Tag Archives: females (demographic group)

World

Afghanistan’s female students voice devastation after being banned from universities

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Kabul, Afghanistan
CNN
 — 

The 21-year-old student had been studying hard for weeks as she prepared for the final exams of her first year of university. She was almost done, with just two exams left, when she heard the news: the Taliban government was suspending university education for all female students in Afghanistan.

“I did not stop and kept studying for the exam,” she told CNN on Wednesday. “I went to the university in the morning anyway.”

But it was no use. She arrived to find armed Taliban guards at the gates of her campus in Kabul, the Afghan capital, turning away every female student who tried to enter.

“It was a terrible scene,” she said. “Most of the girls, including myself, were crying and asking them to let us go in … If you lose all your rights and you can’t do anything about it, how would you feel?”

CNN is not naming the student for safety reasons.

The Taliban’s decision on Tuesday was just the latest step in its brutal crackdown on the freedoms of Afghan women, following its takeover of the country in August 2021.

Though the insurgent group has repeatedly claimed that it would protect the rights of girls and women, it has in fact done the opposite, stripping away the hard-won freedoms they have fought tirelessly for over the last two decades.

Some of its most striking restrictions have been around education, with girls barred from returning to secondary schools in March. The move devastated many students and their families, who described to CNN their dashed dreams of becoming doctors, teachers or engineers.

To the Kabul student, the loss of her education was an even bigger shock than the bomb attacks and violence she has previously witnessed.

“I always thought that we could overcome our sorrow and fear by getting educated,” she said. “However, this (time) is different. It is just unacceptable and unbelievable.”

The news was met with widespread condemnation and dismay, with many world leaders – and prominent Afghan figures – urging the Taliban to reverse its decision.

In a statement on Twitter, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani – who fled Kabul when the Taliban seized power – called the group illegitimate rulers holding “the entire population hostage.”

“The current problem of women’s education and work in the country is very serious, sad, and the most obvious and cruel example of gender apartheid in the 21st century,” Ghani wrote. “I have said it again and again that if one girl becomes literate, she changes five future generations, and if one girl remains illiterate, she causes the destruction of five future generations.”

He praised those in Afghanistan protesting the Taliban’s decision, calling them “pioneers.”

Another former Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, also expressed “deep regret” over the suspension. The country’s “development, population, and self-sufficiency depend on the education and training of every child, girl, and boy of this land,” he wrote.

Other foreign officials and leaders issued similar statements, including the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price, and US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karen Decker.

The foreign ministries of France, Germany, Pakistan, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia criticized the decision as well.

“Preventing half of the population from contributing meaningfully to society and the economy will have a devastating impact on the whole country,” said the UN mission in Afghanistan in a statement.

“Education is a basic human right,” it added. “Excluding women and girls from secondary and tertiary education not only denies them this right, it denies Afghan society as a whole the benefit of the contributions that women and girls have to offer. It denies all of Afghanistan a future.”

Female students in Afghanistan say their futures now lie in limbo, with no clarity on what will become of their education.

“I am still hopeful that things would get back to normal, but I don’t know how long it will take,” said the Kabul student. “Now many girls, including me, are just thinking (about) what is next, what can we do to get out of this situation.”

“I am not quitting,” she added, saying she would consider going “somewhere else” if Afghanistan continued banning female students.

Another 21-year-old, Maryam, is intimately familiar with the dangers of pursuing education as a woman. As a high school student, she’d been in the vicinity of an attack on Kabul University several years ago, and remembers being evacuated “while bullets were flying over our heads.”

Then in September, she barely survived a suicide attack at the Kaaj education center in Kabul, which killed at least 25 people, most of whom are believed to be young women. The attack sparked public outrage and horror, with dozens of women taking to the streets of Kabul afterward in protest.

Maryam, who is being identified by one name for her security, missed the blast by just seconds. When she ran back into her classroom, she was met with the scattered bodies of her friends.

Each brush with death cemented her determination not only to pursue her own ambitions – but the “dreams of all those best friends of mine who died before my eyes,” she said.

Though she was accepted into a bachelors program weeks after the September bombing, she decided to defer her university plans for a year, instead returning to rebuild the destroyed education center from scratch. She wanted to encourage other girls to continue their educations, she said.

Now, those dreams have been shattered by Tuesday’s announcement.

“I am just lost. I don’t know what to do and what to say,” she told CNN. “Since last night, I have been imagining every friend of mine who lost their lives in the Kaaj attack. What was their sacrifice for?”

