By Andrew Chung

(Reuters) – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion that would end the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion could imperil other freedoms related to marriage, sexuality and family life including birth control and same-sex nuptials, according to legal experts.

The draft ruling, disclosed in a leak that prompted Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday to launch an investigation, would uphold a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized the procedure nationwide.

The draft’s legal reasoning, if adopted by the court when it issues its eventual ruling by the end of June, could threaten other rights that Americans take for granted in their personal lives, according to University of Texas law professor Elizabeth Sepper, an expert in healthcare law and religion.

“The low-hanging fruit is contraception, probably starting with emergency contraception, and same-sex marriage is also low-hanging fruit in that it was very recently recognized by the Supreme Court,” Sepper said.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority, including Alito, has become increasingly assertive on a range of issues. The court confirmed the authenticity of the leaked draft but called it preliminary.

The Roe decision, one of the court’s most important and contentious rulings of the 20th century, recognized that the right to personal privacy under the U.S. Constitution protects a woman’s ability to terminate her pregnancy.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” Alito wrote in the draft, adding that Roe and a 1992 decision that reaffirmed it have only “deepened division” in society.

According to Alito, the right to abortion recognized in Roe must be overturned because it is not valid under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment right to due process.

Abortion is among a number of fundamental rights that the court over many decades recognized at least in part as what are called “substantive” due process liberties, including contraception in 1965, interracial marriage in 1967 and same-sex marriage in 2015.

Though these rights are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, they are linked to personal privacy, autonomy, dignity and equality. Conservative critics of the substantive due process principle have said it improperly lets unelected justices make policy choices better left to legislators.

Alito reasoned in the draft that substantive due process rights must be “deeply rooted” in U.S. history and tradition and essential to the nation’s “scheme of ordered liberty.” Abortion, he said, is not, and rejected arguments that it is essential for privacy and bodily autonomy reasons.

‘SOCIAL PROGRESS’

Like abortion, other personal rights including contraception and same-sex marriage may be found by conservative justices to fall outside this framework involving rights “deeply rooted” in American history, scholars noted.

“This was considered social progress – we were changing as a society and different things became important and became part of what one cherished,” said Carol Sanger, an expert in reproductive rights at Columbia Law School.

In the draft, Alito sought to distinguish abortion from other rights because it, unlike the others, destroys what the Roe ruling called “potential life.”

“Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion,” Alito wrote.

Sepper said that Alito is “not particularly convincing because he doesn’t do the work to distinguish those cases in a meaningful way.” She added: “It’s a really sweeping opinion. It doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the abortion right.”

Alito’s opinion resembles his dissent in the court’s same-sex marriage ruling in which he said the 14th Amendment’s due process promise protects only rights deeply rooted in America’s history and tradition.

“And it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights,” Alito wrote in his 2015 dissent.

Some conservative commentators have suggested that Alito has provided a road map for future attempts to eliminate other guaranteed liberties. Other legal scholars doubt that there is either a willingness on the court or in legislatures to eliminate other rights.

“On interracial marriage, contraception and same-sex marriage, for one reason or another there is no likelihood the court is going to revisit those decisions,” Northwestern University law professor John McGinnis said.

The fact that Americans have relied on the same-sex marriage decision to plan and invest in their lives and relationships makes it unlikely that the justices will overturn it, McGinnis said.

McGinnis added, “No state legislature is going to get rid of contraception. That’s fanciful. And no state legislature is going to get rid of interracial marriage.”

George Mason University constitutional law professor Ilya Somin said Alito’s ruling could make it unlikely the court would recognize due process protections in new areas such as transgender rights.

“But on the whole its effect on due process rights is likely to be minor,” Somin said.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

Xochitl Gomez was proud of the authentic teenage representation in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.

The 16-year-old star plays LGBTQ+ Latina superhero America Chavez in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) sequel and was delighted to play a character who matched her age.

