Major Film Studios Follow Netflix In Putting Georgia On Notice Over Illegal Abortion Law

Major Film Studios Follow Netflix In Putting Georgia On Notice Over Illegal Abortion Law

It was a slow start on whether or not America’s film industry would become involved in Georgia politics, threatening to abandon existing projects and future expansion of filming major projects like the revolutionary, Oscar-winning ‘Black Panther’ movie.

Netflix was the first major studio to take a stand against the medical-quackery ‘heartbeat bill banning abortion at about six weeks, joining the ACLU lawsuit in fighting the law not only as an infringement of Roe v. Wade, but as pseudo-science that has no basis in medical facts.

Today, an onslaught of new studios including Viacom, CBS, Sony, AMC, NBC Universal and Warner Media raises their collective business voices against the new law.

US Spelling Bee's 8 Winners, ALL Kids of Color, Challenge Trump's White Nationalism Beliefs

US Spelling Bee's 8 Winners, ALL Kids of Color, Challenge Trump's White Nationalism Beliefs

America had a first-ever, dramatic end to the National Spelling Bee. They ran out of words, and eight kids were still standing. The winners are Rishik Gandhasri, Erin Howard, Saketh Sundar, Shruthika Padhy, Sohum Sukhatankar, Abhijay Kodali, Christopher Serrao, and Rohan Raja.

With all Trump's hateful anti-immigration rhetoric, I note publicly the absence of a majority of white kids in the final rounds. In fact, they are hard to find in this inspiring group of young people.

What's up? Are white kids not making the cut -- or are they too "good" to undertake a mental challenge like the National Spelling Bee?

MacKenzie Bezos Joins Gates & Buffett 'The Giving Pledge', Sharing Half of Her New Fortune

MacKenzie Bezos Joins Gates & Buffett 'The Giving Pledge', Sharing Half of Her New Fortune

There aren’t many solo images of MacKenzie Bezos out there. Even though the mom of four is a successful writers and played her own roll in the formation of Amazon, almost all images of MacKenzie include her husband Jeff Bezos.

Vogue US interviewed one of the world’s richest women in 2013 in advance of her “gripping new novel Traps”. The interview by Rebecca Johnson describes MacKenzie as a “bookish and she” girl who spent hours in her bedroom writing elaborate stories. She attended first Hotchkiss and then Princeton, a very deliberate choice that gave her access to writer Toni Morrison. One of America’s most important voices became Bezos’ mentor and called her in 2013 “one of the best students I’ve ever had in my creative-writing classes . . . really one of the best.”

Gisele Bundchen Covers ELLE Spain June 2019, Lensed By Nino Munoz For Environmental Issue

Gisele Bundchen Covers ELLE Spain June 2019, Lensed By Nino Munoz For Environmental Issue

Inmaculada Jiménez styles environmental activist Gisele Bundchen for the June 2019 issue of ELLE Spain. Nino Munoz captures the cover star in an issue devoted to the environment.

Indya Moore Is First Trans Person To Cover ELLE US June 2019, Lensed By Zoey Grossman

Indya Moore Is First Trans Person To Cover ELLE US June 2019, Lensed By Zoey Grossman

Indya Moore is styled by Charles Varenne for images by Zoey Grossman for ELLE US June 2019. Moore is the first transgender person to cover the magazine. / Makeup by Vincent Oquendo ;hair by Hos Hounkpatin

{A word from Anne on language — which ELLE also addresses in Jada Yuan’s interview Indya Moore Just Wants To Be Free. Imagine Trumpsters navigating this paragraph in ELLE: “

A note on gender pronouns: Indya is nonbinary and prefers to use “they” and “them,” but is also navigating how that works in a society that has long oriented around cisgender or binary trans identities. Most people around Indya use “she,” which Indya says is fine to use throughout this story. See her Instagram post in April about this very topic. “

Bonobo Mothers Meddle In Their Sons’ Sex Lives – Making Them Three Times More Likely To Father Children

BONOBOS DOING WHAT THEY DO BY GREG @ FLICKR

Bonobo Mothers Meddle In Their Sons’ Sex Lives – Making Them Three Times More Likely To Father Children

Dating is never easy, for any of us. Scenarios play over in our heads, classic questions and worries bombard us. Will she like me? Does he share the same interests? Will my mum be watching us have sex? Thankfully, that last question isn’t actually one we humans have to deal with. But new research shows that for bonobos, sex really is often a family affair. What’s more, rather than being an embarrassing hindrance, motherly presence greatly benefits bonobo sons during the deed.

