Trending 5-4-2018
CAMILLE COSBY SPEAKS, ARE YOU READY?
WHYY-FM NPR, May 3, 2018
Bill Cosby's wife says the 80-year-old comedian was the victim of "lynch mobs" and that her husband's conviction on sexual assault charges was the result of a "frenzy" advanced by the media and the untrustworthy account of main accuser Andrea Constand.
In the first public statements made by Camille Cosby since a jury found her husband guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault last month, she said the case that could send the comedy legend to prison for the rest of his life was "mob justice, not real justice."
The inflammatory, three-page written statement calls for the district attorney who prosecuted Cosby to be criminally investigated.
Cosby's wife of more than five decades also equated Cosby's fate to the death of Emmett Till, the black teen who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after witnesses said they saw him suggestively whistling at a white woman. The killers, meanwhile, were acquitted.
"Once again, an innocent person has been found guilty based on an unthinking, unquestioning, unconstitutional frenzy propagated by the media and allowed to play out in a supposed court of law," Camille Cosby wrote. "This is mob justice, not real justice. This tragedy must be undone not just for Bill Cosby, but for the country."
During Cosby's two trials, Camille Cosby was largely absent from the courtroom. Yet she has fiercely stood by her husband's side in the face of more than 60 women accusing him of sexual misconduct.
She appeared just once during Cosby's criminal retrial last month, for the defense team's closing arguments. She hugged and kissed her husband and then sat in the front row of the courtroom, wearing large sunglasses the entire time. She left quietly, just before it was the prosecution's turn to deliver final remarks to the jury.
Yet on Thursday, Camille Cosby's blistering statement had a lot to say, unleashing venom in particular at Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, whose office twice prosecuted Cosby for sexually assaulting Constand in 2004 at the entertainer's mansion in Cheltenham, Pa.
Camille Cosby’s written statement-
"I am publicly asking for a criminal investigation of that district attorney and his cohorts," she wrote. "This is a homogeneous group of exploitive and corrupt people, whose primary purpose is to advance themselves professionally and economically at the expense of Mr. Cosby's life. If they can do this to Mr. Cosby, they can do so to anyone."
A spokeswoman for the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office said prosecutors do not have a response to Camille Cosby's statement.
But Constand's attorney, Dolores Troiani, dismissed the statement when contacted for her response.
"Twelve honorable people — a jury of Cosby's peers — have spoken," Troiani said. "There's nothing else to say."
Part of Cosby's defense in both of his criminal trials was that the encounter between him and his primary accuser, Constand, was consensual.
Cosby's lawyers told the jury during his retrial that he was not a criminal but rather a "lonely and troubled" philanderer.
The statement from Camille Cosby did not respond to her husband's admitted infidelity nor his insistence that the encounter between him and Constand was just an affair, not a sexual attack after being drugged as Constand has long maintained.
Jurors in the case, in their own statement, said earlier this week that they unanimously arrived at a far different conclusion after hearing Constand confront Cosby in court over two days.
"We were asked to assess the credibility of Ms. Constand's account of what happened to her," the seven men and five women wrote in a group statement. "And each one of us found her account credible and compelling."
The judge who oversaw the trial has ordered Bill Cosby to remain on house arrest until his sentencing date. Then, the man once known as "America's Dad" can face 10 years in prison for each of the three sexual assault charges he was convicted of.
K & K TEAM UP TO FREE GREAT GRANDMA FROM PRISON
People Magazine, TIERNEY MCAFEE, May 03, 2018 05:10 PM
Yes, one is a Kardashian the other is a Kushner. Kim Kardashian West has had multiple phone calls with President Donald Trump‘s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, about a possible pardon for a 62-year-old great-grandmother serving a life sentence for a first-time, nonviolent drug offense. Kardashian West and Kushner have been in talks for several months and their calls have “picked up in intensity” in the last several days, Mic reports, citing a source with knowledge of the conversations.
A representative for Kardashian West confirmed to PEOPLE that she has been speaking with Kushner about the possibility of President Trump pardoning Johnson. Mic also says that Johnson’s case has been reviewed by a White House lawyer. The White House did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Kardashian West’s crusade comes as her husband, Kanye West, is making headlines for his support for President Trump. A source told PEOPLE that the reality star, 37, is doing her best to protect her husband since the rapper, 40, made controversial remarks on Twitter and in new interviews over the past week.
Alice Marie Johnson has been in prison since October 1996, after she was convicted for helping facilitate communications in a drug trafficking case. She believed she would be pardoned in 2016, when then-President Obama granted clemency to 231 people, including many with similar nonviolent drug charges. But Johnson was passed over.