Xochitl told Variety at the premiere of the movie in Hollywood on Monday (02.05.22): “It’s really crazy because I was 14 and she was 14. I feel like teens don’t really get as much representation because they have like, a 20-year-olds playing 15-year-olds. So what’s better than an actual 14-year-old playing 14.”

The star also revealed that she studied co-star Elizabeth Olsen, who plays Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, during her time on set.

Gomez said: “I did look at Lizzie, you know, especially while she was acting, and getting ready to kind of do the scene… She’s just, you know, a powerful woman.

“Especially me as a young girl, I would constantly look up to her, and I realised how much five minutes before a scene that’s kind of difficult, she would kind of get in that moment. And I realised that, ‘Oh, well, if she’s doing it, I should probably do it, too.'”

Xochitl described the premiere as a “lifetime experience” as it marked a first in her career.

She said of watching the film with fans: “This is going to be like one of the lifetime experiences for me, honestly. I know that Benedict (Cumberbatch) and Lizzie (Olsen) have gone to their movie premieres; they’ve seen themselves on the screen, but this is a whole other thing for me.

“It’s absolutely crazy.”

Phoebe Bridgers had an abortion while on tour last year.

The 27-year-old singer-songwriter – who is allegedly engaged to ‘Normal People’ star Paul Mescal – has shared her abortion story after a document leaked by the US Supreme Court suggested the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade case that legalised abortion across America could be overturned.

The ‘Smoke Signals’ singer says “everyone” should have “access” to abortion services like Planned Parenthood and shared “a big list of places you can donate to right now”.

She tweeted: “I had an abortion in October of last year while I was on tour.

“I went to Planned Parenthood where they gave me the abortion pill. It was easy.

“Everyone deserves that kind of access.”

Meanwhile, a partygoer recently claimed that the singer introduced Paul as her fiancé as she attended a bash at the Coachella festival in California.

Phoebe performed at the event while Paul was also seen mingling with his ‘Normal People’ co-star Daisy Edgar-Jones at the festival.

The pair were first romantically linked in 2020 when the American singer referred to Paul as “the cute boy” during an interview and revealed she “got a little pitter-patter” in her heart when she noticed the actor was following her on Instagram.

Paul then landed a role in her music video for the track ‘Saviour Complex’ before the pair went Instagram official at the end of last year.

The 26-year-old actor hasn’t publicly confirmed the relationship but has spoken about the positive aspects of having a girlfriend.

He said: “To have someone too lean on through such a mad, mad time has been invaluable. Really, I don’t know where I’d be without her.”

Phoebe came out as bisexual when she was in high school and previously suggested that she “doesn’t believe in” straight people.

The singer said: “I don’t know — I actually don’t believe that anyone is, like, entirely straight.

“I just don’t believe in straight people! It’s like, how? It’s 2021!”

Washington (AFP) – The leaked draft decision that indicates the Supreme Court is poised to eliminate abortion rights marks a stunning triumph of a five-decade campaign by religious conservatives to plant their agenda at the center of US political life.

At the core of the “culture wars” over feminism, race, secularism and LGBTQ rights, the campaign took off when conservative Catholics and Evangelical Protestants joined hands following the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling guaranteeing a woman’s right to have an abortion.

That alliance, at first weak compared to the progressive social movement, grew to become a juggernaut in local and national politics over the following decades.

The final stage was set when Donald Trump, never an opponent of abortion before he ran for president in 2016, repaid the religious right’s support by naming three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, tilting it decidedly in their favor.

“Roe v. Wade was decided 50 years ago, and the right wing began to resist it and launched an enormous backlash immediately,” said Columbia Law School Professor Katherine Franke.

Their stunning success at the Supreme Court, she said, represents a “radical retrenchment” of three generations of constitutional law.

Litmus test for candidates

Russell Moore, a veteran Evangelical Christian activist and public theologian at Christianity Today, recalled that abortion was not a partisan political issue in the 1970s.

At the time, he said, “Many Roe supporters assumed that the ‘pro-life’ movement would just go away.”

Catholics and Evangelicals built media-savvy lobby groups with names like “Moral Majority” and “Family Research Council” that spread their message in churches around the country.

With strong funding, they supported political candidates who backed “right to life,” as the anti-abortion movement was dubbed, and steadily accrued power.

By the arrival of president Ronald Reagan in 1981, abortion had become a centerpiece of conservative politics, and was a litmus test for any Republican seeking office.

Moore said the movement took advantage of advances in medical technology to promote their arguments.

For one, steady improvements in care for premature babies pushed back the view of “viability” — how early a fetus can live outside the womb — changing people’s views of the consequences of abortion.

In addition, Moore said, the spread of sonograms allowed expectant mothers and their families to see their babies in the womb.

With sonograms, “it becomes very difficult… to speak of the unborn child as simply a clump of tissue or collection of cells,” he said.

Washington insider

In parallel with the popular movement, anti-abortion activists built a force in Washington with a long-term goal to get their own justices on the Supreme Court.

“From the very beginning, people understood that this would have to be addressed through the judiciary,” said Moore.

Central to that effort was Leonard Leo, a former clerk of the court’s most conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, and a figure in the Catholic Church’s anti-abortion Opus Dei sect, a quiet but highly influential force in Washington politics.

From the late 1990s, Leo built a network to shape the US judiciary over the long term, operating from the powerful Federalist Society and tapping donors for tens of millions of dollars.

According to The Washington Post, in the 2000s, Leo was deeply influential in President George W. Bush’s administration.

Most notably, Leo led the campaigns to promote Bush’s two nominations to the high court: Samuel Alito, the author of the leaked draft opinion overturning Roe, and Chief Justice John Roberts, who reportedly stands with the court’s three liberals against it.

A key contact of Leo’s in the Bush White House was Brett Kavanaugh — now one of the five Supreme Court Justices who reportedly backed Alito’s opinion.

Victory with Trump

Polls showed, and still show, that a significant majority of Americans support abortion rights. 

But by 2016, the anti-abortion movement were powerful enough to make or break Trump’s presidential campaign.

Never particularly religious or opposed to abortion, Trump actively courted Evangelical leaders and, earning their blessing, began to condemn abortion and say Roe should be overturned.

Trump chose for his vice president Mike Pence, an Evangelical himself who as Indiana governor set tough restrictions on abortion.

And Trump announced a “shortlist” of nominees he would propose to fill court vacancies — a list supplied by Leo.

That helped swing the election, with nearly 80 percent of Evangelicals backing Trump despite clouds over his personal life. 

The payoff was clear: Trump, it turned out, had the opportunity to name three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court, and all were conservatives backed by Leo and his network.

Struggle not over

Moore said he is uncomfortable with the way Alito’s draft decision was leaked, saying it tarnished the court.

Nevertheless, it marks the success of a five-decade political battle.

“Most conservative evangelicals will be very happy with the court decision,” Moore told AFP.

“But most of us understand that does not mean an end to the struggle, but a new phase,” he said, referring to what is already a fight to have abortion made illegal by the legislatures in each of the 50 states. 

Washington (AFP) – President Joe Biden urged voters Tuesday to defend their “fundamental” rights after a leaked Supreme Court draft on ending nationwide legal abortion sparked a political firestorm around one of America’s most divisive ethical issues.

If confirmed by the court, the ruling would categorically overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade case, which enshrined abortion rights across the country — ensuring the hot-button question will dominate the November midterm elections for control of Congress.

In practice, it would mean that abortion laws were left up to individual state legislatures, with as many as half of the country’s states expected to introduce bans or new restrictions.

Abortion is the fiercest fought of all the so-called culture war battles, and Republicans have pushed hard for years to overturn Roe — something that became almost inevitable once three conservative justices were appointed under Donald Trump, shifting the Supreme Court’s political balance sharply to the right.

Biden, whose Democrats have been forecast to lose their narrow control of Congress in November, issued a rallying cry to the left, warning that restricting abortion rights will be only the beginning.

“I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental… and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” Biden said in a written statement.