“We need to get education; we have given a lot of sacrifice for it. It is our only hope for a better future.”

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US

Karen Bass sworn in as first female mayor of Los Angeles by Kamala Harris

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CNN
 — 

Karen Bass was sworn in as the first female mayor of Los Angeles on Sunday, marking another historic achievement in her career.

Kamala Harris – the first woman and first woman of color to become vice president – administered the oath of office at Los Angeles City Hall.

Bass focused her remarks Sunday on her plans to solve the city’s housing crisis, with some 40,000 people living on the streets.

“Today, too many Angelenos have no choice but to crowd multiple families into one home, and to work multiple jobs just to barely pay rent,” Bass said.

“Tragically, our city has earned the shameful crown as being home to the most crowded neighborhoods in the nation – Pico Union, South L.A., East L.A., the East Valley,” she added. “And Angelenos, we know our mission – we must build housing in every neighborhood.”

She said her first act as mayor will be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness.

Though billions of dollars in state, city and county money are being directed toward interim and permanent housing units, construction has moved slowly. The latest count measured a 1.7% rise in homelessness from the last count in 2020.

Bass’ plan calls for housing 15,000 people by the end of one year and ending tent encampments using existing funding. She has said the city would put more resources into trained “neighborhood service teams” to connect people with housing and mental health services.

The six-term congresswoman has argued that her longtime relationships with state and national lawmakers would result in increased funding to Los Angeles to address the city’s housing crisis.

Bass has also promised to use her connections within the Biden administration to troubleshoot problems like the need for more federal housing vouchers. As mayor, she has said she would also pursue federal waivers to allow the creation of mental health and substance abuse facilities with a greater number of beds.

Bass, whose home was burglarized earlier this year during the campaign, has also promised to address concerns about crime, noting her proposal to bring police staffing back up at a time when the city has struggled to recruit new officers. She has proposed moving at least 250 police officers back onto patrol from administrative work and has said she would hire more civilian employees to free up more officers to get back on the beat.

Bass overcame a fierce challenge from real estate magnate Rick Caruso, who spent more than $104 million to defeat her in November. She’s succeeding term-limited Mayor Eric Garcetti.

Elected to the California state Assembly in 2004, Bass made history some four years later as the first Black woman to serve as speaker of any state legislature.

When Bass takes office, the four largest cities in the US will all have Black mayors – that includes Eric Adams of New York City, Lori Lightfoot of Chicago and Sylvester Turner of Houston.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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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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World

Ruwa Romman: First Muslim and Palestinian woman elected to Georgia state House

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CNN
 — 

Ruwa Romman remembers the sadness she felt as an 8-year-old girl sitting in the back of a school bus watching classmates point to her house and erupt in vicious laughter.

“There’s the bomb lab,” they jeered in yet another attempt to brand her family as terrorists.

On Tuesday, the same girl – now a 29-year-old community organizer – made history as the first known Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, and the first Palestinian American elected to any office in the state.

After 10 months of relentless campaigning, the Democrat said she is eager to begin representing the people of District 97, which includes Berkeley Lake, and parts of Duluth, Norcross, and Peachtree Corners in Gwinnett County.

As an immigrant, the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, and a Muslim woman who wears the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, the road to political office hasn’t been easy, especially in the very Christian and conservative South.

“I could write chapters about what I have gone through,” Romman told CNN, listing the many ways she’s faced bigotry or discrimination.

“All the times I am ‘randomly’ selected by TSA, teachers putting me in a position where I had to defend Islam and Muslims to classrooms being taught the wrong things about me and my identity… it colored my entire life.”

But those hardships only fueled her passion for civic engagement, especially among marginalized communities, Romman said.

“Who I am has really taught me to look for the most marginalized because they are the ones who don’t have resources or time to spend in the halls of political institutions to ask for the help they need,” she said.

Romman began in 2015 working with the Georgia Muslim Voter Project to increase voter turnout among local Muslim Americans. She also helped establish the state chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

Soon after, Romman began working with the wider community. Her website boasts: “Ruwa has volunteered in every election cycle since 2014 to help flip Georgia blue.”

She said her main focus is “putting public service back into politics,” which she intends to do by helping expand access to health care, bridging the economic opportunity gap, protecting the right to vote, and making sure people have access to lifesaving care like abortion.

“I think a lot of people overlook state legislators because they think they’re local and don’t have a lot of impact, not realizing that state legislatures have the most direct impact on them,” Romman said. “Every law that made us mad or happy started in the state legislature somewhere.”

