Jean Claude Van Damme appears to have told Vladimir Putin that he wants to come to Russia as an ‘”ambassador of peace”.

In a bizarre video posted on Telegram by a pro-Russian journalist from Ukraine, a man purporting to be the Hollywood action hero said he would be “honoured” to take on such a role.

Addressing the Kremlin leader directly, he said: “We want to come to Russia. We’ll try to do this the way you want to do this – to be an ambassador of peace.”

It would not be the first time the man nicknamed “The Muscles from Brussels” has visited Russia.

In 2010, he enjoyed ringside seats alongside Putin at a mixed martial arts event in Sochi.

The Belgian-born former bodybuilder shares a love of fighting with the Russian president, who is himself a judo black belt, and they are said to have known each other for years.

Tiptoeing around the topic of Russia’s war in Ukraine and its ongoing stand-off with the West, Van Damme promised to talk “only about peace, sport and happiness” and not politics, before signing off the video with a “big kiss for Putin”.

Most celebrities have turned their back on Vladimir Putin since he launched his invasion in February 2022 but a handful continue to defend him. Of those, American actor Steven Seagal is the most high profile.

The Under Siege star, who holds a Russian passport and is a frequent visitor to the country, acts as Moscow’s special representative for Russian-US humanitarian ties.

But when we caught up with him at Putin’s latest presidential inauguration last year, he refused to say why he supports the Kremlin leader…

Gossip Girl actress Michelle Trachtenberg died as a result of complications from diabetes, New York City’s medical examiner has said.

The 39-year-old, who was also known for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harriet the Spy, was found dead at her home in New York City after officers responded to a 911 call on 26 February.

According to a source quoted by Sky News’ US partner network NBC, she had recently received a liver transplant.

At the time of her death, officials said no foul play was suspected, and the medical examiner’s office had listed her death as “undetermined”.

Trachtenberg’s family had objected to a post-mortem, which the medical examiner’s office honoured because there was no evidence of criminality.

But the medical examiner’s office said in a statement on Thursday it amended the cause and manner of death for the actress following a review of laboratory test results.

Trachtenberg was best known for her role as Dawn Summers in Buffy, the younger sister of the title character played by Sarah Michelle Gellar between 2000 and 2003.

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Between 2008 and 2012, she played Georgina Sparks on Gossip Girl – the malevolent rival of Blake Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen and Leighton Meester’s Blair Waldorf.

She also starred in the movie 17 Again, where she portrayed daughter Maggie O’Donnell, comedy film Eurotrip and the 2005 teen film Ice Princess.

In 2001, she received a Daytime Emmy nomination for hosting Discovery’s Truth or Scare.

Seven years after allegations against him first emerged online, Harvey Weinstein is back in court.

When the accusations surfaced in late 2017, the American actress Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If all the women who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote ‘Me too’ as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.”

This gave birth to what we now know as the #MeToo movement and a flood of women – famous and not – sharing stories of gender-based violence and harassment.

Weinstein, 73, was jailed in 2020 and has been held at New York’s notorious Rikers Island prison complex ever since.

On 15 April, jury selection for his retrial got off to a false start, with none of the 12 potential candidates or six alternatives being deemed suitable. One, an actor, described Weinstein as a “really bad guy” and claimed he could not remain impartial. A woman also bowed out after declaring she had been the victim of sexual assault.

Once jurors are selected, the original charges of rape and sexual assault will be heard again, with opening statements and evidence due to start on 21 April.

Here we look at why there’s a retrial, why Weinstein will likely remain behind bars – and what has happened to #MeToo.

Why is there a retrial?

Weinstein is back in court because his first two convictions were overturned last April and are now being retried.

In 2020, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually assaulting ex-production assistant Mimi Haley in 2006 and raping former actor Jessica Mann in 2013.

But in April 2024, New York’s highest court overturned both convictions due to concerns the judge had made improper rulings, including allowing a woman to testify who was not part of the case.

At a preliminary hearing in January this year, the former Hollywood mogul, who has cancer and heart issues, asked for an earlier date on account of his poor health, but that was denied.

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When the retrial was decided upon last year, Judge Farber also ruled that a separate charge concerning a third woman should be added to the case.

In September 2024, the unnamed woman filed allegations that Weinstein forced oral sex on her at a hotel in Manhattan in 2006.

