Ghislaine Maxwell forced to crawl ‘on her hands and knees’ to get in prison van on way to court
Ghislaine Maxwell was forced to crawl “on her hands and knees” while wearing leg shackles to get into a prison van and attend a pre-trial hearing, her lawyer has claimed.
Bobbi Sterheim said Ms Maxwell was woken at 3.45am and arrived at the courthouse at 5.38am but was prevented from looking at her legal materials.
She was offered “very little food” and given no utensil to eat it with.
The hearing began at 11am.
Ghislaine Maxwell made a sketch of court artists while seated between defence attorneys Bobbi Sternheim and Jeffrey Pagliuca
Ms Maxwell, 59, who was brought into court shackled and wearing a blue prison jumpsuit and a black mask, has long complained about her treatment in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre.
She appeared exhausted as she sat listening to proceedings and conferring with her legal team.
Her lawyers have previously claimed their client has lost hair and over 15 pounds in body weight during her incarceration.
On Saturday, Ms Maxwell’s brother, Ian Maxwell, told Sky News he believed prison officers have “physically abused” his sister.
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‘I don’t see her administering black eye to herself’
In the pre-trial hearing, Judge Alison Nathan ruled the term ‘victim’ and ‘minor’ could be used in the trial to describe accusers.
The defence had argued the terms were “inherently prejudicial” but Judge Nathan ruled banning them would be “unnecessary and impractical”.
The judge also agreed to a prosecution request to allow the four alleged victims and four other witnesses to use pseudonyms.
A photo of Ghislaine Maxwell with a ‘black eye’ was released by her lawyer in April
Ms Nathan told the court the alleged victims would be giving “highly sensitive and personal testimony” and it was important they were protected from harassment and embarrassment.
In contrast to UK law, in the US, alleged victims of sexual offences are not automatically guaranteed lifelong anonymity.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: Sky UK
Judge Alison Nathan also ruled that no evidence on the government’s decision to charge Ms Maxwell will be allowed in court.
The defence had wanted to use statements from former attorney general Bill Barr to suggest there was a political motive behind the prosecution.
Ms Nathan told the court that such evidence could “substantially confuse and delay the trial”.
The court was told Ghislaine Maxwell has not been offered a plea deal by prosecutors and has not requested one.
The British socialite, and former girlfriend of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking, which she denies. She is accused of procuring teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse.
Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, took his own life in jail in 2019. He was awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.
The opening arguments of Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial are expected to begin on 29 November.
The new version of the ChatGPT AI chatbot has been unveiled and offers near-instant results across text, vision and audio, according to its maker.
OpenAI said it was much better at understanding visuals and sounds than previous versions.
It offers the prospect of real-time ‘conversations’ with the chatbot, including the ability to interrupt its answers.
The firm says it “accepts as input any combination of text, audio, and image and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs”.
GPT-4o is to be rolled out over the next few weeks amid a battle by tech firms to develop ever-more advanced artificial intelligence tools.
Monday’s announcement showed tasks such as real-time language translation; using its vision capability to solve a maths question on a piece of paper, and to guide a blind person around London.
GPT-4o can respond to audio in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which the company says is similar to human response time.
To try to ease concerns over bias, fairness and misinformation, the Microsoft-backed company says the new version has undergone extensive testing by 70 external experts.
It comes after Google earlier this year had a major PR blunder over images generated by its Gemini AI system.
GPT-4o model will be free, but premium ‘Plus’ users get a greater capacity limit for messages.
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Previous versions of the chatbot have caused unease in schools and universities due to some students using it to cheat by producing convincing essays.
When it launched two years ago, ChatGPT was said to be the fastest-ever app to reach 100 million active monthly users.
The announcement also stole a march on Google, which is expected to tomorrow show off its own new AI features at its annual developers’ conference.
A 16-year-old suspect armed with a rifle has been stopped from entering a church full of children by worshippers during a livestreamed service, say authorities in Louisiana.
The boy tried to get into the St Mary Magdalen Church, in Abbeville, through the back door at around 10.30am on Saturday (4.30pm UK time), according to police.
A livestream of the incident that was seen by Sky News’ partner outlet NBC News showed a man approaching Reverend Nicholas DuPre after 48 minutes to whisper something.
Rev DuPre then stopped the service and asked churchgoers to pray with him, while some people were heard panicking and screaming.
Around 60 children were inside and waiting to take their first Holy Communion when worshippers confronted the armed suspect.
The Louisiana Catholic church said they then took him outside before calling the police.
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
On the livestream, police officers could seen walking through the church, as boys ran across the altar and the clergy took shelter, NBC News reported.
Someone was heard to say over a loudspeaker: “Guys, just get ahold of your children, go slowly. We did apprehend a child, he is in custody.”
In a statement, Abbeville Police Department said that upon arrival, officers arrested the suspect and then searched the church.
The force added the teenager was charged with terrorising the church and two counts of possession of a firearm by a juvenile.
Witnesses told TV station KADN that he was dressed all in black and armed with the rifle, NBC News reported.
Police chief Mike Hardy thanked the churchgoers who intervened for their “quick response and remaining calm throughout this matter”.
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The church also said it now plans to have uniformed law enforcement officers outside of its masses “out of an abundance of caution”.
The swimmer who was the first victim in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws has died.
Susan Backlinie died in her home in California at the age of 77, according to her agent. Her death was first reported by The Daily Jaws website.
The opening scene of Steven Spielberg‘s classic features Ms Backlinie running along the beach and before diving into the water and skinny dipping.
The poster for the film Jaws. Pic: HA/THA/Shutterstock
Her character Chrissie Watkins is then suddenly pulled under the water and she screams as she is violently attacked by an unseen great white shark.
Ms Backlinie had been a champion swimmer when cast in the film. She told The Palm Beach Post in 2015 that Spielberg told her: “When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with the popcorn and bubblegum.
“I think we did that,” she said.
In the documentary, Jaws: The Inside Story, Spielberg called Ms Backlinie’s sequence “one of the most dangerous” stunts he’s ever directed.
“She was actually being tugged left and right by 10 men on one rope and 10 men on the other back to the shore, and that’s what caused her to move like that.”
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Ms Backlinie worked with Mr Spielberg again in the 1979 parody war film 1941, in which she spoofed her Jaws character.
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