Romman said she always wanted to influence the political process, but never thought she’d be a politician.

The decision to run for office came after attending a Georgia Muslim Voter Project training session for women from historically marginalized communities, where a journalist covering the event asked if she wanted to run for office.

“I told her no, I don’t think so, and she ended up writing a beautiful piece about Muslim women in Georgia, but she started it with ‘Ruwa Romman is contemplating a run for office,’ and I wasn’t,” Romman recounted. “But when it came out, the community saw it and the response was so overwhelmingly positive and everyone kept telling me to do it.”

Two weeks later, Romman and a group of volunteers launched a campaign.

She was surrounded by family, friends and community members who were rooting for her success. Together, they knocked on 15,000 doors, sent 75,000 texts, and made 8,000 phone calls.

Her Republican opponent John Chan didn’t fight fair, she said.

“My opponent had used anti-Muslim rhetoric against me, saying I had ties to terrorism, at one point flat-out supporting an ad that called me a terrorist plant,” she said.

Flyers supporting Chan’s candidacy insinuated she is associated with terrorist organizations.

Chan did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

It was the same type of bullying Romman faced as a schoolgirl, she said. Only this time, she wasn’t alone. Thousands of people had her back.

“What was incredible is that people in my district sent his messaging to me and said ‘This is unacceptable. How can we help? How can we get involved? How can we support you?’ and that was such an incredible moment for me,” she said.

It was also ironic, Romman added, because her passion for her community and social justice is rooted in her faith: “Justice is a central tenant of Islam,” she pointed out. “It inspires me to be good to others, care for my neighbors, and protect the marginalized.”

It’s also rooted in her family’s experience as Palestinian refugees, who she said were banished from their homeland by Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

“My Palestinian identify has instilled in me a focus on justice and care for others,” Romman said. “Everyone deserves to live with dignity. I hope that Palestinians everywhere see this as proof that consistently showing up and working hard can be history making.

“I may not have much power on foreign policy, but I sincerely hope that I can at least remind people that Palestinians are not the nuisance, or the terrorists, or any other terrible aspersion that society has put on us,” she added. “We are real people with real dreams.”

Romman joins three other Muslim Americans elected to state and local office in Georgia this election cycle, according to the Georgia Muslim Voter Project.

The other three candidates, all Democrats, were Nabilah Islam, the first known Muslim woman elected to the Georgia State Senate, Sheikh Rahman, elected to the Georgia State Senate, and Farooq Mughal, elected to the Georgia State House.

“We’ve had Muslim representation at the state level in Georgia, but these wins take representation for Georgia Muslims further than ever before because now we have more gender and ethnic representation for Muslims,” the group’s executive director Shafina Khabani told CNN. “Not only will we have a representation that looks like us and aligns with our values, but we will have an opportunity to advocate and influence policies that impact our communities directly.”

“Having diversity in political representation means better laws, more accepting leadership, and welcoming policies for all of Georgia,” she said.

More than anything, Romman hopes her election points to a future free of hate and bigotry.

“I think this proves that people have learned that Muslims are part of this community and that tide of Islamophobia is hopefully starting to recede,” Romman added.

Looking back at her childhood, Romman wishes she could tell her younger self things would get better with time, and that one day she would not only make Georgia history, but hopefully a real difference in the world.



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World

Ruwa Romman: First Muslim and Palestinian woman elected to Georgia state House

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CNN
 — 

Ruwa Romman remembers the sadness she felt as an 8-year-old girl sitting in the back of a school bus watching classmates point to her house and erupt in vicious laughter.

“There’s the bomb lab,” they jeered in yet another attempt to brand her family as terrorists.

On Tuesday, the same girl – now a 29-year-old community organizer – made history as the first known Muslim woman elected to the Georgia House of Representatives, and the first Palestinian American elected to any office in the state.

After 10 months of relentless campaigning, the Democrat said she is eager to begin representing the people of District 97, which includes Berkeley Lake, and parts of Duluth, Norcross, and Peachtree Corners in Gwinnett County.

As an immigrant, the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, and a Muslim woman who wears the hijab, or Islamic headscarf, the road to political office hasn’t been easy, especially in the very Christian and conservative South.

“I could write chapters about what I have gone through,” Romman told CNN, listing the many ways she’s faced bigotry or discrimination.

“All the times I am ‘randomly’ selected by TSA, teachers putting me in a position where I had to defend Islam and Muslims to classrooms being taught the wrong things about me and my identity… it colored my entire life.”

But those hardships only fueled her passion for civic engagement, especially among marginalized communities, Romman said.

