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Spare: Key takeaways from Prince Harry’s book

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CNN
 — 

Britain’s Prince Harry has launched a series of incendiary accusations against members of his family in his new memoir, which reveals a number of private confrontations between him and other senior royals and details his split from the family.

CNN has obtained a copy of the book – called “Spare,” a reference to the Duke of Sussex’s role as the monarchy’s “spare heir.” For days now, many have been gobsmacked by the stunning claims to have emerged from the memoir after they were first reported by British newspaper the Guardian, which managed to get a copy ahead of its scheduled release.

The autobiography, which releases globally on Tuesday, features a litany of rebukes, criticisms and grievances from Harry’s time as a senior member of the royal family, and details of his highly publicized split from the clan in 2020.

Kensington Palace and Buckingham Palace have not commented on the allegations in the book, which the 38-year-old royal has promoted in a series of televised interviews.

Here is what we’ve learned from “Spare”:

Among the most explosive claims is Harry’s allegation that Prince William, his older brother, knocked him onto the floor during an argument over Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

The alleged scuffle took place after a conversation between the two siblings, during which William, the heir to the British throne, called Meghan “difficult,” “rude” and “abrasive,” according to the book.

The confrontation escalated until William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor,” Harry writes.

He details his version of events, which began when William arrived at Harry and Meghan’s then-home, Nottingham Cottage on Kensington Palace grounds in London, to discuss “‘the whole rolling catastrophe’ of their relationship and struggles with the press.”

Harry alleges that William attacked him after he gave his elder brother water and attempted to cool the heated verbal exchange.

“He set down the water, called me another name, then came at me. It all happened so fast. So very fast. He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor. I landed on the dog’s bowl, which cracked under my back, the pieces cutting into me. I lay there for a moment, dazed, then got to my feet and told him to get out.”

Harry states in the book that William urged him to hit back, but he refused to do so. William left but later returned “looking regretful” and apologized, he says.

In his interview with Britain’s ITV, which aired Sunday, the duke elaborated on the altercation and recalled seeing a “red mist” take hold of William.

“What was different here was the level of frustration, and I talk about the red mist that I had for so many years, and I saw this red mist in him,” he said, adding, “He wanted me to hit him back, but I chose not to.”

Early on in the book, Harry recalls returning to the UK for the first time after stepping back as a senior royal in April 2021 for the funeral of the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip.

The somber occasion was the first time the duke was reunited with his father, now King Charles III, and William since he and Meghan had spoken to Oprah Winfrey for their bombshell interview.

“So, though I’d flown home specifically and solely for Grandpa’s funeral, while there I’d asked for this secret meeting with my older brother, Willy, and my father talk about the state of things. To find a way out,” he writes in the book, an advance copy of which CNN has obtained.

Harry continues: “I tried to explain my side of things. I wasn’t at my best. For starters, I was still nervous, fighting to keep my emotions in check, while also striving to be succinct and precise.”

However, Harry says, he discovered that his brother and father had “come ready for a fight.” Harry’s retelling suggests tensions with William remained high and quotes Charles pleading to his sons not to “make my final years a misery,” according to the memoir.

The passage also revealed the brothers refer to each other as “Willy” and “Harold” respectively.

Harry also claims in his memoir that Charles also once joked about who Harry’s father really is.

The prince explained his father “liked telling stories” and recounts his father, then Prince Charles, making a joke about his mother Diana’s affair with Major James Hewitt.

Harry writes that his father would joke: “‘Who knows if I’m really the Prince of Wales? Who knows if I’m even your real father? Maybe your real father is in Broadmoor, darling boy!”

Harry found it an “unfunny joke, given the rumour circulating just then that my actual father was one of Mummy’s former lovers: Major James Hewitt.”

The former Princess of Wales, Diana, confirmed she had a five-year affair with Hewitt in a now infamous BBC Panorama interview with journalist Martin Bashir. She said the relationship started in 1986 – two years after the Duke of Sussex was born.

“One cause of this rumour was Major Hewitt’s flaming ginger hair, but another cause was sadism. Tabloid readers were delighted by the idea that the younger child of Prince Charles wasn’t the child of Prince Charles,” Harry writes. “Never mind that my mother didn’t meet Major Hewitt until long after I was born, the story was simply too good to drop.”

Prince Harry added that if the King thought anything about Major Hewitt, “he kept them to himself.”

In another anecdote from the autobiography, Harry told his father not to marry Camilla, who is now Queen Consort, and feared that she would be a “wicked stepmother.”

“I recall wondering, right before the tea, if she’d be mean to me. If she’d be like all the wicked stepmothers in storybooks. But she wasn’t. Like Willy, I did feel real gratitude for that,” he wrote.

Both William and Harry called her the “other woman,” according to the book.

William “long harboured suspicions” of his father’s affair, “which confused him, tormented him, and when those suspicions were confirmed he felt tremendous guilt for having done nothing, said nothing, sooner,” Harry writes.

When their father wanted “to be public about” his relationship with Camilla, the brothers met her formally for the first time in separate occasions, Harry writes.

“He (William) merely gave me the impression that the Other Woman, Camilla, had made an effort, which he appreciated, and that was all he cared to say,” Harry says. He later compares his meeting with her as getting an injection, writing in the book, “close your eyes, over before you know it.”

Prince Harry claims to have killed 25 people while serving with the British army in Afghanistan, saying that in the heat of combat he viewed his targets as “chess pieces” rather than people.

The prince completed two tours of Afghanistan, one spanning 2007 to 2008 and the other from 2012 to 2013.

Advancements of technology “in the age of Apaches and laptops,” allowed Harry to say “precisely how many enemy combatants I’d killed,” adding that, “I felt it vital never to shy away from that number.”

“So, my number: Twenty-five. It wasn’t a number that gave me any satisfaction. But neither was it a number that made me feel ashamed,” he writes.

Harry also says he “didn’t think of those twenty-five as people. You can’t kill people if you think of them as people. You can’t really harm people if you think of them as people. They were chess pieces removed from the board, Bads taken away before they could kill Goods. I’d been trained to “other-ize” them, trained well. On some level I recognized this learned detachment as problematic. But I also saw it as an unavoidable part of soldiering.”

The remarks have sparked criticism from some British security and military figures – and an angry rebuke from the Taliban.

One part of Harry’s life story that many wondered if he would share was the death of his grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II. He does in fact reveal that it was his father Charles who first called him last September to say that the Queen’s health “had taken a turn.”

In the memoir, Harry recounts immediately then sending a text message to William to ask if he and Kate were flying to Balmoral – and when and how.

There was no response from William, Harry says.

He writes that he then received another call from Charles, who told Harry that he was welcome at the Scottish residence but that his wife, Meghan, was not.

Harry says he spent much of the time on his flight to Scotland staring at the clouds, replaying the last time he’d spoken with his grandmother.

