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Amanda Knox faces a new slander trial in Italy that could remove the last legal stain against her

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Amanda Knox faces a new slander trial in Italy that could remove the last legal stain against her

MILAN (AP) — Amanda Knox faces another trial for slander this week in Italy in a case that could remove the last legal stain against her, eight years after Italy’s highest court threw out her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate.

Knox, who was a 20-year-old student when she was accused along with her then-boyfriend of murdering Meredith Kercher in 2007, has built a life back in the United States as an advocate, writer, podcaster and producer — with much of her work drawing on her experience.

AMANDA KNOX SAYS MAN WHO KILLED ROOMMATE MEREDITH KERCHER HAS HARMED ‘MORE YOUNG WOMEN’ SINCE RELEASE

Now 36 and the mother of two small children, Knox campaigns for criminal justice reform and to raise awareness about forced confessions. She has recorded a series on resilience for a meditation app and has a podcast with her husband, Christopher Robinson, and an upcoming limited series on her struggles within the Italian legal system for Hulu that has Monica Lewinsky as an executive producer.

Amanda Knox speaks at a Criminal Justice Festival at the University of Modena, Italy, Saturday, June 15, 2019. Knox faces yet another trial for slander in a case that could remove the last remaining guilty verdict against her eight years after Italy’s highest court definitively threw out her conviction for the murder of her 21-year-old British roommate, Meredith Kercher.  (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)

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Despite a definitive ruling by Italy’s Cassation Court in 2015 that Knox and then-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito did not commit the crime, and the conviction of another man whose DNA was at the scene, doubts persist about Knox’s role with the victim’s family and the man she wrongly accused.

That is largely due to the slander conviction for wrongly accusing a Congolese bar owner in the killing, which was confirmed by the highest court in 2015. That conviction was only thrown out last November, based on a European Court of Human Rights ruling that found Knox’s rights had been violated in a long night of questioning without a lawyer and official translator.

Even now, Knox isn’t sure that a not guilty verdict in the new trial, which opens Wednesday in Florence, will persuade her detractors.

“On the one hand, I am glad I have this chance to clear my name, and hopefully that will take away the stigma that I have been living with,’’ Knox, who did not respond to an interview request, said on her podcast Labyrinths in December.

“On the other hand, I don’t know if it ever will, in the way I am still traumatized by it,” she said. “I am sure people will still hold it against me because they don’t want to understand what happened, and they don’t want to accept that an innocent person can be gaslit and coerced into what I went through.”

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Knox said on her podcast that she expects to testify, but her lawyer said she is not expected in court for opening day.

The Kercher family lawyer, Francesco Maresca, said the high court’s exoneration did little in his mind to dispel doubts following Knox’s conviction by a trial court and two appeals courts, the first confirming her sentence of 26 years and the second raising it to 28 ½ years.

“This trial never ends,’’ Maresca told The Associated Press, obscuring “the memory of poor Meredith, who is always remembered for these procedural aspects and not as a student and young woman.”

Among his doubts, Maresca cited Knox’s confused retraction of her accusation against Patrick Lumumba, the owner of the bar where she worked part-time, and the verdict in Rudy Guede’s conviction for killing Kercher that maintains that the Ivorian man did not act alone.

Now 36, Guede was released from prison in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year term handed down in a fast-track trial. Guede was recently ordered to wear a monitoring bracelet and not leave his home at night after an ex-girlfriend accused him of physical and sexual abuse. An investigation is ongoing.

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Knox’s new trial will admit just one piece of evidence: her four-page handwritten statement that the court will examine to see if it contains elements to support slander against Lumumba. Despite having an ironclad alibi, he was held in jail for some two weeks before police released him. Lumumba has since left Italy.

Two earlier statements typed up by police that Knox signed in the early hours of Nov. 7, 2007 that contained the accusation, and were considered the most incriminating, have been ruled inadmissible by Italy’s highest court.

The four-page letter, which she wrote in the same 53-hour span of questioning over four days starting Nov. 6, reflects someone in a state of confusion, trying to reconcile what police have told her with her own recollections.

“In regards to this ‘confession’ that I made last night, I want to make clear that I’m very doubtful of the verity of my statements because they were made under the pressures of stress, shock and extreme exhaustion,’’ Knox wrote.

She referred to police statements that she would be arrested and jailed for 30 years and that Sollecito was turning against her.

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Lauria Baldassare, an Italian lawyer who founded the Innocents Project, said the topic of wrongful convictions in Italy is starting to “create social alarm as it assumes important dimensions.”

He cited 10 cases of defendants being paid damages for wrongful convictions over the last decade, but said they faced difficulty in escaping the stigma of their initial guilty verdict — much like Knox.

“There is still part of the public opinion that does not accept the Court of Cassation’s decision, and these debates become a sport,” said Baldassare, whose organization is independent from the Innocence Project that Knox works with. “Italy does not have the maturity to accept an exoneration, because social prejudices are stronger than the finding.”

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Israeli Strikes Kill a Journalist and Injure Another in Lebanon

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Israeli Strikes Kill a Journalist and Injure Another in Lebanon

Israeli strikes killed one journalist and wounded another in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, rattling a tenuous cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon.

The Lebanese Ministry of Public Health said the Israeli military had targeted the journalists in the town of Tayri, where they took shelter in a nearby house after an airstrike struck a vehicle in front of the car they were traveling in. About an hour and a half later, a second strike hit the house they were hiding in, according to a statement by a Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, which employed the journalist who was killed.

