Can you steal someone’s life story? A lawsuit in France—against an award-winning novelist—seeks to find out

By David Chazan

The winner of France’s top literary prize has been accused of basing his novel on the life of a patient who was treated by his psychiatrist wife.

Kamel Daoud was awarded the Prix Goncourt last month for Houris. Its central character is a 26-year-old woman whose throat was cut by an Islamist militant during Algeria’s 1992-2002 civil war. The woman survives but loses her voice and communicates using a speech aid.

The book is banned in Algeria under a law restricting the publication of accounts of the conflict. Its French publisher, Gallimard, was barred from the Algiers book fair last month. READ ON

The Christian right spent millions to smear Dr. Mary Calderone, a 1960s sex-education activist. Now the issues Calderone campaigned for are under fire again—this time from the incoming Trump administration

By Joseph Rodota

WHO CREATED YOUR CHILD’S SEX ED CURRICULUM? asked the headline in a bulletin from the America First Policy Institute (A.F.P.I.), a nonprofit think tank with close ties to the incoming Trump administration. The answer was: “Texas chapters of Planned Parenthood” helped conceive “a K-12 sex education curriculum for a national organization which said that sex educators should avoid teaching kids not to engage in casual sex and called for the elimination of women from conversations on teen pregnancy.”

In another fact sheet sent to parents ahead of a school-board election in Peoria, Illinois, the A.F.P.I. warned that “too many schools” were “sexualizing” children “by presenting age-inappropriate sexual content.” READ ON

The shocking leak of Pope Francis’s closely guarded autobiography bears uncanny similarities to an infamous publishing swindler’s modus operandi

By Mattia Ferraresi

An advance manuscript of Pope Francis’s upcoming autobiography has been stolen and illegally leaked online, where it was available for more than a week before being taken down by law enforcement.

The theft sent the publishing world into a behind-closed-doors frenzy and sparked legal action, but until now no one has publicly acknowledged that the file ended up floating in the darkest corners of the Internet. Even the Holy See claimed to be unaware of the leak. “We have no information regarding the diffusion of the text,” a Vatican spokesman said. AIR MAIL was able to locate and download READ ON

Before becoming known as a sex offender, Mohamed Al-Fayed was just another under-the-radar Lothario overseeing an empire. One of his former employees looks back

By Paul Spike

“The chairman will meet with you now,” said the secretary who had come to fetch me. I entered his enormous office, which stretched along a corner of Harrods in Knightsbridge. The curtains were drawn.

On that day in 1997, Mohamed Al-Fayed rose from his chair to greet me. He was short and bald with a toffee-colored complexion. His stout body was dressed in a gray bespoke suit. On his shirt, little hippos copulated against a pastel-blue cotton background.

He shook my hand. “Paul Spike, yes? Sit down. So, Paul, how your balls? Your balls O.K.?”

I tried hard not to blink. “Yes, my balls are O.K.” READ ON

A new type of online scam targets influencers and porn stars—by seizing control of social-media accounts and holding them hostage

By Nick Thompson

Maddison Fox makes a good living by selling nude photos and videos of herself online. She gains most of her customers via Instagram, where she has more than 300,000 followers. Here she posts semi-clothed images of herself—so as not to get blocked by the app’s anti-nudity rules—to entice customers to buy a subscription to her OnlyFans page, where her more risqué content resides. Fox says she can earn at least $600,000 a year.

In 2022, Fox fell victim to a type of scam that has been little reported but is pervasive on Instagram and aimed at mid-level influencers. Upon READ ON

The rape trial of Dominique Pelicot has shocked France. But the story has gotten even darker with the revelation that Pelicot may have drugged and abused his own daughter

By Kim Willsher

When detectives told Caroline Darian her father had been lacing her mother’s food and drink with a powerful concoction of drugs and inviting strangers to rape her, she thought nothing more could shock her.

Just a few hours later, however, an urgent call to return to the gendarmerie brought more devastating news. Among the 20,000 photographs and videos her father Dominique Pelicot had recorded of her mother Gisèle being abused were two images of a much younger woman asleep in a bed.

At first Darian did not recognize the person in the photographs.

“The quilt was lifted on the READ ON

Was Sean “Diddy” Combs’s father murdered by the Gambino crime family?

By Legs McNeil

I never paid too much attention to the West Coast–East Coast gangsta-rap wars of the 1990s, but I learned something interesting while finishing work on Pusherman: Frank Lucas & The True Story of American Gangster, a documentary about the notorious Harlem heroin dealer. Namely that Sean “Diddy” Combs’s father, Melvin Combs, had done business with Lucas and was murdered in his car, parked off of Central Park West in 1972, for being a suspected informer.

In fact, Lucas knew Diddy, though this was decades before he adopted the nickname. “Melvin used to bring [Diddy] over to my house every other READ ON

Once home to a public park and architectural marvels, an island off the shore of the idyllic Lake Ontario is being turned into a big-budget spa, to the ire of some locals

By Elena Clavarino

As night fell in Toronto on Wednesday, October 2, its residents drifting to sleep, a group of construction workers were just getting started. They wore protective gear and carried chainsaws, and for the next 24 hours they swarmed Ontario Place, the city’s most prized public park, cutting down more than 850 trees—home to upwards of 100 unsuspecting bird and animal species, including Canada geese, mallards, beavers, and chipmunks—spanning 16 acres.

The park, which stretches across two artificial islands off the shore of the idyllic Lake Ontario, is in the process of being turned into a seven-story-high, $500 million spa, READ ON

A nun named Gertrude is the face of one of the buzziest craft breweries in Belgium. But in a previous life, she conspired to commit genocide in Rwanda

By Alexandra Marshall

The story seemed like lifestyle press catnip: from a sleepy corner of southeastern Belgium comes the first modern abbey beer brewed by nuns. Some of the best-known Belgian beers originated from clerics, but for centuries their craft was the exclusive domain of monks who eventually started licensing their recipes to lay professionals. Here comes girl power, at Maredret Abbey, whose first two brews debuted a couple of years ago.

In coverage by Reuters and the BBC, and on the YouTube channel of Maredret’s licensee brewer, John Martin, the most visible face of the product is a beatific-looking, soft-spoken Black READ ON

An I.T. employee at the elite Kent boarding school, in Connecticut, downloaded photos from 70 under-age female students’ laptops. Then he moved on to Yale

By Clara Molot

“It was boarding school. There was nothing else to do,” says Sam Thompson, 23, thinking back to the types of photographs that lived on her personal laptop when she was a teen. “Boarding-school boys were crazy.”

Thompson grew up in the quiet town of Kent, in western Connecticut. Her father worked as a math teacher and football coach at the nearby Kent School, an elite Episcopal boarding school whose alumni include singer Lana Del Rey and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane. (Some might recall the 1999 saga when longtime Kent School head of school Father Richardson Schell engaged in a letter-writing campaign against a 26-year-old MacFarlane to kill the popular new sitcom because there was a character named after his secretary.) READ ON

The former mistress of Spain’s exiled monarch, Juan Carlos, forced her 13-year-old son to photograph and video her royal romps in order to extort millions of dollars in hush money from the Spanish state

By James Badcock

The day he saw the king have sex with his mother is a childhood memory that will never leave Angel Cristo.

Barbara Rey made a paella on the terrace of her family home for Juan Carlos before the couple frolicked in the pool.

The fun continued to the bedroom where Ms Rey and the long-serving Spanish monarch rekindled a romance that had begun nearly 20 years earlier.

But while Juan Carlos was indulging in an extra-marital affair behind the back of his wife, Queen Sofia, his mistress was engaged in her own act of skulduggery – one that would allegedly net her millions but also traumatise her teenage son. READ ON

Frank Stronach, a 92-year-old Canadian auto-parts tycoon, has been accused of multiple sexual assaults dating back nearly 50 years. One of his alleged victims shares her story

By Jane Boon

People who have known me since the 1980s have probably heard my story about the time I bit Frank Stronach. Their curiosity remained dormant until earlier this year, when Stronach, a billionaire and pillar of the Canadian Establishment, was arrested. Thirteen women have now made criminal allegations against him including rape, forcible confinement, and sexual assault. The earliest charge dates back to 1977, the most recent to February 2024.