“Four days earlier, long chat on the phone. We’d touched on many topics. Her health, of course. The turmoil at Number 10,” Harry recalls.

As the plane began its descent, Harry says he received a text message from Meghan asking him to call her and then he checked the BBC’s website.

“Granny was gone. Pa was King,” he writes.

He also opens up about the moment he saw the Queen’s body inside a room within Balmoral Castle.

“I braced myself, went in. The room was dimly lit, unfamiliar – I’d been inside it only once in my life. I moved ahead uncertainly, and there she was. I stood, frozen, staring. I stared and stared. It was difficult, but I kept on, thinking how I’d regretted not seeing my mother at the end. Years of lamenting that lack of proof, postponing my grief for want of proof. Now I thought: Proof. Careful what you wish for.”

Harry says he then whispered to her that he hoped she was happy, that she was with her late husband, Prince Philip.

In another part of the memoir, it’s revealed that the Duchess of Sussex allegedly upset the Princess of Wales by saying she must have “baby brain” because of her hormones after she had given birth and during the run up to the royal wedding in 2018.

Harry describes a 2018 meeting with William and Kate at their residence – which, according to the duke, was an attempt to clear the air between both couples.

Prince Harry reportedly claims that Kate demanded an apology from Meghan for offending her.

Kate allegedly told Meghan that “we’re not close enough for you to talk about my hormones!” according to the book.

Harry went on to say that Meghan said she spoke to all her friends that way.

Harry recounted that the Prince of Wales called Meghan “rude” and pointed his finger, saying “it’s not what’s done here in Britain,” to which Meghan reportedly replied “Kindly take your finger out of my face.”

“Meg said she’d never intentionally do anything to hurt Kate, and if she ever did, she asked Kate to please just let her know so it wouldn’t happen again,” Harry writes.

“We all hugged. Kind of.”

The autobiography also revisits the controversial incident of wearing a Nazi costume to a party in 2005. Harry alleges that his decision to wear it was influenced by Prince William and his wife Catherine who encouraged him to do so.

In 2005, Harry was pictured on the front page of the UK’s Sun newspaper wearing a swastika armband on a German military jacket at a costume party.

At the time, Harry took responsibility for the incident and issued an apology through Clarence House Press Office saying he was “very sorry if I caused any offense or embarrassment to anyone. It was a poor choice of costume and I apologize.”

The topic was readdressed in the recent Netflix documentary titled ‘Harry and Meghan’ where the Duke of Sussex said it was one of the “biggest mistakes” of his life, adding that he felt “so ashamed afterwards.”

Harry’s new claim that his brother and sister-in-law were involved contrasts with his previous public apologies, in which he took responsibility for the incident alone.

The Duke of Sussex in the new book revisits the time when he was debating which costume to wear and called Prince William and Catherine to ask their opinions, to which they allegedly told him to wear the Nazi uniform over a pilot costume.

“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” Harry says. “I rented it, plus a silly moustache, and went back to the house.”

Harry tries it on and both William and Kate “howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous!”

He described what followed after a picture of him wearing the costume was released in the media as a “firestorm, which I thought at times would engulf me.”

“And I felt that I deserved to be engulfed. There were moments over the course of the next several weeks and months when I thought I might die of shame,” he adds.

Calling his judgement “swift, harsh,” he says , “I was either a crypto Nazi or else a mental defective. I turned to Willy. He was sympathetic, but there wasn’t much to say.”

Harry ends by saying the “shame would never fade. Nor should it.”

He also addressed a scandal from 2009 when a video emerged of him using a racial slur to describe a fellow soldier from Pakistan.

Harry recalls that he had shot some video of he and some of his fellow cadets as they killed time in an airport.

“I panned the group, gave a running commentary on each lad, and when I came to my fellow cadet and good friend Ahmed Raza Kahn, a Pakistani, I said: Ah, our little P*ki friend…” Harry writes, before adding that he didn’t know the word was a slur.

“Growing up, I’d heard many people use that word and never saw anyone flinch or cringe, never suspected them of being racist,” he explains. “Neither did I know anything about unconscious bias. I was twenty-one, awash in isolation and privilege, and if I thought anything about this word at all, I thought it was like Aussie. Harmless.”

The footage was sent to a fellow cadet for an end-of-year video, he writes, but it was then circulated and “ultimately ended up in the hands of someone who sold it to the News of the World [newspaper].”

Harry recounts that his father’s office issued an apology on his behalf after the video became public and that he’d also wanted to put out a statement but “courtiers advised against it” as it was “not the best strategy, sir.”

“I didn’t care about strategy. I cared about people not thinking I was a racist. I cared about not being a racist,” he writes, adding that he reached out directly to his friend to apologize and was forgiven.

“He said he knew I wasn’t a racist. No big deal,” Harry ends. “But it was. And his forgiveness, his easy grace, only made me feel worse.”

Harry, who now resides in California with Meghan and their two children, also admits taking cocaine at age 17.

Harry writes: “Of course. I had been doing cocaine around this time. At someone’s country house, during a shooting weekend, I’d been offered a line, and I’d done a few more since.”

He added: “it wasn’t much fun,” adding that it didn’t “make me particularly happy as it seemed to make everyone around me.

“But it did make me feel different, and that was the main goal. Feel. Different. I was a deeply unhappy seventeen-year-old boy willing to try almost anything that would alter the status quo,” Harry continues.

Prince Harry has previously admitted to drug use in his youth. In 2002, when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy, he faced accusations of underage drinking and cannabis use, CNN previously reported. A confession of heavy drinking and marijuana use when he was 16 prompted his father to send him to the drug rehab center, Phoenix House UK, for a day.

Elsewhere in the autobiography Harry describes losing his virginity in what he calls a “inglorious episode.”

Harry says he lost his virginity to “an older woman,” who he added “liked horses, quite a lot, and treated me not unlike a young stallion.”

He does not name the woman in the book.

“Among the many things about it that were wrong: It happened in a grassy field behind a busy pub,” he writes.

“Obviously someone had seen us,” Harry adds.

Harry also reveals in his memoir that he recreated the journey his late mother took through the Paris tunnel where she and two others were involved in a fatal car crash.

Diana died in 1997, when Harry was 12.

Harry writes he had been invited to the French capital to attend the 2007 Rugby World Cup semi-final and had been provided with a driver. On his first night in the city, he asked the driver if he knew the tunnel – Pont de l’Alma – where Diana’s vehicle crashed in 1997.

He asked to drive at 65 miles per hour (104.6 kilometers per hour) – “the exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash.”

“I’d always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel,” Harry says, before adding that there was “no reason anyone should ever die inside it.”

Harry also writes that he asked his driver to go through the tunnel a second time.

“It had been a very bad idea. I’d had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I’d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn’t really. Deep down, I’d hoped to feel in that tunnel what I’d felt when JLP [Jamie Lowther Pinkerton, former private secretary to Harry and Prince William] gave me the police files—disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away,” Harry says.