Along with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), bonobos (Pan paniscus) are our closest living relatives. Restricted to a 500,000 km² thickly-forested zone of the Congo Basin, these endangered great apes were only formally discovered in 1928, which until 2017 made them the most recently-described living great ape species.

Operating in female-led social systems, bonobos are capable of showing a wide range of what were long held as human-specific feelings and emotions, such as sensitivity, patience, compassion, kindness, empathyand altruism.

They’re also perhaps the most promiscuous non-human species on the planet.

Chopard Extends Luxury Brand Sustainability Drive To Chloe Sevigny's Handbag Inspo

Chopard Extends Luxury Brand Sustainability Drive To Chloe Sevigny's Handbag Inspo

Swiss luxury jewelry and watchmaker Chopard has made another advancement in its commitment to sustainability with a handbag designed by award-winning actor Chloë Sevigny.

The geometrically-styled, highly-recognizable evening bag featuring a large heart overlapping the front and side panel, was inspired by “iconic images of the 1940s,” according to a Chopard release on Friday. The bag, sold in three colors, is made from calf-skin leather that is sustainably sourced and “fully traceable,” Chopard said.

For the Sevigny-designed “Green Carpet Collection” bag, which retails for $2,360, Chopard sought to not only trace the leather lineage, but also to work with the tannery on environmental management systems that ensure “all processes and resources, including water, waste, and energy were responsibility managed,” according to Green Carpet, sustainability expert Livia Firth’s Eco-Age. Reinforcement materials on the bag also are made from natural latex and vegetable tanned leather waste.

The Evolution of the Medieval Witch – and Why She’s Usually a Woman

The Evolution of the Medieval Witch – and Why She’s Usually a Woman

By Jennifer Farrell, Lecturer in Medieval History, University of Exeter. First published on The Conversation.

Flying through the skies on a broomstick, the popular image of a witch is as a predominantly female figure – so much so that the costume has become the go-to Halloween outfit for women and girls alike. But where did this gendered stereotype come from? Part of the answer comes from medieval attitudes towards magic, and the particular behaviours attributed to men and women within the “crime” of witchcraft.

Taking one aspect of the witch’s characterisation in popular culture – her association with flight – we can see a transformation in attitudes between the early and later Middle Ages. In the 11th century, Bishop Burchard of Worms said of certain sinful beliefs:

Some wicked women, turning back to Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms of demons, believe [that] in the night hours they ride on certain animals with the pagan goddess Diana and a countless multitude of women, and they cross a great span of the world in the stillness of the dead of night.

According to Burchard, these women were actually asleep, but were held captive by the devil, who deceived their minds in dreams. He also believed that none but the very “stupid and dim-witted” could think that these flights had actually taken place.

Washington Becomes First State to Allow ‘Human Composting' As A Burial Method

Washington Becomes First State to Allow ‘Human Composting' As A Burial Method

In 2015, cremations outpaced burials for the first time in United States history. And as the National Funeral Directors Association points out, this upward trend is set to continue over the coming decades, with the national cremation rate predicted to reach nearly 80 percent by 2035. Still, while cremation has obvious environmental advantages over burial—think of all the wood, reinforced concrete, steel, copper and carcinogenic formaldehyde needed to inter the deceased—the process isn’t as Earth-friendly as you might think. In fact, Laura Yan reported for Pacific Standard in 2016, cremation releases 600 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

Human composting is the brainchild of Katrina Spade, CEO of alternative burial company Recompose. Speaking with local news station KIRO 7, Spade explains that recomposition involves moving the body to a specially designed facility—“part public park, part funeral home, part memorial to the people we love,” in the entrepreneur’s words—and placing it inside of a vessel filled with wood chips, alfalfa and straw. After several weeks of microbial activity, the body breaks down into soil that can then be given to family of the deceased or used by conservation groups to “nourish the [surrounding] land.” Overall, the process uses an eighth of the energy required for cremation and saves more than one metric ton of carbon dioxide for every individual who opts to use it.