“Who I am has really taught me to look for the most marginalized because they are the ones who don’t have resources or time to spend in the halls of political institutions to ask for the help they need,” she said.

Romman began in 2015 working with the Georgia Muslim Voter Project to increase voter turnout among local Muslim Americans. She also helped establish the state chapter for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.

Soon after, Romman began working with the wider community. Her website boasts: “Ruwa has volunteered in every election cycle since 2014 to help flip Georgia blue.”

She said her main focus is “putting public service back into politics,” which she intends to do by helping expand access to health care, bridging the economic opportunity gap, protecting the right to vote, and making sure people have access to lifesaving care like abortion.

“I think a lot of people overlook state legislators because they think they’re local and don’t have a lot of impact, not realizing that state legislatures have the most direct impact on them,” Romman said. “Every law that made us mad or happy started in the state legislature somewhere.”

Romman said she always wanted to influence the political process, but never thought she’d be a politician.

The decision to run for office came after attending a Georgia Muslim Voter Project training session for women from historically marginalized communities, where a journalist covering the event asked if she wanted to run for office.

“I told her no, I don’t think so, and she ended up writing a beautiful piece about Muslim women in Georgia, but she started it with ‘Ruwa Romman is contemplating a run for office,’ and I wasn’t,” Romman said. “But when it came out, the community saw it and the response was so overwhelmingly positive and everyone kept telling me to do it.”

Two weeks later, Romman and a group of volunteers launched a campaign.

She was surrounded by family, friends and community members who were rooting for her success. Together, they knocked on 15,000 doors, sent 75,000 texts, and made 8,000 phone calls.

Her Republican opponent John Chan didn’t fight fair, she said.

“My opponent had used anti-Muslim rhetoric against me, saying I had ties to terrorism, at one point flat-out supporting an ad that called me a terrorist plant,” she said.

Flyers supporting Chan’s candidacy insinuated she is associated with terrorist organizations.

Chan did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

It was the same type of bullying Romman faced as a schoolgirl, she said. Only this time, she wasn’t alone. Thousands of people had her back.

“What was incredible is that people in my district sent his messaging to me and said ‘This is unacceptable. How can we help? How can we get involved? How can we support you?’ and that was such an incredible moment for me,” she said.

It was also ironic, Romman added, because her passion for her community and social justice is rooted in her faith: “Justice is a central tenant of Islam,” she said. “It inspires me to be good to others, care for my neighbors, and protect the marginalized.”

It’s also rooted in her family’s experience as Palestinian refugees, who she said were banished from their homeland by Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

“My Palestinian identify has instilled in me a focus on justice and care for others,” Romman said. “Everyone deserves to live with dignity. I hope that Palestinians everywhere see this as proof that consistently showing up and working hard can be history making.

“I may not have much power on foreign policy, but I sincerely hope that I can at least remind people that Palestinians are not the nuisance, or the terrorists, or any other terrible aspersion that society has put on us,” she added. “We are real people with real dreams.”

Romman joins three other Muslim Americans elected to state and local office in Georgia this election cycle, according to the Georgia Muslim Voter Project, but her win is particularly groundbreaking.

“We’ve had Muslim representation at the state level in Georgia, but these wins take representation for Georgia Muslims further than ever before because now we have more gender and ethnic representation for Muslims,” the group’s executive director Shafina Khabani told CNN. “Not only will we have a representation that looks like us and aligns with our values, but we will have an opportunity to advocate and influence policies that impact our communities directly.”

“Having diversity in political representation means better laws, more accepting leadership, and welcoming policies for all of Georgia,” she said.

More than anything, Romman hopes her election points to a future free of hate and bigotry.

“I think this proves that people have learned that Muslims are part of this community and that tide of Islamophobia is hopefully starting to recede,” Romman said.

Looking back at her childhood, Romman wishes she could tell her younger self things would get better with time, and that one day she would not only make Georgia history, but hopefully a real difference in the world.



Read original article here

World

Ukrainian women on the front line struggle to find uniforms that fit. One couple aims to fix that

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Kyiv, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Andrii Kolesnyk and Kseniia Drahanyuk both beam with excitement as they crouch over a box.

They are about to unpack Ukraine’s first ever military uniform for pregnant women, which they recently commissioned after a pregnant sniper got in touch.

The young couple, both TV journalists before the war started, are now fully dedicated to their independent NGO, “Zemlyachki,” or “Compatriots,” which procures vital items for women in the armed forces.