“I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead, it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux,” he continues.

In a clip from “Harry: The Interview,” was broadcast in Britain on ITV on Sunday, the prince speaks about his memories of meeting mourners and the guilt he felt while walking outside Kensington Palace following the death of his mother in 1997.

Harry also says that he cried once in the wake of his mother’s death – at her burial.

“Everyone knows where they were and what they were doing the night my mother died,” he tells presenter Tom Bradby.

“I cried once, at the burial, and you know I go into detail about how strange it was and how actually there was some guilt that I felt, and I think William felt as well, by walking around the outside of Kensington Palace.”

Harry described feeling the mourners’ tears on their hands when he shook them. “There were 50,000 bouquets of flowers to our mother and there we were shaking people’s hands, smiling,” he says. “I’ve seen the videos, right, I looked back over it all. And the wet hands that we were shaking, we couldn’t understand why their hands were wet, but it was all the tears that they were wiping away.”

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World

Prince Harry says ‘heinous, horrible’ stories have been ‘spoon-fed’ to press from the palace

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CNN
 — 

Prince Harry told CBS’ 60 Minutes Sunday he hasn’t spoken with his brother, Prince William, for “a while,” in the second of two major interviews ahead of the publication of his memoir, “Spare,” on Monday.

The Duke of Sussex told Anderson Cooper he doesn’t “currently” speak with the Prince of Wales, “but I look forward to us being able to find peace,” he said. It follows an interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, ahead of what is likely to be an explosive week for the British royals with the release of Harry’s memoir.

Prince Harry also told Cooper that he hasn’t spoken to his father, King Charles III, in “quite a while,” adding the “ball is very much in their court” when asked about the possibility of the family reconciling after Harry’s highly publicized disclosures.

Buckingham Palace has repeatedly declined to comment on the contents of Prince Harry’s forthcoming memoir, which has been the subject of leaks since last week detailing some of his most controversial claims. CNN has not seen a copy of the book but has requested an advance copy from the publisher Penguin Random House.

His most recent interviews cover a wide range of topics from the death of his mother, the Princess of Wales, his frustration towards the British press, the treatment of his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and the subsequent fallout with his family since his marriage.

The interviews set the stage for the string of revelations that are expected to be made public Monday, as Prince Harry continues to push back against what he refers to as “the institution,” offering a revealing look inside the estranged family.

Despite the fractured relationship between the two brothers, Prince Harry told Cooper he loved William “deeply.”

“My brother and I love each other. I love him deeply,” the Duke of Sussex said. “There has been a lot of pain between the two of us, especially the last six years.”

He added that nothing he has written is “ever intended to hurt my family.”

“But it does give a full picture of the situation as we were growing up, and also squashes this idea that somehow my wife was the one that destroyed the relationship between these two brothers,” Prince Harry said.

The book’s title of “Spare” is a reference to an “heir and a spare,” a saying in the United Kingdom that refers to the need to have a child to inherit an aristocratic title. Harry was next in line to the British throne after William until William’s children were born – now he’s fifth in the line of succession.

The strained relationship between the brothers has been a common theme in leaked excerpts from the book and Harry’s media interviews, which revealed deep divisions between the siblings.

Perhaps the most incendiary revelation to emerge was Prince Harry’s claim of a scuffle with the Prince of Wales during an argument over his wife in 2019, as he described while reading in an excerpt of his memoir on ITV on Sunday.

Prince Harry said his brother never tried to dissuade him from marrying Meghan, but expressed some concerns and told him, “‘This is going be really hard for you,’” Prince Harry recalled during his interview with Bradby.

“I still to this day don’t truly understand which part of what he was talking about,” Prince Harry continued. “Maybe he predicted what the British press’s reaction was going to be.”

In the interview and in excerpts from his memoir shared by ITV, the Duke of Sussex addressed how strife in his family has been fueled by the relationship between Buckingham Palace and media outlets.

“We’re not just talking about family relationships, we’re talking about an antagonist, which is the British press, specifically the tabloids who want to create as much conflict as possible,” Prince Harry told Bradby. “The saddest part of that is certain members of my family and the people that work for them are complicit in that conflict.”

He also stated that the “leaking” and “planting” of “a royal source” to the press “is not an unknown person, it is the palace specifically briefing the press, but covering their tracks by being unnamed.”

Prince Harry added that he thinks “that’s pretty shocking to people. Especially when you realize how many palace sources, palace insiders, senior palace officials, how many quotes are being attributed to those people, some of the most heinous, horrible things have been said about me and my wife, completely condoned by the palace because it’s coming from the palace, and those journalists have literally been spoon-fed that narrative without ever coming to us, without ever seeing or questioning the other side.”

Prince Harry echoed those sentiments with CBS’ Cooper, adding even at the young age of 12, he felt resentment toward the British media.

“It was obvious to us as kids the British press’ part in our mother’s misery and I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily, I never expressed to anybody,” he said. “But I resorted to drinking heavily. Because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from how … whatever I was thinking. And I would, you know, resort to drugs as well.”

In both interviews, Prince Harry spoke about how his mother was hunted by paparazzi, recalling the traumatic night his father told him Princess Diana had died from injuries sustained in a car crash.

“I really think about how many hours he’d been awake. And the compassion that I have for him, as a parent having to sit with that for many, many hours, ringing up friends of his, trying to work out, how the hell do I break this to my two sons?”

Harry said he never wants to find himself having to do the same.

“I don’t want history to repeat itself. I do not want to be a single dad. And I certainly don’t want my children to have a life without a mother or a father,” Prince Harry told ITV’s Bradby.

Diana was killed in 1997, when the car she was traveling in crashed inside a Paris tunnel. Prince Harry was 12 years old at the time. He told Cooper his memories of the days that followed are blurry, but recalls seeing the throng of people outside Buckingham Palace who came to offer their condolences.

“I think it’s bizarre, because I see William and me smiling,” he said. “I remember the guilt that I felt … The fact that the people that we were meeting were showing more emotion than we were showing, maybe more emotion than we even felt.”

Prince Harry told Cooper he “refused to accept she was gone” and for “may years” believed she had decided to disappear.

The Duke of Sussex said he only cried once his mother’s coffin went into the ground. “That was the first time that I actually cried… there was never another time,” he said.

Prince Harry also recalled the events around the death of his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, who died on September 8 at Balmoral Castle. The duke was at a charity event in London when the palace announced that the queen was under medical supervision.

“I asked my brother – I said, “What are your plans? How are you and Kate getting up there?” And then, a couple of hours later… all of the family members that live within the Windsor and Ascot area were jumping on a plane together, a plane with 12, 14, maybe 16 seats,” he said. “I was not invited.”

He recalled spending time with the Queen in her bedroom after she had died.