Donald Trump: Why White Evangelical Women Support Him

Donald Trump: Why White Evangelical Women Support Him

During the US president Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in early February, House Democratic women showed up clad all in white. The colour, a nod to the suffragettes, was meant to show their displeasure with the president’s policies towards women, climate change and immigration. But Trump’s contentious relationship with Democratic women contrasts sharply with the support he receives from another group of women – white evangelicals.

As is well known by now, in the November 2016 presidential election, 80% of white evangelicals voted for Trump. That constituted the largest “evangelical vote” in nearly two decades. If scholars, journalists and the general public have puzzled over why so many white evangelicals would vote for someone whose language and behaviour violated key tenets of the Christian faith, the question of why evangelical women voted for him is even more puzzling – especially given Trump’s long track record of alleged sexual misconductand derogatory comments about women.

But the 2016 vote wasn’t a fluke. A recent poll reports that two-thirds of white evangelical women still approve of the president.

Naomi Wolf's 'Outrages' Book Exposed On Air By BBC As Full Of Major Errors About Victorians

Naomi Wolf's 'Outrages' Book Exposed On Air By BBC As Full Of Major Errors About Victorians

Author, activist Naomi Wolf is living the worst nightmare for a writer. She did not properly investigate the term "death recorded", a key research term in her new book 'Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love, '

The error is a whopper, one that goes to a core premise of her book, which deals with people not only being imprisoned for 'illegal love acts' but -- according to Naomi -- being executed.

Wolf was interviewed on BBC Radio Thurs. where she apparently sat with interviewer Matthew Sweet , as he read to Wolf the definition of “death recorded,” a 19th-century English legal term. “Death recorded” means that a convict was pardoned for his crimes rather than given the death sentence.

The legal term means the exact opposite of what Naomi assumed. The error speaks volumes about her lack of scholarship and a book that is on sale as we speak.

Chrissy Teigen, Queen of Social Media Lands An Airstream Photo Op For Porter Edit, May 24, 2019

Chrissy Teigen, Queen of Social Media Lands An Airstream Photo Op For Porter Edit, May 24, 2019

Talented wit, supermom, wife, cook par excellence, Trump troller and the “queen of social media” Chrissy Teigen has become “the woman that everyone wants to befriend” writes Christine Lennon for the May 24, 2019 issue of Porter Edit. Tracy Taylor styles Chrissy in ‘Hot topics’ for images by Sebastian Kim.

Elephants Reduced to a Political Football as Botswana Brings Back Hunting

Elephants Reduced to a Political Football as Botswana Brings Back Hunting

Botswana has reinstated trophy hunting after a 5-year moratorium on the practice.

In the wake of evidently declining wildlife numbers, former president Ian Khama imposed the ban in early 2014. Elephant numbers had plummeted by 15% in the preceding decade. The hunting industry had been granted a total quota of between 420 and 800 elephants a year during that time. Evidence of abuse was prolific and communities were not benefiting from the fees that hunters were paying.

Over the past five years Botswana has earned a reputation as the continent’s last elephant haven. It harbours just over a third of Africa’s remaining savanna elephants.

Khama’s successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi, has been in the job for just over a year. He’s promoted a conservation doctrine that is diametrically opposed to Khama’s.

Masisi recently hosted a conference in Kasane that brought together heads of state and environment ministers from Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Its pretext was to formulate a common vision for managing southern Africa’s elephants under the banner of the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA). But the conference was used to drum up support for Botswana’s intended reversion to elephant hunting.

Elle Fanning's Dior Haute Couture 'New Look' Tribute To ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Cannes Premiere

Elle Fanning's Dior Haute Couture 'New Look' Tribute To ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ Cannes Premiere

Actor Elle Fanning was an apparition straight out of old Hollywood glamour, appearing at the Cannes 2019 screening of Quentin Tarantino’s highly-anticipated film ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’, wearing a jaw-dropping tribute to Christian Dior’s New Look.

The 21-year-old Fanning is the youngest juror in the history of the Cannes Film Festival and doesn’t appear in ‘Once Upon A Time in Hollywood’. The film tackles the summer of 1969, a tumultuous moment of American unrest and the Manson murder of pregnant actor Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie). At the time, the pregnant Tate was married to besieged director Roman Polanski.

