A Filipina used her fists yesterday to attack a US Marine she has accused of rape as she headed toward the witness stand to testify, witnesses said.
The 22-year-old woman, known in court by the pseudonym "Nicole," last week identified Lance Corporal Daniel Smith as the man who allegedly raped her on Nov. 1 last year inside a van.
As she was walking toward the witness stand to resume her testimony in Makati Regional Trial Court in Manila, she suddenly turned toward Smith and started hitting him with her fists. Her mother claimed Smith had apparently tried to trip her.
Court officials and US embassy staff quickly moved to separate them, and the woman was led away by her lawyer, Evalyn Ursua.
Smith was sitting with the three other Marines -- Lance Corpora Keith Silkwood, Lance Corpora Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpentier -- who also are charged in the case for allegedly cheering Smith on.
After the commotion, the Marines -- who could face up to 40 years in prison if convicted -- were surrounded by embassy personnel and Smith was moved to another bench in the courtroom.
The woman testified last Thursday that she was intoxicated while dancing with her sister at the Neptune Bar when Smith grabbed her by the wrist to dance.
She testified that she'd continued to drink, and was then forced out of the bar.
"The next thing I remember, someone was lying on top of me," she said, before breaking down in tears. "Someone was kissing me .... It was Smith."
The woman told the court yesterday that Smith kissed her and she tried to resist but could not push him away "because I was very weak and he was heavy."
"I did not like what he was doing to me," she said.
The Marines have refused to answer the rape charges, prompting the judge to enter an innocent plea for them. Defense lawyers insist Smith had consensual sex with the woman.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema