By SYLVIE CORBET, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — French movie star Gérard Depardieu ’s fall from grace is now complete.

Depardieu further moved down from the pinnacle of French cinema Tuesday as he was found guilty of sexually assaulting two women on the set of a movie in which he starred in 2021 and given an 18-month suspended prison sentence. He was also fined a total of around $32,350, and the court requested that he be registered in the national sex offender database.

The actor, 76, has been convicted of having groped a 54-year-old set dresser and a 34-year-old assistant during the filming of “Les Volets Verts” (“The Green Shutters”). The case was widely seen as a key post-#MeToo test of how French society and its film industry address allegations of sexual misconduct involving prominent figures.

Depardieu, who has denied the accusations, didn’t attend the hearing in Paris. Depardieu’s lawyer, Jérémie Assous, said that his client would appeal the decision.

“It is the victory of two women, but it is the victory of all the women beyond this trial,” said Carine Durrieu Diebolt, the set dresser’s lawyer. “Today we hope to see the end of impunity for an artist in the world of cinema. I think that with this decision we can no longer say that he is not a sexual abuser. And today, as the Cannes Film Festival opens, I’d like the film world to spare a thought for Gérard Depardieu’s victims.”

Accused by more than 20 women

Depardieu’s long and storied career — he told the court that he’s made more than 250 films — has turned him into a French movie giant. He was Oscar-nominated in 1991 for his performance as the swordsman and poet Cyrano de Bergerac.

In recent years, the actor has been accused publicly or in formal complaints of misconduct by more than 20 women, but so far only the sexual assault case has proceeded to court. Some other cases were dropped because of a lack of evidence or the statute of limitations.

During the four-day trial in March, Depardieu rejected the accusations, saying he’s “not like that.” He acknowledged that he had used vulgar and sexualized language on the film set and that he grabbed the set dresser’s hips during an argument, but denied that his behavior was sexual.

The court, composed of a panel of three judges, concluded that Depardieu’s explanations in court were “unpersuasive” and “not credible” and stressed both accusers’ “constant, reiterated and substantiated declarations.”

The court also said that both plaintiffs have been faced with an “aggressive” defense strategy “based on comments meant to offend them.” The judges therefore considered that Depardieu’s lawyer comments in court aggravated the harm to the accusers and justified higher fines.

The two accusers testified in court

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

From left, a plaintiff’s lawyer Claude Vincent, lawyer Catherine Le Magueresse, a plaintiff, a plaintiff’s lawyer Carine Durrieu Diebolt speak with the media outside a Paris court, after a verdict was delivered on accusations that French actor Gerard Depardieu sexually assaulted two women who were working on a film with him in 2021, in Paris, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)

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 grabbed her chest.

The woman also testified that Depardieu used an obscene expression to ask her to touch his penis and suggested he wanted to rape her. She told the court that the actor’s calm and cooperative attitude during the trial bore no resemblance to his behavior at work.

The other plaintiff, an assistant, said that Depardieu groped her buttocks and her breasts during three separate incidents on the film set.

The Associated Press doesn’t identify by name people who say they were sexually assaulted unless they consent to be named. Neither women has done so in this case.

“I’m very moved,” one of the plaintiffs, the set dresser, told reporters after the verdict. “I’m very very much satisfied with the decision, that’s a victory for me, really, and a big progress, a step forward. I feel justice was made.”

Some expressed support for Depardieu

Some figures in the French cinema world have expressed their support for Depardieu. Actors Vincent Perez and Fanny Ardant were among those who took seats on his side of the courtroom.

French media reported last week that Depardieu was shooting a film directed by Ardant in the Azores archipelago, in Portugal.

The actor may have to face other legal proceedings soon.

In 2018, actor Charlotte Arnould accused him of raping her at his home. That case is still active, and in August 2024 prosecutors requested that it go to trial.

For more than a half-century, Depardieu stood as a towering figure in French cinema, a titan known for his commanding physical presence, instinct, sensibility and remarkable versatility.

