Trump outburst over Kavanaugh's female accuser sparks hashtag trend
President Donald Trump's outburst demanding to know why a university academic accusing his Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault in the 1980s failed to come forward sooner, saw a new hashtag storm the Internet on Friday.
#WhyIDidntReport was the top trending conversation starter on Twitter in the United States, as people, mostly women, vented outrage over past sexual transgressions and to stand in solidarity with Christine Blasey Ford, the Californian professor who took decades to accuse Brett Kavanaugh of groping her when they were teens.
By mid-afternoon East Coast time, tens of thousands of tweets had been posted to the microblogging platform as users explained why they had not reported occasions on which they too had been sexually assaulted in the past.
"The first time it happened, I was 7. I told the first adults I came upon. They said 'Oh, he's a nice old man, that's not what he meant,'" tweeted activist Ashley Judd. "So when I was raped at 15, I only told my diary. When an adult read it, she accused me of having sex with an adult man."
Three infants, two adults stabbed at daycare centre in New York City
A female worker stabbed three babies, two of whom are less than a month old, at a home-based daycare centre in New York City on Friday before slashing her own wrists and being taken into custody, police said.
The unidentified woman, age 52, who also stabbed two adults in the predawn incident in the borough of Queens, was in stable condition. Police did not have any details on a possible motive.
Of the babies stabbed, there were two girls and one boy, police said. All three were hospitalised and listed in serious but stable condition. Prosecutors said they were aged 13 days, 22 days and 33 days.
Muslim rapper cancels gigs at Bataclan concert venue targeted by militants
A French Muslim rapper said on Friday he was cancelling two gigs at a Paris concert hall attacked by Islamist militants three years ago, saying he couldn't go ahead for security reasons after the far-right accused him of stoking divisions.
Far-right leader Marine Le Pen welcomed the cancellation of rapper Medine's concerts at the Bataclan, where 90 people died in an attack coordinated by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), calling it "a victory for all the victims of Islamist terrorism".
Medine, a 35-year-old artist who has used phrases such as "crucify the secularists" and "I put fatwas on the heads of idiots" in his songs, told Clique online media last year that he was intentionally provocative to try to shatter stereotypes.
Mentally-ill Maryland shooter shot herself twice in head after deadly rampage
A woman shot herself twice in the head after killing three co-workers and wounding three others in the shooting at a Rite Aid distribution centre in Aberdeen, Maryland, authorities said.
The woman had suffered from mental illness and had recently shown agitated behaviour that caused friends and family to worry about her, officials said on Friday in describing what they had learned so far about the shootings.
The shooter - Snochia Moseley, 26, of White Marsh, Maryland - shot herself once and grazed her head, then shot herself again in the head with a 9mm Glock, dying later at a hospital.
Tennis: Federer mulling clay court return in 2019
World number two Roger Federer says he is mulling a return to the European clay-court season in 2019 following a two-year absence.
Federer, speaking to ESPN on the sidelines of this weekend's Laver Cup, has skipped the clay-court segment of the season since 2017 in order to conserve energy for Wimbledon and hard-court seasons.
However, the 37-year-old revealed he is rethinking his scheduling for next season, and may yet play on clay.
