French film director Jean-Claude Brisseau appeared in a Paris courtroom Thursday to defend himself on charges of sexual assault and harassment. Four young actresses claim he made them masturbate as part of auditions conducted between 1996 and 2001.

The director, credited with discovering Vanessa Paradis, "denies the charges of sexual harassment and sexual assault, insisting in newspaper interviews that the 'erotic auditions', held between 1996 and 2001 for his 2002 feature Choses Secrètes, were justified artistically and 'indispensable' to his work."

Rebekah Wade, 37, the editor of Britain's The Sun tabloid, who recently started a campaign in her newspaper against domestic violence, has been arrested on such a charge.

The New York Comedy Festival is now on, and some courageous, original, boundary-breaking young comic will take home the second annual Andy Kaufman award.

This NYT editorial talks about how Coloradans voted down a $3.7 billion tax cut and lifted the U.S.'s toughest state spending and taxing limits.

Rosa Parks, who helped spark the fight for civil rights for blacks in the United States by triggering the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott, was buried Wednesday in her adopted city of Detroit.

It's worth looking at the video of the Rev. Al Sharpton's and former U.S. President Bill Clinton's speeches attached to the CTV.ca story.

If you want to see an amazing bit of preaching, check out the video of Rev. Charles Adams:

Update

Democracy Now! has transcripts of remarks made at the funeral service by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton, Rev. Bernice King (MLK Jr.'s daughter), Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Rev. Joseph Lowery (co-founder, Southern Christian Leadership Conference), Rev. Al Sharpton and Aretha Franklin, who sang this:

O Lord, I’ll fly away. Lord, I, Lord, I’ll fly away. O Glory, Lord, I’ll – oh, help me now – fly away to a land, to a land on God’s selection shore. Lord Jesus, I’ll, oh, I’ll fly, fly away. O Glory, o Glory, I’ll – come on and sing it with me – fly away. O Glory, Lord, I – she flew away. Oh, when, Lord, when I die, Hallelujah, o Hallelujah, by and by, oh, I’ll fly – there was Moses, and then there was Rosa – she flew away.

The show also has a transcript of remarks from the memorial service in Washington, D.C. on Monday, which featured Oprah Winfrey, Cicely Tyson, Julian Bond and other.

Mo Dowd's weekend NYT piece adapted from her new book Are Men Necessary: When Sexes Collide, is drawing some fire.

The CIA operates a global covert internment network  that it uses to interrogate its top al Qaeda suspects, the Washington Post reported Wednesday.