A woman was rescued on Monday after being trapped in the elevator of a billionaire’s Manhattan townhouse for an entire weekend. She is now in the hospital in stable condition. The house is owned by Warren Stephens, the chief executive of the investment bank Stephens. He has an estimated net worth of $2.4bn.

Stephens was away with his family over the weekend, leaving 53-year-old housekeeper Marites Fortaliza alone in the townhouse. She entered the elevator on Friday evening and got stuck. At 10am on Monday morning, a member of the Stephens family and a delivery worker called 911 when they found the elevator wasn’t working. When firefighters arrived they were shocked to find Fortaliza inside. “We went for a stuck elevator,” a fire department of New York (FDNY) official said. “Not for a person stuck in an elevator.”

Firefighters forced their way into the elevator to find Fortaliza stuck between the second and third floors. After being rescued she was taken to Weill Cornell medical center. Authorities say she is dehydrated but in a stable condition. According to city records, the elevator was inspected in July and had no violations. It is not known whether Fortaliza had a mobile phone or if the emergency call button was working.

A spokesperson for Stephens said Fortaliza has worked for the family for 18 years and described her as “extended family”. The spokesperson said: “The Stephens family is relieved and thankful that she is doing well in the hospital. The cause of this unfortunate incident is being investigated and appropriate measures will be taken to ensure that something like this never happens again.”(theguardian)…[+]

LOS ANGELES, – The family of Michael Jackson yesterday described reaction to a new documentary about alleged child sex abuse by the late singer as a “public lynching” and said he was “100 percent innocent” of such accusations.

The statement followed the premiere at the Sundance film festival on Friday of “Leaving Neverland,” in which two men, now in their 30s, say they were befriended by the “Thriller” singer and sexually abused by him starting from when they were 7 and 10 years old.

The documentary received a standing ovation at Sundance on Friday, Variety and other entertainment media reported. It will be shown on cable channel HBO and Britain’s Channel 4 television network this spring. Jackson, who died in 2009, was acquitted at a 2005 criminal trial in California on charges of molesting a different, 13-year-old boy, at his Neverland ranch. The singer is survived by his mother Katherine and nine siblings, four of whom were members of pop group “The Jackson 5.”(Reuters)…[+]

Thank you, Daryl. Those were the words mother of two, Alesha Garcia, would say to her husband if she could see him one last time. Daryl Garcia, 43, drowned at a beach in Guayaguayare while saving his eight-year-old son last week Thursday.
The drowning was witnessed by the couple’s two children. Garcia, also 43, said her children were traumatised by the incident. But she was grateful that they were alive.

In a telephone interview with the Express, Garcia thanked her husband for the ultimate sacrifice. “Thank you, Daryl. Because of him I have my two children here with me today. I could have been burying all three of them. Daryl was not a good dad. He was a great, great dad. There are no words to describe how good he was. I want him to know that I know he sacrificed his life for our son. He wanted his son to live, to carry on his name. Thank you for that,” she said.

Garcia, a security guard, said her husband had dropped her to work at the Arima Health Centre at around 5.30am that day. He was on a week leave from work, she said. Garcia said her husband checked on his mother in Arima and then returned home to their children.(Trinidad Express)…[+]