“It will fall on voters to elect” officials who back abortion rights, he said, vowing to work to pass legislation in Congress that codifies Roe v. Wade — a goal impossible to achieve unless far more Democrats win seats.

Speaking to reporters, Biden went further, calling the draft ruling “radical” and warning of a “fundamental shift in American jurisprudence” that could put into question the future of gay marriage and “how you raise your child.”

“It would mean that every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question.”

‘Roe v. Wade is going to go!’

The leaking of the draft ruling was unprecedented, knocking another hole in the once hallowed reputation of the top court as the one apolitical branch in the US government.

Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the document released by the Politico news website was authentic, although he cautioned that this did not necessarily represent the court’s final decision. Roberts ordered a probe into the leak.

Crowds of protesters from both camps descended on the Supreme Court building, with anti-abortion activists chanting “abortion is violence. Abortion is oppression” as well as “Hey Hey Ho Ho Roe v. Wade is going to go!”

In Roe v. Wade, the court ruled that access to abortion is a constitutional right. In a subsequent 1992 ruling, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion until the fetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically around 22 to 24 weeks of gestation.

Most developed countries allow abortions on request up to a gestational limit, most often 12 weeks. 

Roe v. Wade makes the United States one of a handful of nations to allow the procedure without restriction beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy — although many others allow it past that point for specific reasons.

The court had been expected to decide this June on challenges to Roe v. Wade.

The Republican National Committee said it was time for abortion decisions to revert to state governments.

“The far left wants unelected judges to impose a radical, one-size fits all abortion policy, leaving Americans without a voice. The Republican Party will always stand for the sanctity of life,” it said.

‘Wrong from the start’

The draft opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito and according to Politico has been circulating since February inside the court — now dominated 6-3 by conservatives.

The 98-page draft majority opinion calls Roe v. Wade decision enshrining the right to abortion “egregiously wrong from the start.”

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the document, labeled the “Opinion of the Court.”

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The Guttmacher Institute, which backs abortion rights, has said 26 states are “certain or likely” to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Democratic governors of several states including California, New Mexico and Michigan swiftly announced plans to enshrine abortion rights into law even if the court overturns Roe, with California Governor Gavin Newsom tweeting: “Women will remain protected here.”

By Maria Caspani

(Reuters) – Democratic lawmakers from 16 states on Tuesday pledged to introduce legislation providing legal refuge to transgender youth and their families displaced by restrictive laws in their states.

These states will join legislative efforts already under way in California, New York and Minnesota to provide a coordinated response to a recent wave of laws and measures banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth in multiple conservative states including Texas and Alabama.

“This attack on the very existence of our community is something that we will not accept and we’re going to fight and push back very, very hard,” said California state Senator Scott Wiener as he announced the coalition at an event with the LGBTQ Victory Institute and other civil rights groups.

Wiener is the sponsor of a California bill introduced in March that is serving as a template for other states. It would, among other things, reject any out-of-state court judgment removing transgender children from their parents in cases where parents allow their kids to receive gender-affirming care against local measures.

It would also bar compliance with any out-of-state subpoenas seeking to obtain health or other related information on individuals who come to California to receive such care, Wiener has said.

The rollout of refuge legislation will have to wait in many of the 16 states where legislative sessions have already wrapped up, and might face opposition in some legislatures.

Annise Parker, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ Victory Institute, said it was nonetheless important for leaders to send “a very clear message” to trans youth and their families.

“We see you, we hear you, we support you and we’re going to do everything in our power to make you safe,” Parker said.

(Reporting by Maria Caspani in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

Kyan Douglas is retiring from television.

The 51 -year-old star shot to fame as grooming expert on the original version of reality show ‘Queer Eye’ – which was rebooted by Netflix in 2018 – from 2003 to 2007 but is now stepping down from his television career after almost than 20 years on the box.

Speaking on daytime chat show ‘Rachael Ray’, he said: “I’ve done more episodes of ‘Rachael Ray’ than I did of ‘Queer Eye’. But I just feel ready to move on to something else. I don’t know what that is yet, but things come to an end and the universe will fill a void, so it’s time to step away and see what’s next for me.”

