By SYLVIE CORBET and JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — French actor Gérard Depardieu acknowledged Tuesday that he used crude and heated language around a woman who accuses him of sexual assault and grabbed her hips but denied assaulting her, as he testified for the first time at his landmark trial in Paris.

She told the court that he’d behaved “like a madman” who took “pleasure in frightening me.”

Day 2 of the Paris trial centered on the Oscar-nominated actor’s behavior during the filming in 2021 of “Les Volets Verts” (“The Green Shutters”), where two co-workers allege that he groped them on the set.

Actor Gerard Depardieu, left, arrives at his trial for the alleged sexual assaults of two women on a film set in 2021, with his lawyer Jeremie Assous ,Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

The 76-year-old has denied assaulting the women. But during more than an hour of testimony Tuesday in a packed Paris court, Depardieu acknowledged that he had used vulgar and sexualized language with one of the plaintiffs, a 54-year-old set dresser, and grabbed her hips during an on-set argument about the artistic merits of a painting.

Depardieu said he’d been in a “bad mood” because the set was hot, which was hard for him because he is overweight.

“I understand perfectly if she’s a bit upset,” he said in his gruff, deep voice so familiar to cinemagoers. “I don’t have to talk like that, get angry like that, voilà.”

But he insisted that he isn’t a sexual predator. “I’m not touching the butts of women,” Depardieu said.

The actor faces up to five years in prison and a fine of $81,000 if convicted. The verdict isn’t expected immediately after the trial.

Plaintiff details alleged assault

The set dresser testified after Depardieu. She described the alleged assault in detail, saying the actor pincered her between his legs as she squeezed past him in a narrow corridor.

She said he grabbed her hips then started “palpating” her behind and “in front, around.” She ran her hands near her buttocks, hips and pubic area to show what she allegedly experienced. She said he then reached for and grabbed her chest.

A plaintiff arrives as actor Gerard Depardieu face his trial for the alleged sexual assaults of two women on a film set in 2021, with his lawyer Jeremie Assous ,Tuesday, March 25, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)

“That’s when I had a reflex of ‘My God.’ I tried to free myself, I tried to take his hands away, I couldn’t do it,” she testified. “He terrified me, he laughed, he looked like a madman.”

“It was very brief, there was no shouting,” she said, adding that she’d been too “petrified” to speak and that he was too strong for her to break free. She said someone came and removed Depardieu’s hands from her.

“I saw in his eyes a pleasure in frightening me, that’s what I felt, it’s savagery,” she said. “He terrified me, and that amused him.”

She said Depardieu’s calm and cooperative attitude in court bore no resemblance to his behavior at work.

“Here, he’s exemplary, he doesn’t move, he’s quiet, he doesn’t make any noise,” she said. “He’s not like that on the film set: He gesticulates, he grunts, he makes remarks to women.”

On the movie set, “he started saying sexual things, talking about his sexual capabilities,” she said.

The second plaintiff, a 34-year-old who worked as an assistant on the film, is yet to testify.

Depardieu acknowledges boorish behavior

Because of Depardieu’s fame and impact on the French movie industry, his trial is seen as an important test of French willingness to confront sexual violence and hold influential men accountable.

His long and storied career — he told that court that he’s made more than 250 movies — has turned him into a giant of the French movie industry. French President Emmanuel Macron has included himself among Depardieu’s many admirers, calling him a “great actor” who “makes France proud.” That was in 2023, when the star was already facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct.

In his testimony, Depardieu said he’d noticed that the set dresser had been taken aback by his behavior and language. He acknowledged that he sometimes has a potty mouth and that his behavior can be boorish.

“I’ve always been told I have a Russian nature, I don’t know if it’s because of the drinking or the vulgarity,” he said. “I have said in black and white that I am a disgusting slob.”

But he said he “never, ever” would have pincered a woman between his legs against her will.

“I’m not like that,” he said.

By JULIA FRANKEL, Associated Press

SUSIYA, West Bank (AP) — The lawyer for an Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers and detained by Israeli forces says he will be released. Lea Tsemel, the attorney for Hamdan Ballal, said Tuesday that he and two other Palestinians spent the night on the floor of a military base while suffering from serious injuries sustained in the attack.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

The wife of an Oscar-winning Palestinian director who was attacked by Jewish settlers before being detained by the Israeli army said Tuesday that he was beaten in front of his home by three men in military fatigues while another filmed it.

