Oprah Winfrey honors Breonna Taylor with September magazine cover

  • First time magazine will not feature Winfrey on cover
  • Taylor, 26, was shot dead by police in own home in March

A portrait of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Black emergency medical technician shot dead by police in her own home earlier this year, will appear on the cover of the latest issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

It is the first time in the magazine’s 20-year history that the cover will not feature the magazine’s namesake: Oprah Winfrey.

Continue reading...

Rowling, Rushdie and Atwood warn against ‘intolerance’ in open letter

Harper’s letter asserts way to ‘defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion’, but critics accuse authors of censorious mentality

JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood are among the signatories to a controversial open letter warning that the spread of “censoriousness” is leading to “an intolerance of opposing views” and “a vogue for public shaming and ostracism”.

Rowling, whose beliefs on transgender rights have recently seen scores of Harry Potter fans distance themselves from her, said she was “proud to sign this letter in defence of a foundational principle of a liberal society: open debate and freedom of thought and speech”.

Continue reading...

Can Anna Wintour survive fashion’s reckoning with racism?

While Condé Nast has said the Vogue editor-in-chief will not be stepping down, turmoil has been mounting as employees past and present speak out

For decades she has stood astride the fashion industry, micro-managing the look and content of US Vogue, marshaling a significant part of the global fashion industry to her worldview, and presiding over a annual gala which, at $25,000 a head, paying guests and favored courtiers mounted lavishly-carpeted steps of Metropolitan Museum of Art to symbolically kiss the ring.

But for Anna Wintour this has been her annus horribilis. New York fashion week has been written off, the Met Gala has been cancelled, magazine advertising revenues are plummeting and there are scarcely any frocks to shoot since the coronavirus barged its way into the European fashion shows in February.

Continue reading...

Bon Appétit editor Adam Rapoport resigns over ‘brown face’ photo

Several prominent staff members had spoken out about the photograph and the company’s internal culture

Adam Rapoport, the editor in chief of a popular US food magazine, Bon Appétit, has announced his resignation after a 2003 photograph of him dressed in “brown face” surfaced on social media.

In a statement posted on Instagram, Rapoport said he was stepping down “to reflect on the work that I need to do as a human being and to allow Bon Appétit to get to a better place”.

Continue reading...

Kylie Jenner in row with Forbes over billionaire status

Kardashian family member reacts angrily to magazine’s claim she spun ‘a web of lies’

A row has broken out between one of the world’s leading business magazines and the youngest member of reality TV’s most famous family over the value of her cosmetics company.

Forbes magazine has accused Kylie Jenner, the youngest half-sister of Kim Kardashian West, of spinning a “web of lies” to inflate the size and success of her business. It claimed her family went to unusual lengths to present its youngest adult member as being richer than she was.

Continue reading...

Ronan Farrow: master #MeToo reporter hit by surprise New York Times takedown

Pulitzer-winning New Yorker journalist rejects claims from paper’s Ben Smith that work exhibits ‘shakiness at its foundations’

Ronan Farrow is no stranger to the rough and tumble of investigative journalism. His exposés on sexual abuse that helped to inspire the #MeToo movement have led to him to being trailed by private detectives employed by his most famous target – Harvey Weinstein – and to accusations from his former employer, NBC News, that he told “outright lies”.

Related: Shredded Trump documents and spy games: Ronan Farrow's biggest scoops

Continue reading...

Donald Trump ‘lost $1bn in a month’ from coronavirus lockdown

Stock market crash strips billionaire status from 267 of world’s richest people in the annual list

Donald Trump lost an estimated $1bn of his paper fortune in the past month as the coronavirus lockdown forced the closure of offices, shopping centres, hotels and golf courses he owns.

The US president’s fortune has fallen from an estimated $3.1bn (£2.5bn) on 1 March to $2.1bn on 18 March (at the height of stock market panic caused by the coronavirus pandemic) according to Forbes magazine’s annual billionaires list.

Continue reading...

Lawsuit raises questions about source of Jeff Bezos’s affair revelation

In lawsuit, Michael Sanchez has accused AMI of plot to ‘scapegoat’ him, and has cast doubt on claim that he was the ‘sole source’

A top executive at the tabloid publisher behind the National Enquirer said in a private email that he was “saving for my tombstone” the untold story of how the tabloid uncovered a 2019 exclusive about Jeff Bezos’s extramarital relationship, according to a lawsuit against the publisher.

