Man Says He Retrieved A Disoriented Female Friend From Bill Cosby's Apartment In 1984 | ||
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The stomach-churning allegation against about famed comedian Bill Cosby keep coming. A man told the Daily Beast how he allegedly saved one of his disoriented female friends from Cosby's New York City brownstone back in 1984. Beth Ferrier, a former model who has made similar allegations, was apparently there, too. Around midnight in September of that year, Tony Hogue said he started pounding on Cosby's front door. Twenty minutes earlier, his friend had called him, crying hysterically. As Hogue, now the owner of a graphic design business in New Jersey, described the scene to the Daily Beast's Lloyd Grove: "She said, 'Tony, you’ve got to come get me.' And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And she said, 'Tony, I’ve been in this room, I think on the second floor, and I’ve been here for a long time. I don’t think I’m even in my own clothes. I’m almost numb. I can’t stand up. I can’t see straight. My clothes are all disheveled.'" When Hogue asked about Cosby, the woman said he kept coming into the room, trying to kiss her. After about a minute of banging, Cosby allegedly opened the door. At 47, the actor and comedian stood at the peak of his fame. "What's the problem?" Cosby asked, according to Hogue. Hogue demanded that his friend and Ferrier come with him. Cosby, however, tried to explain they had too much to drink and weren't feeling well, Hogue said. Hogue dashed up the stairs, calling his friend's name. He found her (although not Ferrier) "in her clothes but she was a mess," as he explained. “She looked drugged and in a fog, and she couldn’t snap out of it.” The two immediately left Cosby's and went back to their company's apartment. The allegations from Hogue's story aren't new. His friend is "Jane Doe 8," one of 13 women slated to testify in a 2005 sexual assault lawsuit against Cosby. The women, however, didn't testify as the case was settled before trial. The woman, asking to remain anonymous, told the Daily Beast via email that Hogue did "rescue" her, although she felt like "Tony might have thought that I was imagining things." Hogue even admits he had a hard time believing her story at the time. "Even at the time, I didn’t suspect anything really foul. Maybe she had drunk too much or ate something wrong," he told the Daily Beast. Read the full Daily Beast story here »Sexual-assault allegations against Cosby, 77, resurfaced last month after another comedian targeted Cosby during a taped set that went viral. Many of Cosby's accusers have said that the comedian lured them in with promises of career help and mentorship, then gave them pills to make them immobile so he could assault them. The allegations span decades — some dating back to 1969 and one as recent as 2004. "The allegations are strung together by perceptible patterns that appear and reappear with remarkable consistency: mostly young, white women without family nearby; drugs offered as palliatives; resistance and pursuit; accusers worrying that no one would believe them; lifelong trauma," according to a comprehensive report from the Washington Post. "There is also a pattern of intense response by Cosby’s team of attorneys and publicists, who have used the media and the courts to attack the credibility of his accusers." SEE ALSO: Former NBC Employee Corroborates Some Of The Cosby Allegations Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Israel to hold snap election on March 17 | ||
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Jerusalem (AFP) - Israel is to hold a snap election on March 17, the parliament's spokesman said Wednesday, following a crisis within Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's fractious coalition government. "After consultations between different parties, it has been decided to hold elections on March 17," Eran Sidis told AFP, adding that the procedure to adopt a law to dissolve parliament would begin Wednesday.