“I was really happy for her. Because she’d finished life. She’d completed life, and her husband was waiting for her. And the two of them are buried together,” Prince Harry said.

The Duke of Sussex also told ITV’s Bradby about his decision to write the book, saying, “38 years of having my story told by so many different people, with intentional spin and distortion felt like a good time to tell own my story and be able to tell it for myself. I’m actually really grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to tell my story because it’s my story to tell.”

Prince Harry pointed out that he has tried over the last six years to resolve his concerns with his family privately.

“It never needed to get to this point. I have had conversations, I have written letters, I have written emails, and everything is just, ‘No, you, this is not what’s happening. You, you are imagining it,’” he said. “That’s really hard to take. And if it had stopped, by the point that I fled my home country with my wife and my son fearing for our lives, then maybe this would have turned out differently. It’s hard.”

The duke said he wants “reconciliation but first there needs to be some accountability,” with respect to his family.

Prince Harry has previously blamed the constant media intrusion as a critical stressor for him and his wife that ultimately led to their decision to step down as working members of the Royal Family in 2021.

In a six-part Netflix documentary released last month, the couple said press attacks, the lack of action from the palace to prevent them and the couple’s increasing suspicions that the royal household was actually feeding the media pushed Meghan to a dark place.

“You can’t just continue to say to me that I’m delusional and paranoid when all the evidence is stacked up, because I was genuinely terrified about what is going to happen to me,” Prince Harry told ITV’s Bradby.

“And then we have a 12-month transition period and everyone doubles down. My wife shares her experience. And instead of backing off, both the institution and the tabloid media in the UK, both doubled down,” he added.

Still, the duke said, “forgiveness is 100% a possibility.”

“There’s probably a lot of people who, after watching the documentary and reading the book, will go, how could you ever forgive your family for what they have done? People have already said that to me. And I said forgiveness is 100% a possibility because I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back. At the moment, I don’t recognize them, as much as they probably don’t recognize me,” Prince Harry said.

On Monday, the duke’s interview with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Michael Strahan will air on the ABC show, followed in the evening by a half-hour special on ABC News Live. And to top things off, the duke will make an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” hours after his book is released on Tuesday.

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Entertainment

Barack Obama shares his favorite movies and books of 2022

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CNN
 — 

Former President Barack Obama stuck to an annual tradition Friday, releasing a list of his favorites for the year of 2022, including movies and books.

“I always look forward to sharing my lists of favorite books, movies, and music with all of you,” Obama tweeted. “First up, here are some of the books I read and enjoyed this year. Let me know which books I should check out in 2023.”

Among his favorite written works, Obama listed “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan and “The Light We Carry” by former first lady Michelle Obama, noting, “I’m a bit biased on this one.”

On his list of favorite movies, the former president included “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Descendant,” which he also noted he was “biased” about since the Netflix documentary was produced by the Obama-founded company Higher Ground Productions.

“I saw some great movies this year – here are some of my favorites. What did I miss?” Obama wrote in another tweet.

Social media denizens quickly pointed out that Obama left off the list one of the highest grossing movies of the year: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” The Marvel hit and sequel to 2018’s “Black Panther” has come in second behind “Top Gun: Maverick” in box office gross this year, bringing in more than $421 million at the domestic box office alone since its November release, according to Box Office Mojo. “Black Panther” made the list of Obama’s favorite movies in 2018.

Check out the full list of Obama’s favorite movies and books for 2022:

“The Light We Carry” – Michelle Obama

“Sea of Tranquility” – Emily St. John Mandel

“Trust” – Hernan Diaz

“The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams” – Stacy Schiff

“The Furrows: A Novel” – Namwali Serpell

“South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation” – Imani Perry

“The School for Good Mothers” – Jessamine Chan

“Black Cake” – Charmaine Wilkerson

“Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands” – Kate Beaton

“An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us” – Ed Yong

“Liberation Day” – George Saunders

“The Candy House” – Jennifer Egan

“Afterlives” – Abdulrazak Gurnah

“The Fabelmans”

“Decision to Leave”

“The Woman King”

“Aftersun”

“Emily the Criminal”

“Petite Maman”

“Descendant”

“Happening”

“Till”

“Everything Everywhere All at Once”

“Top Gun: Maverick”

“The Good Boss”

“Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy”

“A Hero”

“Hit the Road”

“Tár”

“After Yang”



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US

Federal investigators have accessed emails of Rep. Scott Perry and Trump allies in 2020 efforts

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CNN
 — 

Federal investigators have obtained access to several email accounts, a draft autobiography and other writings in which Republican Rep. Scott Perry, Donald Trump elections attorney John Eastman, and former Justice Department officials Jeffrey Clark and Ken Klukowski discussed the 2020 election, according to a newly released order in the DC District Court.

The order unsealed Thursday indicates how broad a net federal prosecutors have cast for information from top Trump backers as part of the sprawling criminal investigation into January 6, 2021, and efforts to impede the transfer of presidential power.

Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC District Court allowed federal investigators to access email messages sent to and from Perry, who pushed false election fraud claims after the 2020 election and worked with Eastman, Clark and Klukowski as they tried to overturn Trump’s election loss.

The searches obtained more than 130,000 documents and a book outline Clark was writing about himself and his experience in 2020 and early 2021.

Among the documents were 331 drafts of Clark’s autobiography outline, which he had saved in his Google account, according to a court filing.

The order discloses several rounds of investigative steps by the Justice Department in May, June and again in September.

Court filings also show how carefully investigators treaded around attorney communications that could have been considered confidential – and how they used a filter team to catalogue what they collected in the searches, then ultimately went through the federal court to obtain access to some documents.

Earlier this year, Clark declined to answer questions to several investigative teams, citing his Fifth Amendment rights, and had marked on his autobiography drafts that they were attorney work-product, implying he wanted them to remain confidential.

However, the judge wrote, the Justice Department prosecutors told a judge, “Clark penned the autobiography outline in an atmosphere charged with news that congressional committees’ investigations into the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack and other efforts to overturn the 2020 election were increasingly focusing on his role,” one filing said. Six chapters were about the 2020 election, Howell’s opinion added.

The court order cited a snippet from Clark’s prologue that said after the 2000 election, he “never thought [he’d] have a bird’s eye view of a second deeply contested presidential election” but he’d “be wrong.”

In the Perry email cache, investigators found Eastman, Klukowski and Clark were in communication with the congressman a few dozen times after the election. A handful of email exchanges and attached documents were initially filtered out by the DOJ’s filter team, and Howell then allowed prosecutors to access the 37 records.

Among those records, about a week after the 2020 election, Klukowski acknowledges in an email that he and Perry spoke, then attaches a document about state legislatures being able to determine the presidential election.

Three emails showed Eastman discussing a phone call with Perry in mid-December 2021. “John, this is congressman Scott Perry from PA. Can you contact me ASAP?” one said around December 11.