The claim raises new questions about how American Media Inc (AMI) discovered the Amazon CEO’s relationship, and how it obtained knowledge of explicit sexual photographs that Bezos, one of the world’s richest men, has alleged were used against him by the publisher for “extortion and blackmail”.

Continue reading...

Magazine aimed at MEPs ‘filled with pro-Russia content’

EP Today using articles from Kremlin-funded outlet RT, says EU disinformation taskforce

An EU taskforce responsible for tackling disinformation has revealed a self-styled “news magazine for the European parliament” is copying half of its articles directly from the Kremlin-funded news channel RT.

EP Today, whose readers include senior MEPs, the European commissioner for digital economy and society, Mariya Gabriel, and European ambassadors to the EU, is said to be dominated by articles from the Russian outlet.

Continue reading...

Tall tales: Paris Match explains Sarkozy’s growth spurt in photo

After much derision, magazine says 5ft 5in ex-president was on step above wife, Carla Bruni

As soon as this week’s cover of Paris Match magazine featuring Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni was released, the questions began: how was the diminutive former French president seemingly taller than his towering wife?

The front-page photoshoot might have sparked speculation the 64-year-old rightwinger was thinking of a political comeback, coming hot on the heels of his new book called Passions, which has become a summer bestseller.

Continue reading...

Halima Aden becomes first model to wear a burkini in Sports Illustrated

Born in a Kenyan refugee camp, the Muslim Somali-American model returned to her birth country for historic photoshoot

Somali-American model Halima Aden has become the first Muslim model to appear in Sports Illustrated magazine wearing a hijab and burkini. She appeared in the swimsuit edition, out in May, wearing a number of different colourful burkinis.

The model told the BBC: “Young girls who wear a hijab should have women they look up to in any and every industry.

Continue reading...

Pete Cashmore, Guardian and Observer journalist, dies aged 45

Colleagues pay tribute to ‘hilarious writer’ and ‘troubled soul’

The journalist Pete Cashmore, who wrote for the Guardian and Observer among a range of British newspapers and magazines, has died at the age of 45.

Cashmore, who also worked at the NME and men’s magazines Loaded and Nuts, was remembered as a talented and funny writer who possessed a quick wit, a sharp tongue and a troubled soul.

Continue reading...

Saudis hacked Amazon chief Jeff Bezos’s phone, says company’s security adviser

Chief executive allegedly targeted because he owns Washington Post, where Jamal Khashoggi was columnist

The security chief for Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon, says the Saudi government had access to Bezos’s phone and gained private information from it.

Gavin de Becker, Bezos’s longtime security consultant, said he had concluded his investigation into the publication in January of leaked text messages between Bezos and Lauren Sánchez, a former television anchor whom the US National Enquirer tabloid newspaper said Bezos was dating.

Continue reading...

Kylie Jenner’s makeup makes her the world’s youngest billionaire

Youngest of the Kardashian-Jenner reality TV family tops Mark Zuckerberg by two years

Kylie Jenner, the youngest member of the Kardashian-Jenner American reality TV family, has become the world’s youngest billionaire at the age of just 21.

Jenner, who grew up under the watch of TV cameras filming Keeping Up with the Kardashians, was on Tuesday admitted to the “nine-zero” fortune club by Forbes. The business magazine ranked Jenner as the world’s 2,057th richest person. She became a billionaire two years younger than the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who took the title at the age of 23 in 2008.

Continue reading...

Vogue Brazil director resigns over birthday photos evoking slavery

Images show Donata Meirelles, who is white, sitting on a throne-like seat flanked by four black women dressed in white

The fashion director of the Brazilian edition of Vogue has resigned after photos from her 50th birthday party drew criticism for evoking colonial depictions of slavery.

Images from the party showed Donata Meirelles, who is white, sitting on a throne-like seat flanked by four black women dressed in white at the celebration in Bahia, Brazil’s blackest state.

Continue reading...

In the digital age, how much longer can Spain’s street kiosks survive?

As newsprint sales fall and tourists demand keychains, the city of Barcelona is trying to keep alive the old social culture that revolves around street kiosks

For generations, the day in Spain has begun with picking up the paper from the newspaper kiosk and then reading it over breakfast in a bar. These two urban institutions – the kiosk and the bar – have been the twin pillars of any barrio, or neighbourhood.

“You have a close relationship with your clients,” says Máximo Frutos, who owns a kiosk and is vice-president of the city’s news vendors association. “I have copies of the house keys for around 15 people in the barrio, in case they lose theirs. It’s not like any other business.”

Continue reading...