In 2022, less than three months after Queen Elizabeth II’s death, a “royal family friend” named Gyles Brandreth wrote and published Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait. He was the first one to put a name to QEII’s suffering in the final year of her life. Brandreth reported that QEII had “a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer — which would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those ‘mobility issues’ we were often told about during the last year or so of her life.” As a reminder, no one at the palace and no one around QEII would disclose anything to do with QEII’s health in the final year. People were given vague explanations like “mobility issues” and “it hurts her to stand.” They made QEII stand to meet Liz Truss and QEII was dead within a few days. It was awful. Well, anyway, Boris Johnson apparently confirms the diagnosis in his memoir.

Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims that Queen Elizabeth had “a form of bone cancer” in the last years of her life.

Johnson, 60, makes the claim in his upcoming memoir Unleashed, which will be published in the U.K. on Oct. 10 and released in the U.S. on Oct. 22. In an excerpt serialized in the Daily Mail on Sept. 28, Johnson reflected on his final meeting with the Queen at Balmoral Castle in September 2022, two days before she died at age 96.

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer, and her doctors were worried that at any time she could enter a sharp decline,” Johnson writes in Unleashed.

The former mayor of London adds that the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Edward Young, said, “‘She’s gone down quite a bit over the summer,’ ” before Johnson entered his outgoing audience as prime minister with her.

This marks the first time a senior British politician has spoken about her possible cause of death, which was officially listed as “old age” on her death certificate. The revelation is highly unusual in British public life. The queen’s health was a closely-guarded secret during her reign, and information about meetings between the prime minister and monarch are usually kept confidential.

Recalling his final meeting with Queen Elizabeth, Johnson said she “seemed pale and more stooped, and she had dark ­bruising on her hands and wrists, probably from drips or injections.” But, he said, the monarch’s mood was “completely ­unimpaired by her illness, and from time to time in our ­conversation she still flashed that great white smile in its sudden mood-lifting beauty.”

He said the late queen knew “all ­summer that she was going, but was determined to hang on and do her last duty” by seeing the transfer of power from Johnson to his successor Liz Truss.

[From Politico & People]

“I had known for a year or more that she had a form of bone cancer.” This confirms, to me, the timeline which I put together. Prince Philip died in April 2021. QEII was in remarkably good form after his death, attending horse shows and socializing. Then something fell apart in October 2021 – QEII suddenly wasn’t well enough to travel, she had to cancel some events at the last minute, and she went to the hospital overnight and the palace covered it up. I don’t think she was diagnosed with cancer until months after Philip passed. I also think that secretive hospitalization in the fall of 2021 was much more serious than they let on. I suspect QEII and the courtiers just wanted her to get through the Jubbly in June 2022, and she rallied for that before she let go.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Buckingham Palace.

It’s so amusing to watch the British media scramble around for “Hollywood insiders” to describe how “Hollywood” feels about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. There’s usually a tell, like the “Hollywood insider” will say something like “everyone in Hollywood adores King Charles AND Catherine!” There’s a huge British expat community in LA, and most of the time, those are the Hollywood insiders – smug British royalists trying to colonize California. Speaking of, the Mail has a new Hollywood insider who has “heard” some things about Prince Harry’s latest Netflix series, Polo. Polo is due out later this year, and it’s about the world of polo, obviously. Well, according to the Mail, Netflix is mad about it.

When Netflix signed an £80million deal with Prince Harry, executives might have hoped for lots of exclusive personal footage. But his new five-part documentary series about polo hardly features the Duke at all, I can reveal. Instead, it focuses on his friend Nacho Figueras, a little-known Argentinian player.

A source last night claimed Netflix bosses have been disappointed with just how much the final edit focuses on the unknown, saying the streaming giant expected ‘more bang for its buck’.

Through their company Archewell, Harry and his wife Meghan are executive producers of the series, titled simply Polo and due out in December. But behind the scenes it has been nicknamed ‘the Nacho Show’.

The couple signed a five-year deal in 2020 for several shows, but one Hollywood producer told me: ‘What Net­flix have received in return doesn’t look great. People want personal stuff. Apart from their documentary series, which had the drama of them quitting the Royal Family, everything else they’ve produced has been underwhelming. Any reasonable person tuning into a show about polo made by Prince Harry would expect Harry to take a starring role.’