Prada Goes Fur Free In All Company Brands Starting With Spring 2020 Collections

Prada Goes Fur Free In All Company Brands Starting With Spring 2020 Collections

Italian luxury Prada is joining the ranks of fur-free luxury brands, announcing that all collections starting with women’s spring/summer 2020 will not use fur. Prada previously used fur from foxes, minks and rabbits in its luxury collections.

The decision comes after working closely with the Humane Society International, Fur Free Alliance, and Italian animal rights group LAV. Prada’s subsidiary Miu Miu is on the same fur-free spring 2020 timetable. Products that have already been produced will be sold.

How One State Has Become a Model for Protecting Abortion Rights From Supreme Court Conservatives

How One State Has Become a Model for Protecting Abortion Rights From Supreme Court Conservatives

As Republican-controlled state legislatures across the United States pass near-total abortion bans, Vermont Democrats are looking to establish the country’s most comprehensive abortion rights protections.

The pro-choice effort in Vermont is two-pronged: a constitutional amendment via Proposition 5 to guarantee personal reproductive liberty, and bill H 57, which codifies the right to an abortion and prohibits public entities from interfering with a person’s right to choose.

Vermont’s Democratic-majority house and senate have passed both measures this session, and H 57 will soon head to the governor’s desk, where he can either sign it, allow it to become law by taking no action, or veto it. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) does not plan to veto H 57, his spokesperson told Rewire.News.

Africa Has Lost Binyavanga Wainaina. But His spirit Will Continue To Inspire

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE WITH BINYAVANGA WAINAINA AT LANNAN FOUNDATION 2011. VIA FLICKR

Africa Has Lost Binyavanga Wainaina. But His spirit Will Continue To Inspire

Binyavanga Wainaina, one of Kenya’s most famous writers, has passed away.

How to write an obituary for a person of such standing? The conventional way would be by starting with the key biographical facts.

Wainaina was born in 1971 in Nakuru, Kenya. He went to school in Nakuru, Thika, and Nairobi. He studied a degree in Commerce in South Africa (University of Transkei) and later an MPhil in Creative Writing in the UK (University of East Anglia).

In 2002 he won the Caine Prize for African writing, with his short story “Discovering Home”. In 2003 he became the founding editor of African literary magazine, Kwani?, and he served as the director of the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Literature and Languages at the Bard College in the US.

There Is More Than One Religious View On Abortion -- Here's What Jewish Texts Say

There Is More Than One Religious View On Abortion -- Here's What Jewish Texts Say

By Rachel Mikva, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Chicago Theological Seminary. First published on The Conversation.

Alabama’s governor signed a bill this week that criminalizes nearly all abortions, threatening providers with a felony conviction and up to 99 years in prison.

It is one of numerous efforts across the United States to restrict access to abortion and challenge the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide.

Six states have recently passed legislation that limit abortions to approximately six weeks after the end of a woman’s last period, before many know they are pregnant. Although the laws have not yet taken effect and several have been blocked on constitutional grounds, if enacted they would prohibit most abortions once a doctor can hear rhythmic electrical impulses in the developing fetus.

Arizona Muse Gushes Biodynamic Farming, Lensed By Richard Phibbs For Town & Country UK

Arizona Muse Gushes Biodynamic Farming, Lensed By Richard Phibbs For Town & Country UK

Arizona Muse is styled by Miranda Almond in ‘Taking A Stand’, a collection of earth-friendly, noble origins, country manor looks. Photographer Richard Phibbs captures the bucolic scene for Town & Country UK May 2019./ Hair by Paul Donovan; makeup by Polly Osmond

Lydia Slater interviews Arizona at a farm in Sussex, peering into polytunnels of spinach and lettuce while discussing her escalating commitment to eco-fashion and sustainability.

Sharon Stone Delivers Epic Sensuality, Age 61, Lensed By Branislav Simoncik For Vogue Portugal

Sharon Stone Delivers Epic Sensuality, Age 61, Lensed By Branislav Simoncik For Vogue Portugal

Sharon Stone channels her defining role as an actor, playing Catherine Tramell in ‘Basic Instinct’, styled by Paris Libby in femme fatale looks suitable for a Hollywood icon. Photographer Branislav Simoncik captures the screen siren is stunning images — with a soft hand on retouching, bravo — for Vogue Portugal May 2019./ Hair by Giannandrea; makeup by Jo Baker