However, Kyan – who following his time on ‘Queer Eye’ went on to become a regular item presenter on ‘Rachael’ Ray – went on to thank his fellow TV star for working with him for over a decade and revealed that because of the show he was able to spend time with his mother before she passed away.

He added: “I’ve worked for you for 13 years and because of you and working on this show, the flexibility that it gave me, the income that it gave me, I was able to spend the last year of my mother’s life with her at home. You gave that to me, so thank you so much.”

Prior to his announcement, Kyan took to Instagram to alert fans that something “very special” was on the way.

He said: “Hello friends! Forgive me for the last-minute post but I will be on The Rachael Ray show today with a very special announcement! Please watch when and where you can. Check your local listings. Love you guys!”(sic)

Sophie Turner thinks that motherhood has made her a “better actress.”

The 26-year-old star welcomed daughter Willa into the world with husband Joe Jonas back in July 2020 and has insisted that becoming a mother has improved her skills on screen because it has made her a “much more emotional person”.

She said: “The concept of family has made me an entirely much more emotional person. The empathy is heightened; the feelings about family are just like overflowing.It’s made me a better actress for becoming, you know, becoming a mother.”

The ‘Dark Phoenix’ actress – who has been married to former Disney star Joe, 32, since 2019 – went on to explain that the only way to become a “brilliant actor” is to experience life and noted that parenthood is “another part of her life” that she is able to incorporate into her work.

Speaking on WrapWomen’s ‘UnWrapped’ podcast, she added: “Because as an actor, you know, the only way to become a really brilliant actor is to experience as much life as possible and to bring those experiences in, and so this is just another little part of life that I’m experiencing that I get to bring in and hopefully it helps my performance one way or another.”

The former ‘Game of Thrones’ actress is set to make her return screens in HBO Max drama ‘The Staircase’ after a two year break from acting and explained that while the tone was different than what she initially expected, she ended up “preferring” the final cut.

She said: “I wasn’t fully prepared for the tone and told it was a little more comedic than the script it ended up being. But I preferred the story as it was executed ultimately. It was very seductive from the get-go. I was pleasantly surprised about how emotional it was when I saw the first cut.”

Bjorn Ulvaeus thinks that the ABBA comeback is an “immense risk.”

The 77-year-old musician began his ascent to global fame when he won the Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden with the song ‘Waterloo’ alongside ex-wife Agnetha Faltskog as well as Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and Benny Andersson back in 1974 and the four are set to reunite as digital avatars for a series of London concerts, and but Bjorn has been losing sleep over the comeback.

He said: “It’s an immense risk and most people I talk to don’t appreciate that. They say, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine.’ Sometimes I wake up at four in the morning and think, ‘What the hell have we done?’”

The show is being staged at the purpose-built ABBA Arena in London from May at an estimated cost of £15 million but the ‘Super Trouper’ hitmaker – who has sold 385 million records as part of the legendary pop group – explained that a lot of their fellow artists will be “studying” the format of the world-first style of digital concert and named rock band Oasis

He told The Sunday Times: “Lots of artists are going to be studying us, definitely. I won’t name names, but I can think of a few. I wonder who’s going to be first.I couldn’t possibly comment.”

Meanwhile, co-lead singer Anni-Frid, 76, – who was married to Benny during the latter years of the band’s heyday while Bjorn was married to Agnetha -explained that going on tour for them back in the day was an “odd experience” and left them feeling like “prisoners” in their hotel rooms.

She said: “Our situation was so odd. Not in the studio, which was our second home, but going on tour, where we were more or less prisoners in our hotel.”

‘ABBA Voyage’ is set to kick off on May 27 and will run until December 2022.

Martha Stewart has recalled that Pete Davidson was a “young upstart” early on in his career.

The 80 year-old businesswoman remembers sharing the stage with comedian Pete, 28, – who has been dating reality superstar Kim Kardashian since 2021 – for ‘Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber’ back in 2014 and took to Instagram to honour him after the power couple made their first red carpet appearance together at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington D.C. on Saturday (30.04.22) night .