Canadians were astonished. Stronach is the 92-year-old Austrian-Canadian founder and longtime C.E.O. of Magna International, North America’s largest auto-parts manufacturer. It currently has more than 177,000 employees in 28 countries, including 28,750 in the United States, and, in 2023, revenues of $43 billion. READ ON

The crazy tale of a career criminal’s theft of the shoes worn by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz—and the madcap, decades-long fight to get them back

By Mark Seal

Terry Jon Martin had been out of federal prison for 10 years when the call came about stealing the ruby red slippers.

They were on display in the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, a joint whose security “leaked like a sieve,” Terry was told. It didn’t matter to Terry that the ruby slippers were the most famous shoes in movie history, worn by Judy Garland as Dorothy in the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz. Terry had never seen the movie. All he cared about was that the slippers were covered in real rubies, or so he was told by the “old Mob associate” who offered him the job. Given the size of the rubies, he said, they could be worth a fortune. READ ON

To celebrate the end of a 12-year legal ordeal, billionaire Mike Lynch set sail on his “unsinkable” 184-foot yacht. The Fates weren’t with him

By Sam Kashner

The storm is up, and all is on the hazard.
—William Shakespeare

A freakish storm out of nowhere. An “unsinkable” super-yacht that ended up at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Seven dead, including England’s first tech billionaire, 59-year-old Mike Lynch, known as the British Bill Gates, who had, just two months earlier, been exonerated for fraud, concluding a 12-year legal battle. And in that boat, 164 feet under the waves, a locked, watertight safe containing the encrypted hard drives of Darktrace, Lynch’s cybersecurity company, whose clients included M.I.5 and Mossad.

It wasn’t supposed to end like this. And READ ON

A TikTok conspiracy theory shows how quickly wild—and completely unfounded—rumors can come to dominate social media

By Clara Molot

Fifteen years ago, a fresh-faced Taylor Swift wafted onto the stage at New York’s Radio City Music Hall to accept her Video Music Award for Best Female Video. “I’ve always dreamed about what it would be like to win one of these one day, but I never thought it would actually happen,” said Swift, the music video for “You Belong with Me” playing on the screen behind her.

The camera cut to an applauding Pink, wearing an outrageously high mohawk, for just long enough to miss Kanye West barreling toward Swift. The following clip—of West grabbing the microphone from READ ON

Twentysomethings scrabble and fight to appear on the business magazine’s list of bright young things—but many of them quickly crash and burn

By George Pendle and Jack Sullivan

No sooner had the sexts between the reporter Olivia Nuzzi and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. been revealed than the editors at Forbes must have been cursing their luck, yet again. In 2018, Nuzzi had appeared on Forbes’s 30 Under 30 list, the magazine’s annual catalogue of “bright young entrepreneurs, leaders, and stars.”

Few things are as reliable in prophesying a fall from grace as 30 Under 30. Whether it’s down to the hubris that such a list confers upon its members, or simply the low barrier to entry—participants can nominate themselves, and the check system seems largely based on hype instead of substance—there’s little doubt that appearing on it is a double-edged sword. READ ON

Shattered by my sister Dorothy Stratten’s murder, Peter Bogdanovich and I were bonded for life. Not everyone in Hollywood approved

By Louise Stratten

Not yet knowing what had happened to Dorothy, I went to bed the night of August 14, 1980, wearing my sister’s maroon robe. It smelled like her Yves Saint Laurent perfume, and it made me feel better.

I was whisked away by a member of Peter’s staff the next day. I haphazardly packed before being taken to the airport, where a chaperone flew with me to Vancouver. I had never flown first class before. The flight crew attempted to give us complimentary newspapers, which were promptly blocked from my view. I was so confused.

When I arrived at the READ ON

Mohamed Al-Fayed has been revealed as a serial rapist who kept his victims quiet through threats and blackmail. His biographer reveals the resentment that fueled the magnate’s crimes

By Tom Bower

T

he Establishment cover-up has been finally blown. Thirty years after Mohamed Al-Fayed was first exposed as a serial rapist, the BBC has finally exposed his appalling crimes in a new documentary, Al Fayed: Predator at Harrods. Cynics will question why, one year after his death, his reputation remained relatively unblemished until now.

The crimes alleged in the documentary are grave and took place on a quite staggering scale. Twenty women accused Fayed of sexual abuse, including five allegations of rape.