The Lebanese Red Cross said its teams came under fire while trying to evacuate the journalists from the house, forcing them to withdraw. The rescue crews were targeted by a warning strike and machine-gun fire, the Lebanese health ministry said.

Zeinab Faraj, a photojournalist, was rescued from the house. The other journalist, Amal Khalil, who was a reporter for Al-Akhbar, remained trapped under rubble for hours before emergency medics recovered her body, according to the Lebanese Civil Defense.

In addition to Ms. Khalil, the two people in the car in front of her were killed in the strikes, Al-Akhbar reported.

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Amid the 10-day truce between Israel and Lebanon, Israel has continued strikes against what it says are Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon, citing its right to self-defense. Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia group, said that it had fired rockets and drones into Israel on Tuesday in response to what it said were violations of the cease-fire. Earlier on Wednesday, the Lebanese News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike killed one person and wounded two others in another part of the country.

The Lebanese health ministry called the strikes in Tayri a “blatant double breach, involving both the obstruction of rescue efforts for a civilian known for her media and humanitarian work, and the direct targeting of an ambulance clearly marked with the Red Cross.”

The Israeli military denied in a statement that it had prevented rescuers from reaching the injured journalists, and said the incident was under investigation.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said Israeli forces had spotted two vehicles emerging from a military building used by Hezbollah. The military observed the vehicles cross what the spokeswoman called the forward defense line, determining the move to be a violation of the truce agreement.

The spokeswoman confirmed that the Israeli military had struck one of the vehicles and the building some of the occupants of the second vehicle had taken shelter in.

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Ms. Khalil had covered southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah exercises strong control, since at least 2006. In a tribute to Ms. Khalil, a colleague from Al-Akhbar said she embodied the resilience of the southern Lebanese through her relentless reporting, refusing to leave the front lines of war where thousands of Lebanese had been displaced.

“As with every act of aggression, wearing a press vest did not protect those who wore it from the treachery of the Israeli enemy,” Al-Akhbar said in a statement. “Instead, it has become a danger to journalists’ lives, as part of a systematic Israeli policy aimed at silencing anyone who seeks to expose the crimes and practices of the occupation.”

In a forceful statement on social media, Nawaf Salam, the Lebanese prime minister, accused the Israeli military of war crimes for targeting journalists and obstructing access to medical aid. He said that Lebanon would pursue action to ensure Israel is held accountable with international bodies.

The Committee to Protect Journalists said that it was outraged by the attack, and that it raised serious concerns of deliberate targeting.

“The repeated strikes on the same location, the targeting of an area where journalists were sheltering, and the obstruction of medical and humanitarian access constitute a grave breach of international humanitarian law,” said Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa.

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Former Mexican beauty queen found shot dead as investigators examine possible family involvement: reports

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Former Mexican beauty queen found shot dead as investigators examine possible family involvement: reports

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A former Mexican beauty queen was found shot to death in her Mexico City apartment, with investigators examining the possible involvement of her mother-in-law, according to local reports.

Carolina Flores Gómez, 27, was found dead inside an apartment in the Polanco neighborhood, one of the city’s most affluent areas, Reporte Índigo, a Mexico-based news outlet, reported. 

Authorities said the death is being investigated as a homicide, after initial findings indicated she suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Emergency responders were called to the scene, where paramedics confirmed she showed no signs of life.

Prosecutors are investigating whether Flores Gómez’s mother-in-law, Erika María, as well as a man described in reports as her partner or husband, may have been involved in her death.

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CALIFORNIA HIKER’S BODY FOUND NAKED IN BIG SUR BACKCOUNTRY

Carolina Flores Gómez was found shot dead in her luxury apartment April 15 in Mexico City. Her mother-in-law has been named the main suspect in the suspected homicide. (Jam Press)

The man, identified as Alejandro, accused his mother of killing Flores Gómez, Mexican news outlet Azteca Guerrero reported.

The outlet also reported that the woman’s mother-in-law was present at the scene when the gun was fired and that authorities are looking into the timeline of when the incident was reported.

WIDOW, SON OF LATE CHICAGO COMMISSIONER FOUND SHOT DEAD INSIDE HOME IN SUSPECTED HOMICIDE

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Mexican prosecutors have opened a homicide with intent case in the death of former beauty queen Carolina Flores Gómez.  (Jam Press)

Preliminary reports cited by Mexican news outlet Diario Puntual indicate that a security guard at the building did not hear gunshots, adding uncertainty about how the crime occurred.

Authorities in Baja California, Mexico, also responded to the case, Diario Puntual reported.

CIA PERSONNEL KILLED IN MEXICO CRASH TIED TO CARTEL OPERATION; QUESTIONS MOUNT OVER US ROLE

Former beauty queen Carolina Flores Gómez, 27, was found dead in her Mexico City apartment. (Jam Press)

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Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda expressed solidarity with the victim’s family and called for the case to be clarified. 

State prosecutor María Elena Andrade Ramírez also said there is coordination with Mexico City authorities to support the investigation.

Flores Gómez previously competed in beauty pageants and was crowned Miss Teen Universe Baja California in 2017.

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The case has drawn attention in Mexico amid ongoing concerns about violence against women, with advocacy groups calling for a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding her death.

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The investigation into the matter is open and ongoing.

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‘Blockade and threats’: Iran blames US siege of ports for stalled talks

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‘Blockade and threats’: Iran blames US siege of ports for stalled talks
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