“When the criteria came out for clemency, I thought for sure — in fact, I was certain that I’d met and exceeded all of the criteria,” Johnson told Mic. “Oh my goodness, I had so much support.” Kardashian West apparently first learned about Johnson’s case from a previous Mic video published in October. She retweeted the clip and wrote: “This is so unfair.”
https://twitter.com/mic/status/922495751296499712
Since then, the Keeping up with the Kardashians star has reportedly enlisted a team of L.A.-based lawyers, including her personal attorney Shawn Holley, to petition the White House to pardon Johnson. Johnson thanked Kardashian West for her efforts in a November letter, according to TMZ, writing: “Ms. Kardashian you are literally helping to save my life and restore me to my family. I was drowning and you have thrown me a life jacket and given me hope.”
was drowning and you have thrown me a life jacket and given me hope.”
THREE BLACK TEENS BOMBARDED WITH RACISM DUE TO SUCCESS IN NASA COMPETITION
by Chris Ciaccia | Fox News
Three Washington D.C.-area high school students entered a competition supported by NASA, developing a way to purify lead-contaminated water in drinking fountains. Instead of being celebrated for being the only all-black, female team to be named as finalists, the trio were bombarded with racist comments by anonymous online trolls on the website 4chan, according to The Washington Post.
The content that the trio entered was NASA Goddard’s Optimus Prime Spinoff Promotion and Research Challenge. The grand prize is a trip to the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and a $4,000 stipend, according to the contest's website. Mikayla Sharrieff, India Skinner and Bria Snell, all 17-years-old, tried to celebrate their achievements, with one of them texting, "Hidden figures in the making," referencing the hit 2016 movie, "Hidden Figures."
"Hidden Figures" is about three African-American women who worked at NASA in the agency's early days. The movie went on to gross $236 million, has an approval rating of 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for three Academy Awards.
Though Sharrieff, Skinner, and Snell were popular on social media, racking up votes highlighting their work, anonymous posters on 4chan said the trio's work did not deserve to be among the finalists, adding that the African-American community only supported them because of their race. One even said they would consider hacking the voting system to give others, including a team of teenage boys, better odds of winning the competition.
NASA said in a statement that although voting had been compromised. Sharrieff, Skinner and Snell's project is still listed among the other finalists, of which there are 8 in total. "Unfortunately, it was brought to NASA’s attention yesterday that some members of the public used social media, not to encourage students and support STEM [science, technology, education
The government agency added: “NASA continues to support outreach and education for all Americans, and encourages all of our children to reach for the stars.”
Sharrieff made mention of the issues on her Twitter account, posting a picture with a letter and the caption "Thank you so much your support (heart emoji)"
Thank you so much for your support 
Her initial tweet about the project, noting that "We are the only team from the east coast & female minority group!" has been retweeted nearly 3,000 times since being posted on April 23.
Hello Everyone! My name is Mikayla Sharrieff & I am a junior at Banneker HS in D.C. my team and I have been selected as the 2018 NASA OPSPARC Challenge Finalists. Public voting starts today and we need YOUR vote! We are the only team from the east coast & female minority group!
And then this happened:
Winners will be announced in early May, the website states.
CHARLIE ROSE SEXUAL MISCONDUCT SKYROCKETS
Lisa de MoraesMay 3, 2018,
UPDATED with CBS News statement: Charlie Rose engaging in a lot more “sexual misconduct” than previously reported, Washington Post said this morning, finally publishing its long-awaited article on the topic.
An additional 27 women, including 14 CBS News employees, said Charlie Rose sexually harassed them according to the report. More than 100 current and former CBS News employees were interviewed for the story, which claims Rose’s behavior had been flagged to CBS execs as early as 1986 and as recently as April 2017.
Last November, WaPo broke the story that led to Rose being sacked by PBS and by CBS News. In that report, eight women told the newspaper the longtime television host made “unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.” Those women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the Charlie
The new WaPo report goes back as far as 1976, citing a former research assistant who claims Rose exposed his penis and touched her breasts in NBC News Washington bureau, where Rose worked at that time. It also includes more claims of harassment from as recently as 2017, at CBS This Morning.
CBS News said in a statement it “cannot corroborate or confirm many of the situations described,” while insisting that “since we terminated Charlie Rose, we’ve worked to strengthen existing systems to ensure a safe environment where everyone can do their best work.”
CBS News added, “We continue to look for ways to improve our
Today’s report presumably drives a stake in that report from Tina Brown that someone had approached her about producing a show in which Rose would interview other men whose careers have been derailed due to credible claims they sexually harassed women.
Brown made the remark at a recent lunch in Manhattan, NY Post had reported, at which she was featured
CBS News told WaPo its HR department received no complaints about Rose. “Since we terminated Charlie Rose, we’ve worked to strengthen existing systems to ensure a safe environment where everyone can do their best work,” CBS told the WaPo in a statement.
WaPo reported Rose responded to the new report via email, saying, “Your story is unfair and inaccurate.”