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France vows deficit 'well below' EU limits by 2017 | ||
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Paris (AFP) - France's finance minister said on Wednesday that the French public deficit would be "well below" EU limits by 2017, as he trimmed his deficit forecasts for next year. Michel Sapin said that "new measures" announced in October would push France's 2015 deficit down to 4.1 percent of gross domestic product, compared with the 4.3 percent previously feared. However, the figure is still well above limits set by the European Union, which imposes a ceiling of three percent of GDP for its members' deficits. France stunned its European partners in September by pushing back a pledge to squeeze its public deficit below the three percent ceiling from 2015 to 2017, when the next presidential elections are due to be held. Last month, the EU gave France -- along with fellow deficit laggards Italy and Belgium -- an extra three months to fix their budgets but warned they would still incur humiliating penalties if the nations failed to curb spending. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm, singled out France for special criticism, saying it had made "limited progress" in reducing fiscal red ink. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has defended the country's budget as the best balance between fiscal rigour and economic stimulus, as Europe's second largest economy battles sluggish growth and high unemployment. The French economy grew by a meagre 0.3 percent in the third quarter, according to official figures published last month, following two previous quarters of zero growth. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Japan successfully launches asteroid probe | ||
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Tokyo (AFP) - Japan on Wednesday successfully launched a probe destined for a distant asteroid on a six-year mission, just weeks after a European spacecraft's historic landing on a comet. The explorer, Hayabusa 2, blasted off aboard Japan's main H-IIA rocket from Tanegashima Space Center in the south of the country. The rocket roared up out of the Earth's gravitational pull trailed by orange flames at 1:22 pm (0422 GMT) after launch delays due to bad weather. Hayabusa2 was successfully separated from the H-IIA and entered the intended orbit around the planet at the start of its mission, according to the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The probe will use the Earth's gravity as a slingshot to propel it towards its target. Television footage showed JAXA crew at ground control clapping as the launch was confirmed a success, while social media users around the world tweeted their congratulations. The 31-billion-yen ($260-million) project will send the explorer towards the 1999JU3 asteroid in deep space. It will blast a crater in the asteroid to collect materials unexposed to millennia of wind and radiation, in the hope of answering some fundamental questions about life and the universe. It is expected to reach the asteroid in mid-2018 and spend around 18 months in the area. It will also drop tiny MINERVA-II rover robots as well as a French-German landing package named Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout (MASCOT) for surface observation. If all goes well, asteroid samples will be returned to Earth in late 2020. The carbonaceous asteroid is believed to contain organic matter and water, the stuff of life. Analysing the extra-terrestrial materials could help shed light on the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and offer clues about what gave rise to life on Earth, scientists have said. The Hayabusa2 mission blasted off weeks after the European Space Agency succeeded in making the first-ever landing on a comet in November. Scientists said initial data sent from the robot lab Philae showed traces of organic molecules and a surface much harder than imagined. Philae, released from its mothership Rosetta, has gone into hibernation on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, having used its onboard battery power after 60 hours of prodding and probing. JAXA aims to bring 100 milligrams (1/286th of an ounce) of samples to Earth after a round trip of more than five billion kilometres. The probe is the successor to JAXA's first asteroid explorer, Hayabusa -- the Japanese term for falcon -- which returned to Earth in 2010 with dust samples after a trouble-plagued seven-year mission. The spherical 1999JU3 asteroid, which is around a kilometre (half a mile) across, is believed to contain significantly more organic matter and water than the potato-shaped rock studied by the original Hayabusa. Despite various setbacks during its epic seven-year odyssey, including intermittent loss of communication and damage to its motors, the first Hayabusa was hailed as a scientific triumph when it returned to Earth. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Europe's Growth Is Crumbling Away | ||
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Eurozone services PMIs just rolled out for November: PMIs are major business surveys that try to give a hint at how an economy is performing, months before hard, official data comes out. It's not good news: businesses say economic growth is now at a 16 month low, with a PMI reading of 51.1. Last time the readings were this low, Europe was barely edging out of recession. Markit, the firm that collates the PMI readings, says this suggests growth will be just 0.1% in the last quarter of the year, following the same result in the third quarter. This is some of the last major data before the European Central Bank's decisions and president Mario Draghi's press conference on Thursday. If they're weak, they're going to heap more pressure on the ECB to ease their policies. Any figure over 50 signals growth, while anything under 50 hints that the services sector is shrinking. Here's how it broke down by country: First out of the blocks is Spain: November's PMI is down to 52.7. That's the lowest in a year, down from 55.9 last month, and way lower than the 55.2 that was expected. Not a good start. Italy comes next, beating expectations with a 51.8 reading. That's an improvement on October's 50.8 and much better than analysts expected. France, Europe's second-biggest economy, comes in with a PMI at 47.9, a nine month low. That's after an October score of 48.3. Lastly and probably most importantly, Germany's PMI dropped to 52.1, the weakest in 16 months. In October, Germany's services PMI was at 54.4. Analysts had expected a drop. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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