‘That he’s not is hugely disappointing for Netflix. Let’s face it, polo isn’t exactly a mainstream sport so the attraction would have been watching Harry. Without him, it’s marginal at best. The Netflix deal expires next year, so the Sussexes need a big hit. This sounds like a big nothing burger.’

Another insider said: ‘For a show about a sport of Kings, polo barely features any royalty. It’s not the Harry show, it’s the Nacho show.’

Mr Figueras, 47, has been dubbed ‘the David Beckham of polo’ but one source said: ‘Nice of Harry to do his mate a favour, but Nacho speaks broken English and is just not mainstream enough to pull in the ratings.’

[From The Daily Mail]

This is disgusting: “Nacho speaks broken English.” Nacho is a fluent English speaker and he speaks with an Argentinian accent. The insider’s racism and colonialist attitude is showing. Nacho is not “a little-known Argentinian player,” he’s the most famous polo player in the world. He’s basically the only professional polo player most people would be able to name. Hell, he’s the only professional player I can name. Nacho has had lucrative, global sponsorships for years – he’s like the Roger Federer of the polo world. There’s a reason why Nacho is the “star” of the series – it’s because for decades, he’s been the one bringing this niche sport into the mainstream. Anyway, I imagine this will be like Heart of Invictus – Harry will be in the show, but it will mostly be about the other players and the world of polo. I’m including an interview with Nacho on the Today Show – he has absolutely been a global ambassador for polo for decades and his English is excellent.

POLO is a new documentary series that follows elite global players and offers an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the fast-paced world of the sport. From Archewell Productions and Boardwalk Pictures. Premiering this December. pic.twitter.com/92vu4xYW8u

— Netflix (@netflix) September 9, 2024

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Instagram, Cover Images.

Last week, Vanity Fair did a lovely wrap-up piece about Prince Harry’s NYC trip: “Prince Harry’s Transition From Working Royal to Global Advocate Is Now Complete.” I agree – while Harry’s meetings and appearances weren’t huge stories, his trip showed that he’s booked and busy and he has a lot on his plate. VF had details about the meetings and events associated with Sentebale, African Parks, The HALo Trust, Travalyst, The Diana Award and more. VF also editorialized a bit which I enjoyed:

Harry’s CGI speech: When Harry took the stage at the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday morning, it was clear just how far he had come as a speaker and a public figure. He paced the stage, TED Talk–style, and used his personal cell phone as a visual aid. He began by discussing the Space Race, using it as an extended metaphor for the unforeseen effects that technology can have on our politics. Compared to the uplifting yet somewhat hesitant speeches he used to give five years ago, the prince was brimming with purpose when talking about Big Tech.

All business: In under 72 hours, he packed in at least seven events with a handful of his charities, some of which have counted him as a patron for more than a decade. He gave prepared remarks at most of the events, which meant he was switching gears from subjects ranging from youth empowerment to minefields and conflict to the climate impacts of travel to the ongoing HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa at the drop of the hat.

Harry’s role is different: Where William and Charles have walked the line of representing British government interests while establishing themselves as global leaders in fighting climate change, Harry’s role outside of the palace means he’s coming as a representative of himself—and his ideas. His comments this week reveal a direct point of view now, formed both by his years in the royal family, the research he’s done, and the experiences he’s had outside of it.

Project-driven: Harry and Meghan have always been more project-driven than his Windsor family relatives, a quality which was previously met with skepticism and some disdain from the palace staff. “You can say what you want about Meghan, but she works incredibly hard,” an insider told Vanity Fair’s Katie Nicholl in 2020, months after their royal exit. “The problem is she and Harry have a tendency to hatch big projects over dinner and expect them to be actioned within days.” It’s now been four years since they started their Archewell Foundation, and in his whirlwind trip, Harry’s charity appearances made the implicit argument that he has a lot to show for his years outside of the palace.

[From Vanity Fair]

That last part – “Harry’s charity appearances made the implicit argument that he has a lot to show for his years outside of the palace” – is exactly why there was so much energy towards “Meghan is a bully” last week. The aim was distraction, the aim was to minimize Harry’s work. Speaking of, the NY Post ran this: “Prince Harry debuted his reinvention in NYC, but it was ‘hijacked’ by ‘Duchess Difficult’ Meghan.” To hear the Post tell it, you’d think that United Nations diplomats are simply glued to Us Weekly for breaking royal news. This piece also told me that Harry’s brother is incandescent with jealousy over Harry’s busy trip.

