Charges in Italy

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      Haggis, who wrote and directed the Oscar-winning crime drama “Crash,” was accused of assaulting a woman in Ostuni over the course of two days.The Oscar-winning director and writer Paul Haggis was arrested on charges of aggravated sexual violence and aggravated personal injuries in the Southern Italian city of Ostuni on Sunday, according to the local police.According to a statement from the prosecutor’s office in the nearby city of Brindisi, which ordered the arrest, the accuser was not Italian. The statement identifies the man who was arrested as P.H., a Canadian; Vincenzo Leo, the duty officer of the local Italian police, confirmed it was Mr. Haggis.The statement said that after two days of “nonconsensual intercourse,” he had brought the woman to the Papola Casale airport in Brindisi on Friday and left her there “at the first lights of dawn, despite the precarious physical and psychological conditions of the woman.”The airport’s staff and the border police noticed her in the airport in a “confusional state,” assisted her and took her to the local police office, the statement continued. She was then brought to a hospital where she was treated following a protocol used in Italy for victims of violence against women; she subsequently reported the violence to the police.According to the accusations, Mr. Haggis, 69, “would have forced the young woman, that he had met some time before, to endure sexual intercourse.”“I am confident that all allegations will be dismissed against Mr. Haggis,” Priya Chaudhry, a lawyer for Mr. Haggis, said in an email. “He is totally innocent, and willing to fully cooperate with the authorities so the truth comes out quickly.”Mr. Haggis, who won a screenwriting Oscar in 2006 for the crime drama “Crash,” and who wrote acclaimed movies such as “Million Dollar Baby,” was in the southern city to attend the Allora film festival, where he was set to participate in panels and discussions with the audience, starting on June 21, according to the festival’s program.Mr. Haggis was sued for sexual assault in New York in 2017 by a publicist, Haleigh Breest. Ms. Breest accused Mr. Haggis of forcing her to give him oral sex before raping her after a premiere in 2013. Mr. Haggis has contended that the encounter with Ms. Breest was consensual.Following the lawsuit, which is still pending because of delays related to the coronavirus pandemic, three other women accused Mr. Haggis of sexually assaulting them, according to The Associated Press.A lawyer for Mr. Haggis, Christine Lepera, has denied the three other accusations, saying “he did not rape anybody,” according to The A.P.’s report.Mr. Haggis got his start as a TV writer in the 1980s and went on to help create several series, including “Walker, Texas Ranger,” the long-running drama starring Chuck Norris. But he is perhaps best known for his film work, notably “Crash,” the 2005 ensemble drama he directed and co-wrote. The film won best picture at the Academy Awards as well as best original screenplay for Mr. Haggis and Bobby Moresco.In 2009, Mr. Haggis left the Church of Scientology over its support of Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage passed by California voters and later overturned. In a resignation letter that was circulated in Hollywood, Mr. Haggis wrote that the church’s position was “a stain on the integrity of our organization and a stain on us personally.” In the documentary “Going Clear” and elsewhere, Mr. Haggis has become among the more prominent critics of the church. And he has said that, in response, the church has mounted a campaign of harassment.In a court filing last year, Mr. Haggis asserted that the pending sexual assault lawsuit in New York had essentially frozen his career, leaving him unable to work as a director or producer.“I have had discussions with producers and financiers, but have been repeatedly told that they cannot work with me until I clear my name,” he wrote in the filing, which was submitted as part of a motion requesting that the court set a trial date.Stephanie Goodman contributed reporting. More

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      Harvey Weinstein Facing Indecent Assault Charges in Britain

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      British prosecutors said they authorized criminal charges against Mr. Weinstein for an incident in 1996.The British authorities have authorized criminal charges against Harvey Weinstein on two counts of indecent assault against a woman in 1996 in London, the country’s Crown Prosecution Service announced in a news release Wednesday.Mr. Weinstein, 70, has been convicted of felony sex crimes in New York and is awaiting trial in Los Angeles, where he has been charged with several counts of forcible rape, among other charges.“Charges have been authorized against Harvey Weinstein, 70, following a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation,” Rosemary Ainslie, the head of the prosecution service’s special crime division, said in a statement.The Metropolitan Police said in a statement that it had gathered evidence in the case, and that Mr. Weinstein was being accused of two counts of indecent assault in London in August, 1996, against a woman who is now in her 50s. Earlier this month a New York appeals court upheld Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crimes, increasing the likelihood that he would serve a significant portion of his 23-year sentence. A lawyer for Mr. Weinstein said at the time that his legal team would ask the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, to review the decision.Mr. Weinstein must be formally charged at a police station in England or Wales, said David Lindsell, a spokesman for the prosecution service. He declined to comment on the possibility of extradition.A lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, Barry Kamins, declined to comment.A spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Greg Risling, said that Mr. Weinstein would have to stand trial in California before any potential extradition to Britain to face the charges there.Mr. Weinstein was a powerful Hollywood film producer until his downfall in 2017, when The New York Times reported allegations that he had sexually abused women over the course of nearly three decades. In the aftermath, dozens of women came forward to accuse Mr. Weinstein of sexual misconduct or assault; he maintained that he had only engaged in consensual sexual activity.The accusations spurred an international reckoning around sexual assault and harassment, with women in many fields coming forward with public allegations against high-profile men in what became known as the #MeToo movement. In 2018, Mr. Weinstein was arrested in New York City on sex crime charges. He stood trial in 2020, and a jury found him guilty of two felonies — a criminal sexual act in the first degree and third-degree rape — and acquitted him on two charges of predatory sexual assault.In Los Angeles, Mr. Weinstein was indicted on charges that he sexually assaulted several women in separate incidents between 2004 and 2013. He was transferred to California to face the charges and pleaded not guilty. This is the second time in recent weeks that prosecutors in Britain announced that they had authorized criminal charges against a prominent figure from the American entertainment industry accused of sexual misconduct. Last month, the Crown Prosecution Service said it had authorized charges against the actor Kevin Spacey on four counts of sexual assault against three men. Mr. Spacey said that he would voluntarily travel to Britain to face the charges. More