Alongside a throwback of video of Pete, Martha wrote on Instagram: “seven years ago i was on the stage with a young upstart named pete who was doing comedy on saturday night live now that same pete is all grown up , squiring gorgeous women around and appearing everywhere! @petedavidson.93 and @kimkardashian were in washington for the correspondents dinner This clip is from the @justinbieber Comedy Central roast years ago.”(sic)

In the throwback clip, the ‘Saturday Night Live’ star can be seen telling the camera: “I’m Pete and I’m very excited to be doing this roast with Martha because she’s adorable and doesn’t know that she’s gonna get abused.”

Kim – who has North, eight, Saint, six, Chicago, four, and Psalm, two, with her ex-husband Kanye West whilst Pete has previously dated the likes of pop star Ariana Grande and Hollywood actress Kate Beckinsale – was invited to the prestigious event on behalf of ABC following the debut of her new Hulu series ‘The Kardashians’, while Pete came along as her guest.

The couple arrived more than 90 minutes after the event began but they still found the time to stop and pose for photos, though they didn’t speak to reporters before heading into the ballroom.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The pressure Texas exerted on neighboring Mexican states last month to tighten border security was tantamount to “extortion”, Mexico’s foreign minister was quoted as saying on Sunday.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott made deals with the governors of the border states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon after enhanced Texan security checks to prevent smuggling of people and contraband disrupted bilateral trade.

The episode sparked a testy response from Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who described Texas’ behavior as “despicable”, and his foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, this weekend weighed in with his own criticism.

“Let me put this in quotation marks, it’s an extortion scheme, or rather it is extortion; I close the border and you have to sign whatever I say. That’s not a deal, a deal is when you and I are in agreement on something,” Ebrard was quoted as saying by news network Milenio during a visit to Nuevo Leon.

Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside of normal business hours.

Ebrard did not take issue with the Mexican governors, saying that they had been presented with no alternative.

“But we’re not prepared to have a governor extorting Mexico. I will never allow that,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Mexican foreign ministry said Ebrard had been interviewed by Milenio.

Abbott, who is running for re-election as governor, said Texas had reached accords with the Mexican states to beef up security at the border in order to curb illegal immigration.

Mexican media reported later on Sunday that Ebrard declared himself a candidate for the presidency in 2024 during a state election campaign event in the central region of Hidalgo.

A foreign ministry official confirmed the reports, saying Ebrard had previously made it clear he intended to run.

Record numbers of people have this year been caught trying to cross the Mexican border into the United States.

(Reporting by Dave Graham; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Kenneth Maxwell)

HELSINKI (Reuters) – Finland will decide to apply for NATO membership on May 12, Finnish newspaper Iltalehti reported late on Sunday, citing anonymous government sources.

The decision to join will come in two steps on that day, with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto first announcing his approval for the Nordic neighbour of Russia to join the Western defence alliance, followed by parliamentary groups giving their approval for the application, the paper reported.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Finland and Sweden to the verge of applying for NATO membership and abandoning a belief held for decades that peace was best kept by not publicly choosing sides.

Reuters was not immediately able to verify the details provided by Iltalehti.

Under the Finnish constitution, the president leads Finland’s foreign and security policy in cooperation with the government.

The decision will be confirmed in a meeting between the President and the government’s key ministers after the President’s and the Parliament’s initial announcements, the paper reported.

Russia, with which Finland shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border and a pre-1945 history of conflict, has warned it will deploy nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles in its Baltic coast enclave of Kaliningrad if Finland and Sweden decide to join the U.S.-led NATO alliance.

(Reporting by Anne Kauranen, editing by Gwladys Fouche)

Joanne Froggatt insisted it is an “easy decision” to keep returning to ‘Downton Abbey’.

The 41-year-old actress has portrayed Anna Bates in the TV series and both spin-off movies and she will always feel a “real loyalty” to the franchise and everyone who works on it.

