Rose McGowan has claimed that someone close to Harvey Weinstein offered her $1m to remain silent about her sexual assault allegations against the producer.

McGowan, who has accused Weinstein of raping her in a hotel room in 1997, told the New York Times that she had received the offer from an individual close to Weinstein in late September, weeks before multiple sexual abuse allegations against the disgraced mogul came to light. The actor allegedly had previously signed a $100,000 settlement with Weinstein in 1997 over the incident, but says that she discovered this summer that the agreement did not include a confidentiality clause.

The actor says that she initially responded to Weinstein’s offer with her own counter-offer of $6m, partly as a way of raising money towards paying for her career as a multimedia artist and partly as a means of torturing the producer. However, one day after the New York Times published an explosive investigation detailing decades of alleged abuse by Weinstein, she decided to reject the offer outright. “I was like – ew, gross, you’re disgusting, I don’t want your money, that would make me feel disgusting,” she said.(theguardian)…[+]

Spain’s attorney general has asked for charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds to be brought against members of the deposed Catalan cabinet for their role in trying to create an independent state.

José Manuel Maza announced on Monday that he would ask the national court to bring the charges against senior members of the administration of Carles Puigdemont, who was removed from his post as regional president by the Spanish government on Friday. Reports suggest 14 former senior regional government figures are to face charges, including Puigdemont, his deputy, Oriol Junqueras, and the administration’s foreign minister, Raül Romeva.

The supreme court, meanwhile, will oversee possible action against the Catalan political authorities over the part they played in paving the way for last week’s parliamentary vote to declare independence. Maza said the charges were being sought “because their actions over the past two years have produced an institutional crisis that culminated with the unilateral declaration of independence made with total contempt for our constitution on 27 October”.(theguardian)…[+]

Iceland heads into its second snap parliamentary election in less than a year on Saturday with the financial crash that brought the country to its knees nearly a decade ago still playing out in its politics.The island’s economy is thriving again, thanks mainly to an unprecedented tourism boom, but some of its top politicians have been hit by a succession of financial and ethical scandals that have badly dented voters’ trust.

The prime minister, Bjarni Benediktsson, called the election last month after his three-party government collapsed over an alleged attempt to cover up efforts by his father to help “restore the honour” of a convicted child sex offender. Benediktsson formed his centre-right coalition barely 10 months ago, following early elections triggered by his predecessor’s resignation. Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson had stepped down amid public fury at revelations in the Panama Papers that his family had sheltered money offshore.The Guardian revealed this month that while an MP, Benediktsson – whose name also appeared in the Panama Papers – had himself sold millions of króna of assets in a major Icelandic bank’s investment fund as the state was about to seize control of the country’s failing financial sector at the peak of the 2008 crisis.(theguardian)…[+]

Two indigenous women in Canada have filed a class action lawsuit over allegations that they were coerced into undergoing sterilisation at a Saskatchewan hospital. The suit was launched after health authorities in the province admitted that several women had come forward with similar claims.

The legal challenge, which still needs to be certified by a judge, centres on the idea of proper and informed consent – and whether this was obtained before the womenwere sterilised. One of the complainants alleges that she explicitly refused to have her fallopian tubes tied when staff suggested the procedure after the birth of her son in 2001. Despite her objections, she was taken to the operating room in a wheelchair, still weak from delivery, and the procedure was carried out, she said.  The second woman alleges that a doctor suggested tubal ligation as she was being wheeled into the operation theatre for an emergency caesarean section – and had already been given an epidural to counter the deep pain she was in.(Theguardian)…[+]