The initiative started when Andrii’s sister was sent to the front on February 24, the day Russia invaded Ukraine.

“She received men’s uniform, men’s underwear,” he says. “Everything that [was] designed for men.”

It soon became clear that servicewomen needed a lot more than uniforms. Everything from smaller boots to lighter plates for bulletproof vests to hygiene products is in demand.

So, the couple turned to private company donations, charity funds and crowdfunding to purchase goods independently of the military. Some customized gear such as women’s fatigues is produced under their own brand by a factory in Kharkiv in the country’s east – including the new pregnancy uniform.

Other items, including body armor plates, helmets and boots, come from companies as far afield as Sweden, Macedonia and Turkey. But Kolesnyk and Drahanyuk say they are struggling with the procurement of winter items like sleeping bags and thermal clothing that will be important for comfort as winter sets in.

Kolesnyk says they have distributed equipment worth $1 million so far and helped at least 3,000 women. If they’re on the front-line shooting rockets they might as well do it “in minimum comfort,” he tells CNN.

There are currently about 38,000 women in the armed forces, according to the country’s Ministry of Defense.

“We are doing this to help our government,” Kolesnyk says, not to compete with it. Their hub is overflowing with cardboard boxes full of kit, all paid for from crowdfunding and grants.

A physical disability prevents Kolesnyk from joining his sister, father and brother-in-law on the front lines, a fact that saddens him.

“For a man, it’s hard to understand that you can’t go there, and your sister is there. So, I’m trying to do my best here to help not only my family, but the whole army,” he says.

Twenty-one-year-old Roksolana, who gave only her first name for security reasons, walks in to pick up a uniform and other gear before heading out on her next assignment. An art school graduate, she joined the army in March and is now part of an intelligence unit.

“It’s so valuable to have these people who understand that we are tired of wearing clothes that are three sizes too big,” she says. “We had no helmets, we had old flak jackets, wore tracksuits and sneakers. Now we feel that we are humans.”

She giggles as she laces up her new boots with impeccable long fingernails. Before they hug goodbye, Drahanyuk hands Roksolana a copy of “The Choice,” the best-selling memoir by Holocaust survivor and psychologist Edith Eger. The aim is that this can be a tool to help process trauma. Zemlyachki has also formed partnerships with military psychologists to whom women in combat can reach out.

Other women, such as 25-year-old Alina Panina, are receiving psychological support through the Ukrainian military. A border guard with a canine unit, Panina spent five months in captivity at the infamous Olenivka prison in the Russian-controlled Donetsk region after leaving the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

She was finally released on October 17 as part of an all-female prisoner exchange with Russia and went into mandatory rehabilitation at a military hospital, under whose care she remains.

Ukraine recently demanded that the International Committee of the Red Cross send a delegation to the Russian prisoner of war camp.

“I was not prepared [for captivity], and we discussed this a lot with other women prisoners that life hasn’t prepared us for such [an] ordeal,” Panina says at a pizza bar run by veterans in downtown Kyiv.

She says prison guards “were unpredictable people” who sometimes abused prisoners verbally, but that she was spared any physical harm.

Now her partner’s fate is up in the air. He is also a border guard who is still in captivity. “I know he is alive but don’t know in which prison he is,” Panina says sadly as she scrolls through pictures of him.

When asked what gives her hope, she simply says, “our men, our people.”

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Health

US woman files lawsuit against L’Oréal, claiming chemical hair straightening products are linked to her cancer

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CNN
 — 

Cosmetics company L’Oréal, along with multiple other parties, is being sued over claims that its chemical hair straightening products put women at an increased risk of uterine cancer.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, counsel Diandra “Fu” Debrosse Zimmermann and others filed a lawsuit Friday in Illinois on behalf of 32-year-old Missouri resident Jenny Mitchell, claiming that Mitchell’s uterine cancer “was directly and proximately caused by her regular and prolonged exposure to phthalates and other endocrine disrupting chemicals found in Defendants’ hair care products.”

CNN has contacted L’Oréal, Namaste Laboratories LLC, Dabur International Ltd. and Godrej Consumer Products, parent company of the Just For Me brand, for comment.

Debrosse Zimmermann told CNN on Monday that the lawsuit marks a “watershed moment” for women of color who have used chemical hair-straightening products, such as relaxers.

At a news conference Monday, Mitchell said that she recalls getting hair relaxers around third grade, when she was about 8 years old.

Mitchell was diagnosed with uterine cancer on August 10, 2018, according to the lawsuit, and underwent a full hysterectomy at Boone Hospital Center in Missouri on September 24, 2018.