She said: “I love the people and feel a real loyalty to their show and our team.

“We had a wonderful experience during the show so it’s an easy decision to keep coming back.

“We get to hang out with our friends and revisit something that has been such a big and special part of our lives.”

Joanne will always be grateful for the variety of storylines that showrunner Julian Fellowes has written for her over the years.

She continued to Big Issue magazine: “I also love revisiting Anna. It’s never a tough decision to step back into her shoes.

“Julian has put her through the mill over the years, which as an actor I’m very grateful for.

“I wanted to be an actor for the versatility, to be able to play different roles and challenge myself. But to have the opportunity to pop back and revisit that character in a movie is so dreamy, and something that very rarely happens in the TV world.”

The actress has promised the new movie, ‘Downton Abbey: A New Era’, will be a comforting watch.

She said: “I think the second movie is even better than the first.

“It is funny, it is poignant, it looks beautiful – it’s got all those things people love about ‘Downton’.

“It feels like you are getting a warm hug. And I think that’s what everybody needs right now, after the last few years and with what’s happening in the world.”

Serena Williams didn’t tell her daughter’s tennis instructor who she was.

The 40-year-old sports star – who is often dubbed The Queen of the Court – has revealed she didn’t want four-year-old Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.’s coach to know they are training the Grand Slam champion’s offspring.

Appearing on ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ on Monday (02.05.22), she said of her little girl’s skills on the court: “Her ambition is playing princess games.”

The host quipped: “You enrolled her in tennis classes with a coach but you did not tell the coach that you were the mother?”

And Serena replied: “I don’t have the patience to teach tennis.

“It drives me nuts.”

Meanwhile, Serena recently admitted she didn’t feel any connection with her daughter during her pregnancy.

She didn’t form a bond with her baby girl until the day she was born.

In a personal essay for Elle, Serena explained: “I was nervous about meeting my baby. Throughout my pregnancy, I’d never felt a connection with her. While I loved being pregnant, I didn’t have that amazing ‘Oh my God, this is my baby’ moment, ever. It’s something people don’t usually talk about, because we’re supposed to be in love from the first second.

“Yes, I was a lioness who would protect her baby at any cost, but I wasn’t gushing over her. I kept waiting to feel like I knew her during pregnancy, but the feeling never came. Some of my mom friends told me they didn’t feel the connection in the womb either, which made me feel better, but still, I longed for it.”

However, the Olympic gold medallist – who is married to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian – added: “When I finally saw her – and I just knew it was going to be a girl, that was one thing I knew about her before we even had it confirmed – I loved her right away. It wasn’t exactly instantaneous, but it was there, and from that seed, it grew.”

Well they certainly don’t act their age. Grace Hanson and Frankie Bergstein may be well past 70, but they would hardly fit (or approve of) the label “senior citizens”.

Hanson still enjoys a martini with lunch and remains the feisty head of a cosmetics company at an age when others would have long since dozed off into retirement.

Bergstein, on the other hand, is a lively art teacher who loves to paint nude in her studio and is still up for every esoteric trend even at her advanced age.

The Netflix show “Grace and Frankie” deals with the narrow-minded ideas society has about older women and also raises a good question: In the final stretch of life, do friendships not matter, or even more, than our partnerships?

In 2015, the hit producers Marta Kauffman (“Friends”) and John E. Morris (“Home Improvement”) had the right instinct to finally put older people at the centre of a series. The idea became Netflix’s longest-running fictional original production.

After the first of four new episodes were previously released, the final 12 episodes of season seven appeared on Netflix at the end of April.

The show started out with what felt like a cheesy TV drama: After decades of marriage, two women learn that their husbands are secretly in love with each other and have been having an affair for years. When their spouses move in together, Grace and Frankie also decide, out of necessity, to share a flat.

At the beginning, critics were lukewarm at best and pointed to the lazy dialogue and a cliché-riddled plot.

Gradually, however, the two women moved more and more into focus and with them the question: Is it ever too late to reinvent yourself?