It detailed incidents of abuse in London, Paris, St Tropez and Abu Dhabi. It speaks of how the Harrods owner would tour the department store’s vast sales floor to identify female staff to prey upon. This was abuse that took place over decades. READ ON

How a turf war between rival gangs turned Sweden—yes, Sweden—into the most violent country in Europe

By Ravi Somaiya

In one way, the series of events that led to Sweden becoming the violent-murder capital of Europe, held up its accession to NATO as Russia circled, and allowed Iran a terrorist foothold in Europe began with an image that appeared on September 2, 2015.

It shows a tiny figure in a red T-shirt and blue shorts, lying face down on the beach in Bodrum, Turkey, a landing spot for migrants attempting to enter Europe in small boats. Alan Kurdi was two. He had drowned fleeing civil war in Syria. The waves lapping at his face indicate that he is dead. Everything else about him—his chubby arms, his tiny shoes—feels like you could just pick him up and make it better. READ ON

The new Labour government is hiking up taxes on Britain’s acclaimed private schools. Is it leveling the playing field or getting revenge on Boris Johnson?

By Ashley Baker

In the United Kingdom, it’s a bad time to be rich. In August, new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer warned that things would “get worse before they get better.” Almost certainly that means more taxes. No amount of Lexapro can minimize the teeth-gnashing among the nation’s 1-percenters agonizing over the possibility of increased tax on capital gains.

But far beyond the terrace of the Turf Club, the most consequential measure is the 20 percent V.A.T. (value-added tax) that will be applied to private-school tuition. Previously reserved for goods and services such as clothing, electronics, new cars, and hotels, the READ ON

The revelation of sexts between star reporter Olivia Nuzzi and erstwhile presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has blown minds—and shattered journalistic ethics

By Ashley Baker

On Friday, the world woke up to a new face splashed across the home page of the Daily Mail: Olivia Nuzzi, blonde, attractive, and no shrinking violet, posing at an event in her stretchy leopard-print top.

At just 31 years old, she’s had a short but hard-charging career as a scoop-oriented, politically connected reporter that’s already media-world mini-legend. But her sources are about to dry up: she was placed on leave by New York magazine, where she has been Washington correspondent since 2017, over a personal relationship that she developed with a reporting subject. The media newsletter Status quickly revealed it was the Trump supporter and headline magnet 70-year-old Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. READ ON

Accompanying my sister, Dorothy Stratten, to the Playboy Mansion at 12 was a shock. But nothing could have prepared me for what followed

By Louise Stratten

They say things come in threes. I am the survivor of three traumas. The first was the brutal murder of my beloved sister, Dorothy Stratten, by her husband, Paul Snider. Then came the gossip, scrutiny, and unwanted publicity after marrying, divorcing, re-uniting with, and now mourning my partner in life, Peter Bogdanovich. The third trauma is the surprise I got when Peter died suddenly and I was left to navigate the love, legacy, and wreckage he left behind.

As a child in Vancouver, I felt like there was always something not quite right. Ours was a humble household, with erratic meals and a succession of shady men courting our single mother, Peternella Hoogstratten. Friends called her “Nellie.” READ ON

He played charming but icy characters on-screen. The available evidence suggests that he was one in real life

By Legs McNeil

“I got into this profession thanks to women,” Alain Delon, who died last month, said in 2018. “They’re the ones who got me into making movies. It was women who wanted me, who made me, who gave me everything.”

In 1962, a brief affair with the German singer Nico (née Christa Päffgen) gave him a son, Christian Aaron Päffgen, known to the world as “Ari.”

Delon never recognized Ari’s parentage and even went so far as to tell the kid, “You’re my friend, you’re my friend, but I’ll tell you something, you’re not my son, you’ll never be my son, READ ON

Even with the F.B.I. hot on his trail, Miami developer Sergio Pino was so desperate to end his marriage that he’d do anything—including murder

By Mark Seal

Sergio Pino, 67, was regarded by many in his Coral Gables, Florida, community as something of an only-in-America success story. At 12 years old, he arrived in Miami from Cuba and built his company, Century Homebuilders Group, into what is said to be the largest Hispanic-owned homebuilder in America. A success at nearly everything he did, he failed miserably at one thing: his persistent attempts to kill his wife, Tatiana, 55, who, as an alleged hit man explained, “wanted half of what Pino owned and would not settle [their divorce] for the offered 20 million dollars,” and instead began a fight for 50 percent of his $153 million fortune. READ ON