Other emails from Clark’s account, from after the Trump administration ended in 2021, included him sending Perry his resume, a forwarded excerpt of a Vaclav Havel essay, a discussion of a Roger Stone interview and a comment about Pennsylvania’s voting system.

Eastman, Perry, Clark and Klukowski have been known to be subjects of the DOJ criminal investigation around January 6 since earlier this year, when federal investigators conducted searches of each man’s cell phones. CNN reported earlier this week the DOJ had a dispute with Perry over accessing the data on his phone because of constitutional protections around members of Congress, but it’s unclear if that has been resolved.

None of the four men have been charged criminally.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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Entertainment

Tosca Musk, Elon’s sister, has a business venture of her own — and it’s all about romance and female sexuality

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Atlanta, Georgia
CNN
 — 

Tosca Musk strides onto the red carpet at a Regal Cinemas, statuesque in a white pant suit and glistening burgundy silk top.

A hush comes over a group gathered outside the theater’s doors. Some whip out cell phones and start recording her every move.

It’s a chilly October night in Atlanta, and the fans are here for the premiere of “Torn,” the second in a trilogy of romantic fantasy movies based on books by author Jennifer Armentrout. The group of mostly female fans range in age from their twenties to their seventies, and some flew in from Boston, Detroit and other cities.

This is a big night for Musk and her five-year-old streaming service Passionflix, the backer of the movie. It’s their first public film premiere since the pandemic started.

She floats from one group to another, chatting effortlessly with Passionflix’s superfans, known as Passionistas. Her older brother, Elon Musk, may be the most famous sibling in the family, but he’s not the only one who’s founded a company.

Musk, 48, is the force behind Passionflix, which adapts romance novels into movies and streams them to a devoted niche audience. Romance novels are the most popular genre of books in the United States, and Musk is tapping into that market with stories about sultry, powerful female leads and handsome men with chiseled abs. She directs some of the films herself.

“Passionflix focuses on adapting romance novels exactly as the fan and the author envision it,” Musk says in a separate CNN interview. “We focus on connection, communication and compromise – and remove the shame from sexuality, specifically for women, because it empowers women to both acknowledge and ask for pleasure.”

Days earlier, on the set of a Passionflix movie, “The Secret Life of Amy Bensen,” Musk provides a few glimpses into life with her famous family.

Perched on a navy blue couch in a room tucked inside a warehouse in suburban Atlanta, she chooses her words carefully when asked about her older brother, who was on the verge of his Twitter acquisition.

The Musk children – Elon, Tosca and another brother, middle child Kimbal – were born in South Africa and spent time in Canada before coming to the United States. Their father, Errol, is an engineer and property developer, while their glamorous mother, Maye, is a model.

Tosca Musk attended film school at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and moved to California after graduation. For three months, she worked for one of Elon Musk’s companies, Zip2.

“I realized every time I stepped out of the film world, I was just not happy,” she says. “It just wasn’t my thing.”

After a brief stint at the Los Angeles office of Canadian media company Alliance Atlantis, she began directing and producing films while still in her twenties.

Musk produced romance films for the Lifetime and Hallmark channels and in 2005 launched a comic web series, Tiki Bar TV, which was hailed by Apple CEO Steve Jobs as ahead of its time in the emerging field of vodcasts – or video podcasting.

Then came Passionflix. Its origin story is a classic tale of when one door closes, another one opens.

About five years ago, Musk got an email from a woman who wanted her to turn her script into a movie. Musk loved the script, but there wasn’t much interest from production companies.

“People weren’t really that interested because it was too risque … It was an adult movie with a little bit of reincarnation, things like that,” she says. “It just wasn’t one of those things that regular network television wanted to do.”

But Musk met the woman, Joany Kane, in Los Angeles, and they bonded over their shared passion for romance novels. During that conversation, Kane brought up the idea of turning romance novels into movies and creating a streaming platform for them.

And with that, Passionflix was born – with Musk at the helm and Kane as a co-founder.

“We had no investors. We had to go out and find every investor. So it was a matter of going out and pitching every single person,” Musk says. “We pitched every friend, every family member, everybody just for that small bit of angel investment. It was hard. The first money in is always the hardest money.”

Musk declines to say whether her brother Elon was one of her original investors. But she says she can always count on her two brothers, including restaurateur Kimbal Musk, to give her advice on her business ventures. She tries not to ask unless she really needs to.

“I get advice from them to a certain degree when I ask for it. But no unsolicited advice,” she says. “If I ask for advice, I have no doubt that he (Elon) will give it to me. And then I have to take it, because he’s going to be right. So you have to really want to know what you want to ask. But most of the time when I’m with my family, we talk about family things.”

So what does she think about her brother’s new role as CEO of Twitter – and the flurry of headlines surrounding it?

No comment.

Passionflix’s first film was “Hollywood Dirt,” based on a best-selling novel by Alessandra Torre about a Southern woman who finds romance with a Hollywood star when he comes to her small town to film a movie.

“During that shooting of that movie, we were struggling,” Musk says. “Are we going to get money? Are we going to be able to finish it? We were not really sure. We basically were just sort of piecing the dollars together.”

In May 2017, Musk played a trailer of the movie at a romance novel convention and asked attendees to prepay $100, as founding members, for a two-year Passionflix subscription. About 4,000 people signed up, Musk says, and she and Kane used that to show potential investors they were onto something.

“Trying to raise money for a female-driven platform on romance was just not high on anybody’s priority list at the time,” she says. “But as soon as we showed there was that many people that would come on board, the investors just started flying in.”

Passionflix has since produced more than two dozen feature-length and short films, according to the Internet Movie Database.

The company remains lean – it has a core team of seven people who each wear a lot of hats. In addition to producing its own content, Passionflix also licenses films for its platform.

“I think the biggest challenge for Passionflix is we can’t produce enough content to satiate the fans,” Musk says. “It’s a struggle with so many streaming platforms, when people want original content all the time.”

With more than 200 streaming services now competing for viewers, such niche markets face a myriad of challenges, says Dan Rayburn, a streaming media expert and consultant.

Creating, licensing and marketing content is very costly, he said. And while romance is the biggest-selling genre of books in the US, that doesn’t necessarily mean its popularity translates to movies.

“That’s comparing apples to oranges. Books are different,” Rayburn says. “This business is beyond tough. It’s highly competitive and requires an absolute large sum of money.”

Passionflix charges a subscription fee of $5.99 a month. The company does not disclose its subscriber numbers. Musk says subscribers are in the “six figures,” but declines to offer specifics.

Rayburn says it’s hard to determine the company’s profitability without knowing its expenses, including production and licensing costs.

“OK, if you don’t have subscriber numbers, what’s the usage? How many hours per month do people watch it? How much are you spending on content licensing?”