The acclaim from critics grew and grew. Lily Tomlin as Frankie, now 82, has since been nominated four times in a row for the best leading actress in a comedy series at the Emmy television awards

Jane Fonda, 84, is credible as the dapper businesswoman Grace, even if many of us know the actor as a left-wing climate activist and protester against the Vietnam War.

And Tomlin has proven in her career that a character like the absurdly over-the-top Frankie suits her well. After all, she gained fame from eccentric 1980s films like “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” and “9 to 5”.

For anyone who knows the latter, a fitting finale awaits the leading duo at the end of the seven-season run.

Cameo spoiler alert: Singer, songwriter and actor Dolly Parton makes a guest appearance in the last episode of “Grace and Frankie”, bringing the trio of Parton, Tomlin and Parton together again four decades their first joint appearance in the office satire “9 to 5”.

New York (AFP) – Netflix has canceled an animated series created by Meghan Markle as it makes cost-saving moves following disappointing first-quarter results.

The TV streaming giant confirmed in an email to AFP on Monday that it was not moving forward with the Duchess of Sussex’s “Pearl,” which was announced in July last year.

The cancellation is “part of the strategic decisions Netflix is making around animated series,” the company said, adding that it was scrapping other children’s series including “Dino Daycare” and “Boons and Curses.”

Markle and her husband, Britain’s Prince Harry, signed a deal to produce content for the streaming platform after quitting their royal duties in Britain.

The California-based couple formed a production company called Archewell Productions, named after their son Archie.

“Pearl” was due to be about a 12-year-old girl who is inspired by historical female figures.

In 2020, Harry and Meghan announced they would create a documentary series about the Invictus Games for wounded servicemen and women, which Prince Harry has long championed.

Netflix said that Archewell Productions “remains a valued partner and we are continuing to work together on a number of projects, including the upcoming documentary series Heart of Invictus.”

Last month, Netflix reported a drop in subscribers for the first time in a decade, sparking a plunge in its share price.

The Silicon Valley tech firm said it ended the first quarter of this year with 221.6 million subscribers, a drop of around 200,000 users from the final quarter of last year.

Netflix blamed the quarter-over-quarter erosion to suspension of its service in Russia due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Disney showed earlier this year that it was closing the gap with market leader Netflix in America’s TV streaming wars.

By Leah Douglas

(Reuters) – Black farmers in the United States lost roughly $326 billion worth of acreage during the 20th century, according to the first study to quantify the present-day value of that loss.

Land loss is a contributor to the racial wealth gap in the United States and an issue that has marred the relationship between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and minority farmers.

“Wealth and land is one way in this country that you’re able to grow opportunity for your family,” said Dr. Dania Francis, professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Boston and lead author of the study published on Sunday in the American Economic Association’s Papers and Proceedings journal.

“When huge groups of African Americans were denied that opportunity, it speaks to the intergenerational wealth gap that opened up in part due to this type of land loss,” Francis added.

The land loss was due to discriminatory USDA lending policies and forced sales of co-owned land called heirs’ property, among other factors, the study said.

The study calculated the compounded value of declining acreage owned by African Americans between 1920 and 1997 in the 17 states where almost all Black-owned farms were documented, using data from the USDA Census of Agriculture.

“This is not just theoretical, but this is empirical,” said Dr. Darrick Hamilton, economics professor at The New School and another of the study’s authors. “These are real losses that occurred.”

In 1910, Black farmers owned more than 16 million acres of land, according to experts. In 2017, when the most recent agricultural census was done, that figure was just 4.7 million acres, about 0.5% of all farmland.

The $326 billion figure is a conservative estimate, said the study authors, in part because it does not account for multiplier effects, like whether Black farmers could have used lost land as collateral to make other investments.

A Biden administration effort to provide debt relief to farmers of color as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, framed as repair for past USDA discrimination, is currently stalled in court after white farmers argued it was discriminatory. [L1N2SY2JW]

(Reporting by Leah Douglas; Editing by Bill Berkrot)