“At that time, at the age of 28, my dreams of becoming a mother were gone,” she said. In the lawsuit, she claims to have no family history of cancer or uterine cancer.

“As most young African-American girls, chemical relaxers, chemical straighteners were introduced to us at a young age,” Mitchell said. “Society has made it a norm to look a certain way, in order to feel a certain way. And I am the first voice of many voices to come that will stand, stand up to these companies, and say, ‘No more.’”

Mitchell continued using chemical hair-straightening products from around 2000 until March 2022, and she is seeking compensation in excess of $75,000, according to the lawsuit.

Two other individual cases have been filed – in California and New York – against cosmetic companies, including L’Oreal, claiming a connection between chemical hair-straightening products and cancer diagnoses, Debrosse Zimmermann said.

“We imagine that we will continue representing additional women in filing cases, as will other firms, and more and more women will come forward,” she said.

Mitchell’s lawsuit was filed just days after the publication of a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which estimates that among women who frequently use hair-straightening chemical products, the risk of developing uterine cancer by age 70 is around 4%. In women who did not use hair-straightening chemical products in the previous 12 months, the study estimates the risk of developing uterine cancer by age 70 to be 1.6%.

Black women tend to use these chemical hair-straightening products more frequently than White women, the researchers noted.

The study data showed that the association between hair straightening products and uterine cancer cases was most pronounced for Black women, who made up only 7.4% of the study participants, but 59.9% of those who reported ever using straighteners.

Several factors probably play a role in the frequent use of hair straightening products: Eurocentric standards of beauty and social pressures placed on Black and Latina women in workplace settings related to microaggressions and the threat of discrimination, along with desired versatility in changing hairstyles and self-expression.

“Black women have long been the victims of dangerous products specifically marketed to them,” Crump said in a news release. “Black hair has been and always will be beautiful, but Black women have been told they have to use these products to meet society’s standards. We will likely discover that Ms. Mitchell’s tragic case is one of countless cases in which companies aggressively misled black women to increase their profits.”

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Entertainment

Harvey Weinstein’s 2nd sexual assault trial begins with eight accusers set to testify, prosecutors say

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CNN
 — 

Eight women who say they were sexually assaulted by movie producer Harvey Weinstein will testify at his criminal trial in Los Angeles over the coming weeks, prosecutors said in opening statements Monday.

“Each of these women came forward independent of each other, and none of them knew one another,” prosecutor Paul Thompson told the jury, according to a pool report.

Four of the women’s testimony will be directly connected to specific charges. These women include Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a filmmaker and the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom; Jane Doe 1, a model and actress who lived in Italy at the time; Jane Doe 2, a 23-year-old model and aspiring screenwriter; and Jane Doe 3, a licensed massage therapist, according to a pool report.

The most recent indictment in the case indicated there were five women directly connected to charges. CNN is working to clarify the difference between that indictment and the prosecutors’ opening statements.

In addition, four women will testify as “prior bad acts” witnesses, meaning their testimony isn’t related to a specific charge but can be used by the jury as prosecutors try to show Weinstein had a pattern in his actions. These women will testify about assaults outside of Los Angeles jurisdiction, Thompson said.

Weinstein, 70, has pleaded not guilty to charges including rape and forcible oral copulation related to incidents dating from 2004 to 2013, according to the indictment.

In court Monday, he appeared hunched over as he clambered from a wheelchair into a chair at the defense table. Wearing a suit and tie, he primarily looked at jurors throughout the proceedings.

The trial in California is his second such sexual assault case since reporting by The New York Times and The New Yorker in 2017 revealed Weinstein’s alleged history of sexual abuse, harassment and secret settlements as he used his influence as a Hollywood power broker to take advantage of young women.

At the time, Weinstein was one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and helped produce movies such as “Pulp Fiction,” “Clerks” and “Shakespeare in Love.”

The revelations led to a wave of women speaking publicly about the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and harassment in what became known as the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein was found guilty in 2020 in New York of first-degree criminal sexual act and third-degree rape and was sentenced to 23 years in prison. Yet he has maintained his innocence, and New York’s highest court agreed in August to hear his appeal in the case.

In opening statements, Thompson outlined the women’s accusations and noted the similarities in their stories. The women will testify that Weinstein lured them into private meetings, often in hotel rooms, and then sexually assaulted them, Thompson said.

“I’m shaking and I’m kind of being dragged to the bedroom,” he quoted one woman as saying, according to the pool report.