A deep dive into Passionflix’s online movie catalog reveals a mix of contemporary romance, fantasy romance, paranormal romance, erotic fan fiction and related sub-genres.

The films, which stream on the Passionflix site and on Amazon Prime Video, are rated on an escalating steaminess scale Musk calls a “barometer of naughtiness.”

The five categories: Oh So Vanilla, for wholesome romcoms; Mildly Titillating; Passion and Romance; Toe Curling Yumminess; and NSFW (Not Safe for Work). The latter category has risque plot lines and more sex – think “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

But Musk says that even the naughtiest Passionflix movies don’t reach the soft-core porn threshold.

“When we first started Passionflix, somebody asked us if we’re going to rate using MPAA,” she says, referring to the Motion Picture Association of America’s movie ratings such as PG-13, R, etc. “I don’t actually like any of those ratings. They’re not specific to women. I wanted something that could rate our shows and create more of a tongue-in-cheek conversation.”

Musk says she’s a romantic at heart and is a big fan of the genre.

“Love is amazing, it’s incredibly powerful. I love to tell stories of love, all kinds of love,” she says. “So parental love, friend love, family love, and love between any kind of couple.”

That broad range of romantic genres, and its sexy content, are what sets Passionflix apart from channels such as Hallmark and Lifetime Movie Network, says romance novelist Tamara Lush. She believes the romance genre has been especially popular during the pandemic because people seek comfort in stories with happy-ever-after endings.

“Hallmark is romance-centered but the stories are very, very sweet. Passionflix tells a wider range of stories, and the ones romance readers want to watch,” Lush says.

“The popularity of ‘Bridgerton,’ ‘After’ and ’365 Days’ on Netflix should tell streaming services all they need to know: that romance is a lucrative and sure bet for viewers.”

Passionflix’s original subscribers, known as founding members, get access to movie premieres and filming sets.

Last month in Atlanta, about four dozen of them piled into the Regal theater for the premiere of “Torn.” Following the movie, Musk hosted a question-and-answer session with the lead actors, followed by an after-party at a bar across the street. Fans and actors mingled over drinks.

Debbie Parziale, 67, says she flew in from Boston for the event. One of the founding members, she says she spent the pandemic years curled up on her couch, watching Passionflix movies.

“I love Tosca’s premise of empowering women and making sex not such a taboo subject,” she says. “She’s so true to the romance novels. When you read a book and watch one of her movies, it’s the book you read.”

Amanda Cromer, 32, says she signed up for Passionflix at a romance book convention. She loves the camaraderie that comes with being part of the Passionistas. The group has a virtual book club, called Passion Squad.

As one of the original members, Cromer can visit sets and interact with the actors. Cromer, who lives in a suburb of Atlanta, says that during a visit to the set of “Torn” she became an extra in a cafe scene.

“I love the empowerment the movies bring,” says Cromer, who attended last month’s “Torn” premiere with her mother.

“They choose books with strong female leads. They’ve done such a good job of portraying the female persona as a strong independent female, and not a timid person.”

Back on the set of her latest romance movie, Tosca Musk moves from one sparsely furnished room to another.

Musk lives in suburban Atlanta with her two children, 9-year-old twins who were conceived through in vitro fertilization using an anonymous sperm donor.

She’s getting ready to fly to Italy with the twins to film “Gabriel’s Redemption,” the third book in a series by Sylvain Reynard about a Dante scholar and his passionate affair with a younger graduate student. She says they plan to enjoy lots of gelato in Florence and visit Oxford, England, so the kids can see some of the locations where the Harry Potter movies were filmed.

As a single mother, Musk says she marvels at the path that led her to a job she loves.

She hopes Passionflix will help convince the film industry’s big names that adopting romance novels into movies is a worthy investment.

“The entertainment world is controlled mostly by men. At the end of the day, the decisions tend to sway toward the male audience as opposed to the female audience,” she says. “They also tend to be more about the victimization of women than they are about sexually free or sexually empowered stories about women.”

And for Musk, there’s also a simpler reason for her filmmaking ventures.

“I’m a storyteller at heart,” she says. “I just want to be able to tell stories.”

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Entertainment

Bono reflects on his 40-year marriage to Ali Hewson

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CNN
 — 

Bono’s new memoir, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” isn’t just about his time and travels with U2. It’s about love.

“I also wrote the book to explain to my family what I was doing with their life because it was they who permissioned me to be away with U2 or lobbying Congress,” the singer told the Sunday Times Magazine. “Ali gave me the chance and covered for me at home. So I’m not writing a rock’n’roll memoir, [or] an activist’s memoir, I’m not just writing a sojourner’s memoir, I’m trying to write a love letter to my wife.”

Bono and wife Ali Hewson wed in 1982. He counts her as one of his closest friends.

That’s actually how the pair met, as childhood school chums. Bono calls the woman he shares four children with “incredible.”

“She’s not just a mystery to me, by the way. She’s a mystery to her daughters, to her sons,” he said. “I mean, we’re all trying to get to know her. She’s endlessly fascinating. She’s … full of mischief.”

Not that it’s all been a bed of roses.

According to Bono, the couple has weathered some tough times.

“It’s not like our love was absent any dark undercurrents or briny water, [but] we got each other through those bits where it was hard to see where we were,” he said. “Ali calls it ‘the work of love’. I wish she wouldn’t use the word ‘work’ because I have a feeling there’s an adjective, ‘hard’, that’s inferred.”

“Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story” is out Tuesday.

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Entertainment

Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter turned country queen, dies at 90

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CNN
 — 

Loretta Lynn, the “Coal Miner’s Daughter” whose gutsy lyrics and twangy, down-home vocals made her a queen of country music for seven decades, has died. She was 90.

Lynn’s family said in a statement to CNN that she died Tuesday at her home in Tennessee.

“Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the statement read.

They asked for privacy as they grieve and said a memorial will be announced later.

Lynn, who had no formal music training but spent hours every day singing her babies to sleep, was known to churn out fully textured songs in a matter of minutes. She just wrote what she knew.

She lived in poverty for much of her early life, began having kids by age 17 and spent years married to a man prone to drinking and philandering – all of which became material for her plainspoken songs. Lynn’s life was rich with experiences most country stars of the time hadn’t had for themselves – but her female fans knew them intimately.

“So when I sing those country songs about women struggling to keep things going, you could say I’ve been there,” she wrote in her first memoir, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” “Like I say, I know what it’s like to be pregnant and nervous and poor.”

Lynn scored hits with fiery songs like “Don’t Come Home A’ Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ On Your Mind)” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man),” which topped the country charts in 1966 and made her the first female country singer to write a No. 1 hit.

Her songs recounted family history, skewered lousy husbands and commiserated with women, wives and mothers everywhere. Her tell-it-like-it-is style saw tracks such as “Rated X” and “The Pill” banned from radio, even as they became beloved classics.