A bon vivant who overcame a speech impediment and a turbulent youth, Depardieu rose to prominence in the 1970s and became one of France’s most prolific and acclaimed actors, portraying a vast array of characters, from volatile outsiders to deeply introspective figures.

In recent years, his behavior toward women has come under renewed scrutiny, including after a documentary showed him repeatedly making obscene remarks and gestures during a 2018 trip to North Korea.

Samuel Petrequin contributed to this report.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation may have picked up slightly last month as President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs kicked in, a trend economists expect will become more visible in the coming months.

Consumer prices are forecast to have risen 2.4% in April compared with a year earlier, according to data provider FactSet, the same as in March and down from 3% at the start of the year. Still, on a monthly basis, economists expect that the consumer price index rose 0.3% from March to April, a pace that would worsen inflation if it continued, after it fell for the first time in nearly five years the previous month.

Tuesday’s report could provide an early read on how Trump’s duties will affect the prices Americans pay for necessities and other goods such as clothing, shoes, furniture and even groceries. Duties on many goods from Mexico and Canada took effect in February and could have impacted prices last month. Still, economists forecast the impact from duties to be modest.

A worker installs a platform near a Nike store outside a shopping mall in Beijing, Sunday, May 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

“Firms have indicated … that they are unsure how much of the tariff cost increase they can pass through to consumers without denting demand, and we expect some testing of the waters and a staggered pattern of price increases,” Laura Rosner-Warburton, cofounder of Macro Policy Perspectives, wrote in note to clients.

The Trump administration said early Monday that it had reached a deal with China to sharply reduce its tariffs on imports from that country. But even taking that agreement into account, U.S. average import taxes remain at 90-year highs, economists said, which could worsen inflation in the coming months.

Tariffs on furniture, agricultural goods from Mexico, and on clothes and shoes may have boosted prices last month. Auto prices may have risen because car sales surged as Americans sought to get ahead of duties on new cars and car parts, reducing the need for dealers to offer discounts.

Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices are forecast to have risen 2.8% last month compared to a year earlier, the same as in March. On a monthly basis, they are expected to rise 0.3%, up from just 0.1% the previous month.

It will likely take more time for the full impact of the duties to be reflected in prices across U.S. businesses, economists say. Items that were already in transit when the tariffs were imposed won’t have to pay the duties, while many companies have built a stockpile of goods and could hold off on price hikes in hopes that tariffs will ultimately be reduced.

Consumers, at least those outside the top one-fifth in incomes, are also more stretched financially than a few years ago and are more likely to resist price hikes, which could push firms to delay raising prices as long as possible.

Consumer prices cooled noticeably in February and March, prompting Trump to claim repeatedly on social media that there is “NO INFLATION.” Inflation has fallen to nearly the 2% target set by the Federal Reserve, the agency charged with fighting higher prices.

Yet grocery prices have jumped in two out of the past three months, despite Trump’s claims. He has also said gas has fallen to $1.98 a gallon, which is below the measured average in any state. AAA said Monday that gas costs an average $3.14 a gallon nationwide.

On Monday, the White House said it has cut the tariff it imposed on Chinese goods from 145% to 30%, while China also sharply reduced its duties on U.S. goods. Both sides could add 24% tariffs after 90 days if they don’t reach a broader agreement.

The smaller import taxes will limit the damage to the U.S. economy, but combined with a 10% universal tariff already in place, plus larger import taxes on autos, steel, and aluminum, economists forecast they will still slow growth this year and worsen inflation.

The Yale Budget Lab, for example, estimates that the average U.S. tariff will be nearly 18% even including the deal reached Monday between the U.S. and China. At that level, U.S. duties will be the highest since 1934. The Budget Lab calculates the tariffs will lift prices 1.7% and cost the average household about $2,800.

And while Trump may tout his trade deals — such as the one with the United Kingdom reached last week — he has also said “tariffs is the most beautiful word” in the dictionary, and is counting on revenue from duties to narrow the budget deficit, suggesting tariffs will likely remain high.