Thompson also highlighted the women’s understanding of Weinstein’s imposing physical size as well as his power in Hollywood to make or break careers, the pool report said.

“I was scared that if I didn’t play nice something could happen in the room or out of the room because of his power in the industry,” one woman said, according to Thompson.

The women allegedly told friends and family members about their assaults, and those people may also be called to testify in the trial to confirm or deny such conversations.

Notably, the licensed massage therapist told Mel Gibson, the famed actor and director, about her assault, Thompson said.

The trial in Los Angeles comes two years after Weinstein was convicted in New York of similar charges featuring different women.

The New York charges were based on testimony from Miriam Haley, who testified that Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment, and from Jessica Mann, who testified that he raped her in 2013 during what she described as an abusive relationship.

He did not testify in his own defense, but at his sentencing he offered an unexpected, rambling speech which oscillated between remorse, defense of his actions and confusion.

“I’m not going to say these aren’t great people, I had wonderful times with these people, you know,” Weinstein said of the women who accused him of assault. “It is just I’m totally confused, and I think men are confused about all of these issues.”

The former movie producer appeared in frail health during the trial and used a walker as he arrived to and left court each day. He used a wheelchair to arrive to the sentencing in March 2020 as well as in a court hearing in Los Angeles in July 2021. His attorneys have argued the lengthy prison sentence was a de facto life sentence due to his failing health.

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World

Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni named as Italy’s first female prime minister

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CNN
 — 

Populist firebrand Giorgia Meloni has been named as Italy’s first female prime minister, becoming the country’s most far-right leader since Benito Mussolini.

She received the mandate to form a government from Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella on Friday afternoon after two days of official consultations, and is set to be sworn in at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) on Saturday.

Last month’s general election resulted in an alliance of far-right and center-right parties, led by her ultraconservative Brothers of Italy, winning enough seats in Italy’s parliament to form a government.

Meloni announced her government picks in Rome’s Quirinal Palace, making the leader of Italy’s far right League party, Matteo Salvini, infrastructure minister.

Giancarlo Giorgetti, also of the League party, was made economy minister. Antonio Tajani from the Forza Italia party was given the position of minister of foreign affairs while the role of defense minister went to Guido Crosetto, one of the founders of the Brothers of Italy party.

The new government will be made up of a coalition of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, Salvini’s League party and the Forza Italia party, led by former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The Brothers of Italy received nine ministries whereas Forza Italia and the League each received five ministries.

Meloni will be sworn into office during a ceremony at 10 a.m. local time (4 a.m. ET) on Saturday morning.

Pulling together her new cabinet has exposed tensions. This week, the controversial former leader Berlusconi made headlines when audio released by Italian news agency LaPresse revealed the 86-year-old speaking about his “reestablished” relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Berlusconi’s office confirmed to CNN on Thursday that the clips were authentic – having apparently been secretly recorded during a meeting of his Forza Italia party in the parliamentary chamber on Tuesday.

In the audio, the billionaire and media magnate says he has “reestablished relations with President Putin” and goes on to boast that the Russian leader called him “the first of his five true friends.”

His comments raised eyebrows, as diplomatic relations between Russia and Western leaders remain strained amid the Kremlin’s grueling military assault on Ukraine.

Berlusconi has been the subject of multiple corruption and bribery trials during his tumultuous political career.

Meloni has been a strong supporter of Ukraine as it battles Moscow’s invasion. Amid backlash for her coalition over Berlusconi’s leaked comments, she restated her foreign policy line.

“With us governing, Italy will never be the weak link of the West. The nation of spaghetti and mandolini that is so dear to many of our detractors will relaunch its credibility and defend its interests,” Meloni said late Wednesday on her Instagram account.

Speaking earlier Friday after a meeting with Mattarella and her coalition partners, Meloni said it was necessary to form the new government “as soon as possible.”

“We are ready to govern Italy,” Meloni’s official Facebook page stated. “We will be able to face the urgencies and challenges of our time with awareness and competence.”

Meloni entered Italy’s crowded political scene in 2006 and in 2012 co-founded the Brothers of Italy, a party whose agenda is rooted in Euroskepticism and anti-immigration policies.

The group’s popularity soared ahead of September’s election, as Italian voters once again rejected mainstream politics and opted for a fringe figure.

She first made her name as vice-president of the National Alliance, an unapologetically neo-fascist group formed by supporters of Benito Mussolini. Meloni herself openly admired the dictator as a youth, but later distanced herself from his brand of fascism – despite keeping the tricolor flame symbolizing the eternal fire on his tomb in the logo for the Brothers of Italy.