Hamdan Ballal and the other directors of “No Other Land,” which looks at the struggles of living under Israeli occupation, had mounted the stage at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles earlier this month when it won the award for best documentary film.

Basel Adra, Palestinian co-director of the Oscar winner documentary “No Other Land”, looks at a damaged car after a settler’s attack in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

On Tuesday, he and two other Palestinians were being held at a police station in the occupied West Bank, according to their attorney, Lea Tsemel, who was only allowed to speak to them by phone several hours after they were detained late the night before.

She said all three had been wounded in the attack and were accused of throwing stones at a young settler, allegations they deny.

Palestinian residents say around two dozen settlers — some masked, some carrying guns and some in military uniforms — attacked the West Bank village of Susiya on Monday evening as residents were breaking their fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Soldiers who arrived pointed their guns at the Palestinians, while settlers continued throwing stones, they said.

The Israeli military said Monday it had detained three Palestinians suspected of hurling rocks at forces and one Israeli civilian involved in a what it described as a violent confrontation. On Tuesday, it referred further queries to police, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

‘I’m dying!’

Lamia Ballal, the director’s wife, said she heard her husband being beaten outside their home as she huddled inside with their three children. She heard him screaming, “I’m dying!” and calling for an ambulance. When she looked out the window, she saw three men in uniform beating Ballal with the butts of their rifles and another person in civilian clothes who appeared to be filming the violence.

Lamia Ballal, wife of Hamdan Ballal, a co-director of the Oscar winner documentary “No Other Land”, looks on as she sits at their house in the village of Susiya in Masafer Yatta, south Hebron hills, Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)

“Of course, after the Oscar, they have come to attack us more,” Lamia said. “I felt afraid.”

West Bank settlers are often armed and sometimes wear military-style clothing that makes it difficult to distinguish them from soldiers.

On Tuesday, a small bloodstain could be seen outside their home, and the car’s windshield and windows were shattered. Neighbors pointed to a nearby water tank with a hole in the side that they said had been punched by the settlers.

Film looked at Palestinians’ struggle to stay on the land

“No Other Land,” which won the Oscar this year for best documentary, chronicles the struggle by residents of the Masafer Yatta area to stop the Israeli military from demolishing their villages.

The joint Israeli-Palestinian production has won a string of international awards, starting at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2024. It has also drawn ire in Israel and abroad, as when Miami Beach proposed ending the lease of a movie theater that screened it.

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Basel Adra, another of the film’s co-directors who is a prominent Palestinian activist in the area, said there’s been a massive upswing in attacks by settlers and Israeli forces since the Oscar win.

“Nobody can do anything to stop the pogroms, and soldiers are only there to facilitate and help the attacks,” he said. “We’re living in dark days here, in Gaza, and all of the West Bank … Nobody’s stopping this.”

Masked settlers with sticks also attacked Jewish activists in the area on Monday, smashing their car windows and slashing tires, according to Josh Kimelman, an activist with the Center for Jewish Nonviolence. Video provided by the group showed a masked settler shoving and swinging his fists at two activists in a dusty field at night.

Open-ended military rule

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war, along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians want all three for their future state and view settlement growth as a major obstacle to a two-state solution. Most of the international community considers the settlements illegal.

Israel has built well over 100 settlements, home to over 500,000 settlers who have Israeli citizenship. The 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the Western-backed Palestinian Authority administering population centers.

The Israeli military designated Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank as a live-fire training zone in the 1980s and ordered residents, mostly Arab Bedouin, to be expelled. Around 1,000 residents have largely remained in place, but soldiers regularly move in to demolish homes, tents, water tanks and olive orchards — and Palestinians fear outright expulsion could come at any time.

The Palestinians also face threats from settlers at nearby outposts. Palestinians and rights groups say Israeli forces usually turn a blind eye to settler attacks or intervene on behalf of the settlers.

The war in Gaza has sparked a surge of violence in the West Bank, with the Israeli military carrying out widescale military operations that have killed hundreds of Palestinians and displaced tens of thousands. There has been a rise in settler violence as well as Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

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By ERIC TUCKER and DAVID KLEPPER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s top intelligence officials face Congress for back-to-back hearings this week, their first opportunity since being sworn in to testify about the threats facing the United States and what the government is doing to counter them.

FBI Director Kash Patel, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, are among the witnesses who will appear Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee and Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard arrives before President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

Tuesday’s hearing will take place one day after news broke that several top national security officials in the Trump administration, including Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic.