The tariffs have also put the Federal Reserve in an exceedingly difficult spot, as Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged in a news conference last week. Powell said the duties have raised the risk of both higher inflation and higher unemployment, two challenges that rarely occur simultaneously. If unemployment rose, the Fed would typically cut rates to boost the economy, while if inflation worsened, the central bank would usually raise rates or leave them elevated.

President Donald Trump is no longer the most important American in the world.

He is certainly the most powerful, at least for three more years, but power is only one measure of importance. On Thursday, a Chicago native and Villanova University graduate named Robert Prevost supplanted Trump. He became the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV.

And it happened at exactly the right time.

I’m not Catholic. I’m an evangelical from the rural South who grew up so isolated from Catholicism that I didn’t even know any Catholics until I went to law school. But I’m deeply influenced by Catholicism, in both its ancient and its modern forms.

I devoured the works of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in college. And one of my favorite classes was about liberation theology, a left-wing, modern Catholic approach to the Gospel that puts an emphasis on improving the material conditions of the poor, in part through political and economic reform. And no book has influenced my approach to abortion and human life more than Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Evangelium Vitae.”

It was in this study and reflection that I understood the true importance of the historical stream of Christian thought. Christianity is an ancient faith, one that has endured through rulers and regimes far more ignorant and brutal than anything we’ve ever confronted in the United States.

All too many American evangelicals are disconnected from that history. We belong to churches that measure their existence in months or years, not centuries or millenniums. Our oldest denominations have existed for only a fraction of time compared with the Catholic Church.

That lack of perspective ends up exaggerating the importance of politics. It narrows our frame of reference and elevates the temporal over the eternal. It leads to absurd declarations, such as Trump’s vow this Easter to make America “more religious than it has ever been before.”

And when you believe the success of your religion depends on the success of any politician, it’s only a matter of time before politics becomes your religion. That means that too many Christians will evaluate even the pope through a partisan political lens.

And that’s exactly what happened last week, as people found the new pope’s social media feeds and began devouring his old posts. Is the new pope MAGA? Is he woke? How does he fit into the American culture war?

The headline of a story from The Federalist, a MAGA publication, said it all — “Read the New Pope’s Far-Left Takes on Immigration, Climate, Covid and Race Relations.”

And what is far left about the new pope? It turns out that he was opposed to family separation for migrants crossing the border during Trump’s first term, and disagreed with Vice President JD Vance’s interpretation of a theological idea called ordo amoris, which Vance had used to argue that American compassion “belongs first to your fellow citizens.”

Leo had also expressed his sympathy after the death of George Floyd, reposting a tweet by Bishop Michael Olson that said, “I join my voice and prayers to those of my brother bishops that we might work hard to end racism in our hearts and in society. May God give comfort to the family of #GeorgeFloyd in this time of anguish.”

He also posted, “We need to hear more from leaders in the Church, to reject racism and seek justice.”

That’s far left? It seems simply Christian to me.

The new pope had also reposted a message from Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut in support of gun control in 2017, and reposted a message expressing alarm that the United States wouldn’t meet its carbon-emission goals, also in 2017. He expressed support for the COVID vaccine, reposting in 2021 a message that said, “May God grant us the grace to face #COVID19 with the strength of faith, ensuring that vaccines are available for all, so that we can all get immunized.”

Again, these positions aren’t far left. They’re all quite mainstream. But if your catechism is the MAGA party platform, then the pope’s positions are very challenging indeed.

At the same time, he doesn’t fit well into the Democratic box, either. He is strongly anti-abortion, and he upholds the church’s traditional teachings on sexual morality and gender identity. Don’t look for Leo to alter the church’s doctrines on abortion or marriage.

So, no, the pope is neither MAGA nor woke. He’s Catholic, and party platforms are irrelevant to church doctrine.

In addition, don’t look to Leo to provide aid or comfort to those inside and outside the Catholic Church who seek to redeem the culture through the raw exercise of Christian power. In his first homily, he said that the church should serve as “an ark of salvation sailing through the waters of history and a beacon that illumines the dark nights of this world.”