She has pursued a staunchly Conservative agenda throughout her time in politics, frequently questioning LGBT rights, abortion rights and immigration policies.

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Health

Hair-straightening chemical products linked to increased uterine cancer risk in new study

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CNN
 — 

Scientists are uncovering new details in the connection between using certain hair straightening products, such as chemical relaxers and pressing products, and an increased risk of cancer in women.

Ongoing research previously suggested that hair straightening chemicals are associated with an increased risk of certain hormone-related cancers, including breast and ovarian cancers, and now, a new study links use of hair straightening products with an increased risk of uterine cancer. Black women may be more affected due to higher use of the products, the researchers noted.

The study, published Monday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, estimates that among women who did not use hair-straightening chemical products in the past 12 months, 1.6% developed uterine cancer by age 70, but about 4% of the women who frequently use such hair-straightening products developed uterine cancer by age 70.

That finding “also communicates that uterine cancer is indeed rare. However, the doubling of risk does lead to some concern,” said Chandra Jackson, an author of the study and researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“In this study, women with frequent use in the past year had an over two-fold higher risk of uterine cancer,” she said. Frequent use was defined as more than four times in the previous year.

The new study includes data on nearly 34,000 women in the United States, ages 35 to 74, who completed questionnaires about their use of certain hair products, including perms, dyes, relaxers and straighteners. The researchers, from the National Institutes of Health, also tracked the incidence of cancer diagnoses within the study group.

The researchers found a strong association between hair straightening products and uterine cancer cases but the use of other hair products – such as dyes and perms or body waves – was not associated with uterine cancer.

The study data also showed that the association between hair straightening products and uterine cancer cases was most pronounced for Black women, who made up only 7.4% of the study participants, but 59.9% of those who reported ever using straighteners.

Several factors likely play a role in the frequent use of hair straightening products: Eurocentric standards of beauty, social pressures placed on Black and Latina women in workplace settings related to microaggressions and the threat of discrimination, along with desired versatility in changing hairstyles and self-expression.

“The bottom line is that the exposure burden appears higher among Black women,” Jackson said.

“Based off of the body of the literature in this area, we know that hair products marketed directly to Black children and women have been shown to contain multiple chemicals associated with disrupting hormones, and these products marketed to Black women have also been shown to have harsher chemical formulations,” she said. “On top of that, we know that Black women tend to use multiple products simultaneously, which could contribute to Black women on average having higher concentrations of these hormone-disrupting chemicals in their system.”

The researchers did not collect information on brands or ingredients in the hair products the women used, but they wrote in the paper that several chemicals identified in straighteners could contribute to the increased incidence of uterine cancer observed in their study.

“To our knowledge this is the first epidemiologic study that examined the relationship between straightener use and uterine cancer,” Alexandra White, head of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Environment and Cancer Epidemiology group and lead author on the study, said in a news release Monday.

“More research is needed to confirm these findings in different populations, to determine if hair products contribute to health disparities in uterine cancer, and to identify the specific chemicals that may be increasing the risk of cancers in women.”

Some substances found in hair-straightening products, especially those most used by and marketed to Black and Latina women, are hormone-disrupting chemicals, said Tamarra James-Todd, an epidemiologist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who was not involved in the new study but separately has led some of the earliest research finding links between hair products and cancer.

“They modify our body’s normal hormonal processes. So, it makes sense to look at cancers that are hormonally mediated,” she said, adding that hormone-disrupting chemicals could impact other parts of the body too.

“​The challenge is that the impact of these chemicals might not be limited to hormonal processes, but they could also impact other systems, including our immune and vascular systems. Understanding how these chemicals work beyond the hormonal system is still a new and growing area of research,” James-Todd told CNN.

“So, it could be that the way these chemicals are operating is through altering ​not only hormonal responses, but also by altering immune or even vascular responses,” she said. “All of these processes are linked to cancer.”

While the new study is “well done” and shows an association between hair-straightening chemical products and increased uterine cancer risk, it is unable to determine that the products directly cause the cancer, Dr. Otis Brawley, professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and former chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said in an email to CNN.

“It is unable to show cause, it could be pure association,” said Brawley, who was not involved in the new study.

Yet “the question how do we settle this is difficult. The scientific ideal is a randomized trial of 40,000 or so; 20,000 with regular hair straightener use and 20,000 never using it and never having used it and follow them for 20 years,” he said, adding that at this point, “it’s impossible for science to answer better than” the recent study.

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