 “I wasn’t the first woman in country music,” Lynn told Esquire in 2007. “I was just the first one to stand up there and say what I thought, what life was about.”

 She was born Loretta Webb in 1932, one of eight Webb children raised in Butcher Hollow in the Appalachian mining town of Van Lear, Kentucky. Growing up, Lynn sang in church and at home, even as her father protested that everyone in Butcher Hollow could hear.

Her family had little money. But those early years were some of her fondest memories, as she recounts in her 1971 hit, “Coal Miner’s Daughter”: “We were poor but we had love; That’s the one thing that daddy made sure of.”

As a young teenager, Loretta met the love of her life in Oliver “Doolittle” Lynn, whom she affectionately called “Doo.” The pair married when Lynn was 15 – a fact cleared up in 2012, after the Associated Press discovered Lynn was a few years older than she had said she was in her memoir – and Lynn gave birth to their first of six children the same year.

“When I got married, I didn’t even know what pregnant meant,” said Lynn, who bore four children in the first four years of marriage and a set of twins years later.

“I was five months pregnant when I went to the doctor, and he said, ‘You’re gonna have a baby.’ I said, ‘No way. I can’t have no baby.’ He said, ‘Ain’t you married?’ Yep. He said, ‘You sleep with your husband?’ Yep. ‘You’re gonna have a baby, Loretta. Believe me.’ And I did.”

The couple soon headed to Washington state in search of jobs. Music wasn’t a priority for the young mother at first. She’d spend her days working, mostly, picking strawberries in Washington state while her babies sat on a blanket nearby.

But when her husband heard her humming tunes and soothing their babies to sleep, he said she sounded better than the girl singers on the radio. He bought her a $17 Harmony guitar and got her a gig at a local tavern.

It wasn’t until 1960 that she’d record what would become her debut single, “Honky Tonk Girl.” She then took the song on the road, playing country music stations across the United States.

After years of hard work and raising kids, telling stories with her guitar seemed like a break.

 “Singing was easy,” Lynn told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2010. “I thought ‘Gee whiz, this is an easy job.’ ”

The success of her first single landed Lynn on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and, soon, a contract with Decca Records. She quickly befriended country star Patsy Cline, who guided her through the fame and fashion of country stardom until her shocking death in a plane crash in 1963.

 Cline “was my only girlfriend at the time. She took me under her wing, and when I lost her, it was something else. I still miss her to this day,” Lynn told The Denver Post in 2009. “I wrote ‘You Ain’t Woman Enough to Take My Man,’ and she said, ‘Loretta, that’s a damn hit.’ It shocked me, because you don’t expect somebody like Patsy Cline to tell you that you have a hit. Right after she passed, I put the record out, and it was a hit.”

Lynn’s struggle and success became the stuff of legend, an oft-repeated story of youth, naivete and poverty.

From “Fist City” to “You’re Lookin’ at Country,” Lynn always sang from the heart, whether she was telling off a woman interested in Doo or honoring her Appalachian roots. But her music was far from conventional.

She rankled the conservative country establishment with songs like “Rated X,” about the stigma fun-loving women face after divorce, and “The Pill,” in which a woman toasts her newfound freedom thanks to birth control – “They didn’t have none of them pills when I was younger, or I’d have been swallowing them like popcorn,” Lynn wrote in her memoir.

She documented her upbringing in the bestselling 1976 memoir “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” co-written with George Vecsey. A 1980 biographical film by the same name won an Academy Award for actress Sissy Spacek and brought Lynn wider fame. Lynn’s success also helped launch the music careers of her sisters, Peggy Sue Wright and Crystal Gayle.

Lynn’s legend faced questions in 2012 when The Associated Press reported that in census records, a birth certificate and marriage license, Lynn was three years older than what most biographies stated. It didn’t mar Lynn’s success, but did make the oft-repeated tales of her teen marriage and motherhood less extreme.

“I never, never thought about being a role model,” Lynn told the San Antonio Express-News in 2010. “I wrote from life, how things were in my life. I never could understand why others didn’t write down what they knew.”

Lynn always credited her husband with giving her the confidence to first step on stage as a young performer. She also spoke in interviews, and in her music, about the pain he caused over their nearly 50 years of marriage. Doolittle Lynn died in 1996 after years of complications from heart problems and diabetes.

In her 2002 memoir, “Still Woman Enough,” Lynn wrote that he was an alcoholic who cheated on her and beat her, even as she hit him back. But she stayed with him until his death and told NPR in 2010 that “he’s in there somewhere” in every song she wrote.

“We fought one day and we’d love the next, so I mean … to me, that’s a good relationship,” she told NPR. “If you can’t fight, if you can’t tell each other what you think – why, your relationship ain’t much anyway.”

Lynn won numerous awards throughout her career, including three Grammys and many honors from the Academy of Country Music. She earned Grammys for her 1971 duet with Conway Twitty, “After the Fire is Gone,” and for the 2004 album “Van Lear Rose,” a collaboration with Jack White of the White Stripes that introduced her to a new generation of fans.

 She was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988, and her song “Coal Miner’s Daughter” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. She received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010, and in 2013, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 President Barack Obama said Lynn “gave voice to a generation, singing what no one wanted to talk about and saying what no one wanted to think about.”

Her career and legend only continued to grow in her later years as she recorded new songs, toured steadily and drew loyal audiences well into her 80s. A museum and dude ranch are dedicated to Lynn at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

“Working keeps you young,” she told Esquire in 2007. “I ain’t ever gonna stop. And when I do, it’s gonna be right on stage. That’ll be it.”

Lynn was hospitalized in 2017 after suffering a stroke at her home. The following year she broke a hip. Her health forced her to quit touring.

In early 2021, at the age of 89, she recorded her 50th album, “Still Woman Enough.”

The title song, which she sang alongside successors Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire, sounded like a mission statement that captures the ethos of her career:

“I’m still woman enough, still got what it takes inside;

I know how to love, lose, and survive;

Ain’t much I ain’t seen, I ain’t tried;

I’ve been knocked down, but never out of the fight;

I’m strong, but I’m tender;

Wise, but I’m tough;

And let me tell you when it comes to love;

I’m still woman enough.”

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World

Why Iranian women are cutting their hair

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Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


Abu Dhabi, UAE
CNN
 — 

A weeping Iranian woman is seen kneeling by her dead brother’s coffin as she slashes through her hair with a pair of scissors. Her relatives wail for justice as she tosses strands onto the coffin.

They were grieving for 36-year-old Javad Heydari, who was fatally shot last week at one of the anti-government protests that have gripped Iran.

Images like these have galvanized women across the world to join Iranian women protesting the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini. She died in hospital on September 16, three days after being pulled off the streets of Tehran by morality police and taken to a “re-education center” for lessons in modesty.