But, the pope argued, it does not accomplish this through “grandeur” (and here he referred to the beauty and majesty of the church’s buildings and cathedrals), but rather through “the holiness of her members.”

It is not the church’s power or wealth but the church’s witness that helps transform the world.

In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.

Many of us (and certainly many dissenting evangelicals) are also lamenting that Trump owes his victory to the evangelical church more than to any other group in American life. He won the votes of white evangelicals by a 65-point margin. He lost the rest of the electorate by 18 points. Trump’s election, in other words, isn’t just an expression of American political will; it’s also an expression of American Christian will.

But American Christianity does not speak with one voice. It contains multitudes. And so does Leo. He appears to be of mixed-race descent (his maternal grandparents were apparently Creole from New Orleans), and he spent much of his adult life in Peru. In fact, he has such close ties to Peru that the nation celebrated his election, and its president, Dina Boluarte, declared, “The pope is Peruvian.”

Oh, and he’s a White Sox fan, so he has a heart for hopeless causes.

He’s also the living embodiment of one of America’s most important and profound transformations — from a Protestant-dominated nation that was often deeply intolerant of Catholicism and Catholics to a nation in which people of all faiths can worship freely.

Leo will forge his own path, and it’s important not to read too much into various tweets and social media posts. But if there is one thing we can glean from the new pope’s words and the way he has lived his life, it’s that he shares Pope Francis’ love for the poor and the vulnerable. He’s expressing and trying to embody a religious faith that views all life as precious.

“The church,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “must be reminded once again that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” The Catholic church, however, is a global church. It’s not the conscience of one nation. It is the conscience of many nations.

As one American steps onto the world stage as a man of malice, another American answers, leading with love and compassion. They represent two starkly different visions of American character. And, if all goes well, Leo will command the world stage long after Trump is gone from public life.

I don’t know what kind of pope Leo will ultimately become. But Thursday, I felt the cultural wind shift just a tiny bit. An American man who confounds political categories now leads the world’s largest church. As a friend texted me right after the pope’s selection was announced, that shift “almost feels like … hope.”

David French writes a column for the New York Times.

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Today is Tuesday, May 13, the 133rd day of 2025. There are 232 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St. Peter’s Square by Turkish assailant Mehmet Ali Ağca. (Ağca was sentenced to life in prison in Italy in July 1981, but was pardoned in 2000 at the Pope’s request.)

Also on this date:

In 1846, the United States Congress formally declared war against Mexico, following battles along the disputed U.S.-Mexico border in the preceding weeks; the Mexican-American War would continue for nearly two years until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February 1848.

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How Putin uses the USSR’s victory in World War II to rally support for him and the war in Ukraine

In 1940, in his first speech to the House of Commons as British prime minister, Winston Churchill said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

In 1973, in tennis’ first so-called “Battle of the Sexes,” Bobby Riggs defeated Margaret Court 6-2, 6-1 in Ramona, California. (Billie Jean King soundly defeated Riggs at the Houston Astrodome later that year.)

In 1980, a tornado struck downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, killing five people and injuring 79.

In 1985, a confrontation between Philadelphia authorities and the radical group MOVE ended as a police helicopter dropped two bombs onto the group’s row house, igniting a fire that killed 11 people (including five children) and destroyed 61 homes.

In 2016, the Obama administration issued a directive requiring public schools to permit transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Harvey Keitel is 86.
Musician Stevie Wonder is 75.
Screenwriter-producer David Simon (“The Wire”) is 66.
Basketball Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman is 64.
TV host/comedian Stephen Colbert is 61.
Musician Darius Rucker (Hootie and the Blowfish) is 59.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., is 48.
Actor Samantha Morton is 48.
Actor-writer-director Lena Dunham is 39.
Actor Robert Pattinson is 39.
Actor Debby Ryan is 32.
Country musician Morgan Wallen is 32.