The annual hearings on worldwide threats will offer a glimpse of the Trump administration’s reorienting of priorities, which officials across agencies have described as countering the scourge of fentanyl and fighting violent crime, human trafficking and illegal immigration.

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Former FBI Director Christopher Wray routinely has said he is hard-pressed to think of a time in his career when the United States faced so many elevated threats at once, but the concerns he more regularly highlighted had to do with sophisticated Chinese espionage plots, ransomware attacks that have crippled hospitals and international and domestic terrorism.

“We have to change to the dynamic threat landscape that is changing constantly not just in America but abroad,” Patel said in a Fox News interview that aired Sunday night, citing the elevated threat from “narco-traffickers.” But, he added, “we’re not going to forget or ignore national security — never.”

The hearings are also unfolding against the backdrop of a starkly different approach toward Russia following years of Biden administration sanctions over its war against Ukraine.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed during a lengthy call with President Donald Trump to an immediate pause in strikes against energy infrastructure in what the White House described as the first step in a “movement to peace.”

By MATTHEW LEE and FARNOUSH AMIRI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Israel will face a confirmation hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill as U.S. and Arab mediators struggle to get a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas back on track after Israeli forces resumed the war in Gaza last week with a surprise wave of deadly airstrikes.

Trump nominated Mike Huckabee, a well-known evangelical Christian and vehement supporter of Israel, to take on the critical post in Jerusalem days after he won reelection on a campaign promise to end the now 17-month war.

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If Huckabee, a Republican, is confirmed by the Senate, his posting will likely complicate an already unstable situation in the Middle East as the former governor of Arkansas has taken stances on the conflict that sharply contradict longstanding U.S. policy in the region.

Huckabee, a one-time presidential hopeful, has spoken favorably in the past about Israel’s right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel. He has repeatedly backed referring to the West Bank by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria,” a term that right-wing Israeli politicians and activists have thus far fruitlessly pushed the U.S. to accept.

Most notably, Huckabee has long been opposed to the idea of a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian people. In an interview last year, he went even further, saying that he doesn’t even believe in referring to the Arab descendants of people who lived in British-controlled Palestine as “Palestinians.”

“There really isn’t such a thing,” he said on the podcast show “Think Twice” with Jonathan Tobin. “It’s a term that was co-opted by Yasser Arafat in 1962,” referring to one of the early leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

During the same interview, Huckabee described himself as an “unapologetic, unreformed Zionist.”

As the situation in Gaza has deteriorated with the recent collapse of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire and hostage release deal, Israeli officials have begun to talk more seriously about re-occupation of the territory, something to which the Biden administration had been adamantly opposed.

Trump has made his own proposals about a potential U.S. takeover of Gaza, which have attracted attention as well as strong criticism from Arab nations and others.

Huckabee will likely be asked about all of these points in addition to ongoing Israeli military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon and persistent threats to the country from Iran and Iranian-backed proxy groups, like the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In remarks prepared for his testimony, obtained by The Associated Press, Huckabee does not specifically mention either annexation or Trump’s Gaza plan. But he can be expected to offer qualified praise of both, given that he blasts many past Mideast policies as “failed” and speaks of the need to look “at entirely new ways” of promoting peace.

He plans to reaffirm his strong endorsement of Trump’s policies toward Israel during his first term in office, notably his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his decision to move the U.S. embassy to the holy city from Tel Aviv, his recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory and his sealing of the Abraham Accords, in which several Arab nations normalized relations with Israel, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

“President Trump’s first term was the most consequential for Israel and the Middle East ever with his historic Abraham Accords, and finally moving our embassy to Jerusalem, the ancient, indigenous and biblical eternal capital of the Jewish people,” Huckabee’s prepared remarks say.

Trump’s pick for ambassador to Panama also testifying

Another nominee testifying before the committee on Tuesday is Kevin Cabrera, Trump’s nominee to be ambassador to Panama, a country that has bristled at the Republican president’s repeated calls for the U.S. to retake control of the Panama Canal for national security reasons due to potential threats from China. The status of the canal was one of the top items on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s agenda when he visited Panama City on his first trip as America’s top diplomat in February.

“One of the key aspects of our cooperation is ensuring the security of the Panama Canal, a critical international waterway that facilitates global trade and economic growth,” Cabrera will say according to remarks prepared for the hearing.

He plans to praise decisions by the Panamanian government to withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and to review contracts with a China-based company that is running ports at both ends of the canal. The company has preliminarily agreed to sell its interests in the subsidiaries that run the ports, but the deal is not yet complete.

Amiri reported from New York.