Defence lawyers tried to get the charge thrown out, claiming prosecutors were only trying to bolster their case, but Judge Farber decided to incorporate it into the current retrial.

Weinstein denies all the allegations against him and claims any sexual contact was consensual.

Speaking outside court on 15 April, his lawyer Arthur Aidala, said he was “cautiously optimistic that when all the evidence is out, the jury will find that all of his relationships were consensual and therefore reach a verdict of not guilty”.

Why won’t he be released?

Even if the retrial ends in not guilty verdicts on all three counts, Weinstein will remain behind bars at Rikers Island.

This is because he was sentenced for a second time in February 2023 after being convicted of raping an actor in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2013.

He was also found guilty of forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object in relation to the same woman, named only in court as Jane Doe 1.

The judge ruled that the 16-year sentence should be served after the 23-year one imposed in New York.

Weinstein’s lawyers are appealing this sentence – but for now, the 16 years behind bars still stand.

Has #MeToo made a difference – and what’s changed?

“MeToo was another way of women testifying about sexual violence and harassment,” Dr Jane Meyrick, associate professor in health psychology at the University of West England (UWE), tells Sky News.

“It exposed the frustration around reporting cases and showed the legal system was not built to give women justice – because they just gave up on it and started saying it online instead.

“That was hugely symbolic – because most societies are built around the silencing of sexual violence and harassment.”

After #MeToo went viral in 2017, the statute of limitation on sexual assault cases was extended in several US states, giving victims more time to come forward, and there has been some reform of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which were regularly used by Weinstein.

This has resulted in more women speaking out and an increased awareness of gender-based violence, particularly among women, who are less inclined to tolerate any form of harassment, according to Professor Alison Phipps, a sociologist specialising in gender at Newcastle University.

“There’s been an increase in capacity to handle reports in some organisations and institutions – and we’ve seen a lot of high-profile men brought down,” she says.

“But the #MeToo movement has focused on individual men and individual cases – rather than the culture that allows the behaviour to continue.

“It’s been about naming and shaming and ‘getting rid’ of these bad men – by firing them from their jobs or creating new crimes to be able to send more of them to prison – not dealing with the problem at its root.”

Dr Meyrick, who wrote the book #MeToo For Women And Men: Understanding Power Through Sexual Harassment, gives the example of the workplace and the stereotype of “bumping the perp”, or perpetrator.

“HR departments are still not designed to protect workers – they’re built to suppress and make things go away.” As a result, she says, men are often “quietly moved on” with “no real accountability”.

The same is true in schools, Prof Phipps adds, where she believes concerns around the popularity among young boys of self-proclaimed misogynist and influencer Andrew Tate are being dealt with too “punitively”.

“The message is ‘we don’t talk about Andrew Tate here’ and ‘you shouldn’t be engaging with him’,” she says. “But what we should be doing is asking boys and young men: ‘why do you like him?’, ‘what’s going on here?’ – that deeper conversation is missing,” she says.

Have high-profile celebrity cases helped?

Both experts agree they will have inevitably empowered some women to come forward.

But they stress they are often “nothing like” most other cases of sexual violence or harassment, which makes drawing comparisons “dangerous”.

Referencing the Weinstein case in the US and Gisele Pelicot‘s in France, Dr Meyrick says: “They took multiple people over a very long period of time to reach any conviction – a lot of people’s experiences are nothing like that.”

Prof Phipps adds: “They can create an idea that it’s only ‘real’ rape if it’s committed by a serial sex offender – and not every person who perpetrates sexual harm is a serial offender.”

Part of her research has focused on “lad culture” in the UK and associated sexual violence at universities.

She says: “A lot of that kind of violence happens in social spaces, where there are drugs and alcohol and young people thrown together who don’t know where the boundaries are.

“That doesn’t absolve them of any responsibility – but comparing those ‘lads’ to Harvey Weinstein seems inappropriate.”

Dr Meyrick says most victims she has spoken to through her research “wouldn’t go down the legal route” – and prosecution and conviction rates are still extremely low.

“Most don’t try for justice. They just want to be believed and heard – that’s what’s important and restorative,” she says.

But specialist services that can support victims in that way are underfunded – and not enough is being done to change attitudes through sex education and employment policy, she warns.

“Until we liberate men from the masculine roles they’re offered by society – where objectification of women is normalised as banter – they will remain healthy sons of the patriarchy.

“We need transformative, compassionate education for young men – and young women. That’s where the gap still is.”