From the Middle East, Europe and across the United States, women around the globe have shown solidarity with Iranian women’s plight in rallies and demonstrations. Some have also cut or shaved their hair in public or while being filmed.

These protests are different, says celebrated Iranian author

Now in their 12th day, protests have swept through more than 40 Iranian cities, including the capital Tehran. Iranian security forces have been cracking down on protesters, with hundreds arrested and at least 41 killed, according to state media. Some human rights organizations say the death toll is as high as 76. CNN cannot independently verify these figures.

So, why are women cutting their hair?

For many Iranian women, cutting off hair – a sign of beauty that is decreed to be hidden in the Islamic Republic – is a poignant form of protest.

“We want to show them that we don’t care about their standards, their definition of beauty or what they think that we should look like,” said 36-year-old Faezeh Afshan, an Iranian chemical engineer living in Bologna, Italy, who was filmed shaving off her hair. “It is to show that we are angry.”

Afshan attributes the practice of cutting off hair to historical cultural practices. “In our literature, cutting the hair is a symbol of mourning, and sometimes a symbol of protesting,” she told CNN. “If we can cut our hair to show that we are angry… we will do it.”

The practice is cited in Shahnameh, a 1,000-year-old Persian epic and a cultural mainstay in Iran written by Ferdowsi. Made of nearly 60,000 verses, the poem tells the stories of the kings of Persia and is one of the most important works of literature in the Persian language. In more than one instance through the epic work, hair is plucked in an act of mourning.

“Women cutting their hair is an ancient Persian tradition… when the fury is stronger than the power of the oppressor,” tweeted Wales-based writer and translator Shara Atashi. “The moment we have been waiting for has come. Politics fueled by poetry.”

In the Shahnameh, after the hero Siyavash is killed, his wife Farangis and the girls accompanying her cut their hair to protest injustice, Atashi told CNN.

The characters portrayed in the poem “are in everyday use as symbols and archetypes,” she said, adding that the poem has helped shape the identities of Iranians, Afghans and Tajiks for 1,000 years.

“But there is haircutting in the poetry of Hafez and Khaqani too, always about mourning and protests against injustice,” she said, referring to other Persian poets.

Women burn their hijabs after woman’s death in police custody

The practice is also common in other ancient cultures. The Epic of Gilgamesh, a 3,500-year-old poem from ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) covers themes of grief and despair, where cutting or pulling out one’s hair is used to express anguish. The poem is considered to be one of the world’s oldest works of literature and is said to have influenced neighboring cultures.

Shima Babaei, an Iranian activist residing in Belgium who said she was arrested by Iran’s notorious morality police in 2018 for publicly removing her hijab as a sign of protest, told CNN that hair cutting had “historical meaning” for Iranians. Women who lose a direct relative would sometimes cut their hair as a sign of mourning and anger, she said.

Iranian women open up about hijab law and morality police

“For us, Mahsa was our sister,” she said. “And so, in this way, we are protesting.”

Cutting hair, said Atashi, “is itself a ceremony of mourning to better expose the depth of suffering at the loss of a loved one.” And in today’s context, she adds, it is a sign of “protest against the killing of our people.”

Saudi king names MBS as prime minister

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz has named his son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS) as the kingdom’s prime minister and another son Prince Khalid as defense minister, according to Saudi state media.

  • Background: The crown prince was promoted from defense minister and has been the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia for several years. Khalid previously served as deputy defense minister. MBS said the kingdom has increased its self-sufficiency in military industries to 15% from 2% and plans to reach 50% under the newly appointed defense minister, state-run Saudi Press Agency reported. King Salman will still preside over the cabinet meetings he attends, the decree showed.
  • Why it matters: MBS has changed Saudi Arabia radically since rising to power in 2017, leading efforts to diversify the economy from its dependence on oil, allowing women to drive and curbing clerics’ powers. His reforms, however, have come with a crackdown on dissent, with activists, royals, women rights’ activists and businessmen jailed.

Turkey summons German envoy after politician likens Erdogan to ‘sewer rat’

Turkey’s foreign ministry summoned the German ambassador to Ankara on Tuesday to protest comments made by a senior German politician who likened President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to a “little sewer rat,” Reuters reported. “We condemn in the strongest terms the insulting statements made by Wolfgang Kubicki, the vice-speaker of the German Federal Parliament, about our president in a speech during the Lower Saxony state election campaign,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Tanju Bilgic said in a statement.

  • Background: Kubicki confirmed to Reuters that he made the comment during an election campaign rally while trying to draw attention to a rise in the number of illegal migrants moving from Turkey along the so-called Balkan route towards Germany. “A sewer rat is a small, cute, but at the same time clever and crafty creature that also appears in children’s stories,” Kubicki said, citing the popular animated movie “Ratatouille” as an example.
  • Why it matters: Turkey is a candidate for EU membership but negotiations have long been stalled amid disagreements on a number of issues including Ankara’s human rights record, migration and geopolitics. Insulting the president is a criminal offense in Turkey, where Erdogan and his ruling AK Party have held power for two decades.

At least 4 Palestinians killed, dozens wounded in one of this year’s deadliest Israeli West Bank raids

At least four Palestinian men were killed and 50 wounded during an Israeli military raid in Jenin Wednesday morning, Palestinian officials said, making it one of the deadliest Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank this year, which has already seen over 100 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the raid was related to an attack in Tel Aviv in April which left three people dead, and that the suspects Wednesday fought back with explosives and gunfire.

  • Background: For months, Israel has been regularly raiding cities in the West Bank, focusing especially on Jenin and Nablus, saying it is targeting militants and their weapons caches before they have the chance to cross into Israel and carry out attacks. The operation, dubbed “Breaking the Wave” by the IDF, was launched after a series of attacks on Israelis. At least 20 Israelis and foreigners have been killed in attacks targeting civilians and soldiers in Israel and the West Bank so far this year.
  • Why it matters: This is already the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2015, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. More than 35 of those killed have been in Jenin. Israel says most killed were engaging violently with soldiers during military operations, but dozens of unarmed civilians have been killed as well, human rights groups including B’Tselem have said.

Muhammed Semih Ugurlu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Henna, a reddish-brown dye famously used for body art in many parts of the Middle East, may be making its way to joining the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.

In the process of being nominated by the UAE and the Arab League, henna has long been part of Middle Eastern, North African and South Asian heritage and identity.

Dating back thousands of years, the temporary dye is used to create elaborate designs mainly on one’s hands, often for religious festivals and celebrations.

Representatives from 16 Arab countries met this month to discuss the nomination, according to the Abu Dhabi government media office, stressing that henna plays an important role in Arab and Gulf culture and identity.

UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage includes both inherited as well as modern traditions, and is meant to promote practices that contribute to “social cohesion” and encourage a shared sense of identity.

The list includes practices such as falconry, yoga, and Arabic calligraphy.

By Nadeen Ebrahim



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