Jury: Team should pay for harassment of executive

Jury: Team should pay for
harassment of executive

NEW YORK — In an end to a salacious three-week trial, a jury ordered the owners of the New York Knicks to pay $11.6 million to a former team executive who endured crude insults and unwanted advances from coach Isiah Thomas, above. The jury of four women and three men found Thomas and Madison Square Garden sexually harassed Anucha Browne Sanders, but it decided only MSG and chairman James Dolan should pay for harassing and firing Browne Sanders from her $260,000-a-year job out of spite.

The result: The Garden owes $6 million for condoning a hostile work environment and $2.6 million for retaliation. Dolan owes $3 million. Though Thomas is off the hook for any damages, he leaves the case with a tarnished image. Outside court, a beaming Browne Sanders insisted her victory was more about sending a message than the money.

“What I did here, I did for every working woman in America,” she said. “And that includes everyone who gets up and goes to work in the morning, everyone working in a corporate environment.”

Earlier, Thomas emerged from the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan with his trademark smile but flashed anger as he reasserted his innocence amid a crush of reporters and cameras.

“I’m extremely disappointed that the jury did not see the facts in this case,” he said. “I will appeal this, and I remain confident in the man that I am and what I stand for and the family that I have.”

Girl found after running
off with sex offender

BARTOW, Fla. — A teenage girl who ran away to rendezvous with a high-risk sex offender she met online was found safe at a store 400 miles from her home Tuesday, while the search for the 46-year-old man continued, a sheriff said. Authorities had issued an Amber Alert, blasting photographs of the two and a description of the suspect’s car across the state after the girl sneaked out of her home early Monday.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd made a direct plea in a nationally televised news conference to William Joe Mitchell to leave the girl somewhere, and believes it worked. “For some reason, he knew it was time to run,” Judd said. “And thankfully he didn’t murder her before he did that.” Mitchell of Jacksonville was believed to be armed with a handgun. The girl, 15, was located at a Wal-Mart in the Florida Panhandle, the sheriff said. The girl told authorities the two separated when Mitchell took her into the store.

Korean leaders open talks

SEOUL, South Korea — Leaders of the two Koreas opened formal talks Wednesday at the first summit between the divided countries in seven years, following a chilly reception for the South Korean president from North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and Kim began meeting at about 9:30 a.m., South Korean pool reports said, after the opening day of the summit Tuesday where the two had no contact besides a 12-minute welcoming ceremony where they barely exchanged words.

This week’s summit is only the second time leaders of the North and South have met since the Korean peninsula was divided after World War II. On Tuesday, despite rapturous cheers from hundreds of thousands of North Koreans as Roh arrived, Kim was reserved.

The words “I’m glad to meet you” were apparently the only ones he uttered during the brief welcoming ceremony that launched the three-day summit.

U.N. envoy meets with
Myanmar junta chief

YANGON, Myanmar — A U.N. envoy completed his mission to Myanmar on Tuesday with no word of progress on the military junta’s refusal to address the people’s insistent demands for democracy.

The envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, finally met with Myanmar’s reclusive leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, in the remote capital of Naypyitaw after days of delays. Neither side issued any comment that could satisfy the world’s hopes for a halt to the junta’s harsh crackdown on protesters, which began last week.

Gambari then flew to Yangon to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, the detained pro-democracy leader. It was his second meeting in three days with the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest.

Associated Press