The Post claims Meghan hijacked Harry’s newscycle: We were with the renegade royal as he toured the Big Apple; talking about his hopes for the future and making fun of his troubled past. He also revealed how important it is for him to follow in his mother, Princess Diana’s footsteps, which always pulls at the heartstrings. All in all, he proved yet again that he can be immensely likable and charming, when he wants to be. But even though she was back at the couple’s California mansion, Harry’s wife made her presence known. The Sussex camp enrolled a cast list of staffers past and present to hit back after claims were again made that Megan, the Duchess of Sussex is, in fact, “Duchess Difficult”. One political insider in NY for the UN General Assembly (UNGA) told us, “This totally hijacked any coverage Harry got…it was quite an own goal.”

Harry the wannabe statesman? Sources told Page Six that, despite everything, this is the direction Harry wants to take; he wants to be seen as a statesman and philanthropist. However, the political insider told Page Six he has some way to go before he can claim the kind of impact made by Hollywood stars such as Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner, with her kids charity ‘Once Upon a Farm’. Sophia Bush also spoke at the Clinton event. She’s a well known humanitarian and launched her charity, ‘Pencils of Promise’, a 2008-founded nonprofit that has built more than 550 schools, largely in Ghana, Guatemala and Laos. The insider said, “Harry has got a long way to go to be remotely on the same level as Matt Damon. He’s not yet viewed as a statesman – or as a celebrity who has really made a huge philanthropic impact. He’s not like Jennifer Garner [or] Sophia Bush – those are real social impact activists.”

Stay out of the tabloids, Harry! “You’ll have to watch this space to see how far Harry can go,” said another political source who has worked with President Barack Obama, “If he can get his personal issues out of the tabloids, he might well achieve some big things.”

[From Page Six]

I’m sorry, but why is “He’s not like Jennifer Garner [or] Sophia Bush – those are real social impact activists” so funny to me? I mean zero disrespect to Sophia or J-Garn, they’re doing their own work and it’s all completely admirable. But to use their names to disparage Harry, the founder of the Invictus Games? You’re telling me Sophia Bush is a more globally recognized activist and advocate than Prince Harry? The sources/insiders claiming this are not serious people. Anyway, in case you missed it, the people who have spent years smearing Meghan and now really mad that she’s fought back at long last.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.

Taylor Swift has now skipped two Chiefs games in a row! Two weekends ago, she skipped the Kansas City Chiefs’ game against the Atlanta Falcons, which was IN Atlanta. So that was seemingly Taylor’s excuse – she didn’t want to fly down to Atlanta to support her boyfriend, she had other things to do (like hanging out with Gigi Hadid). Then yesterday, Taylor skipped the Chiefs-Chargers game at SoFi Stadium in LA. Taylor has a home in LA, but I think she was likely in New York this weekend? In any case, she didn’t go to her boyfriend’s game and now people are gossiping about it.

She was not back in the bleachers. Taylor Swift was notably absent as the Kansas City Chiefs took on the Los Angeles Chargers at SoFi Stadium on Sunday. The “You Belong With Me” singer, 34, also skipped the team’s match-up against the Atlanta Falcons last weekend.

The pop star’s second straight no-show comes amid ongoing criticism of her boyfriend Travis Kelce’s performance on the field this season. However, Chiefs wide receivers Rashee Rice, JuJu Smith-Schuster and Mecole Hardman showed their solidarity before Sunday’s game by wearing custom T-shirts with different images of Kelce, 34, playing football.

Although Swift attended Kelce’s first two games, she was not in the crowd for his win against Atlanta — in which he tallied four receptions for 30 yards. The tight end’s stats have been a major talking point over the last couple of weeks, with some analysts blaming his busy private life on his lackluster performance.

[From Page Six]

So why has Taylor been making a point of skipping Travis’s games in recent weeks? No one knows! So I’ve developed some theories, pick one:

A. She doesn’t want to travel to away-games
B. Travis’s Bozo Season gives her the ick
C. Harrison Butker gives her the ick
D. She’s working on yet another album
E. They already broke up and haven’t announced it yet
F. She’s pregnant!
G. With twins!
H. She doesn’t want to hang out with MAGA people like Brittany Mahomes
I. She’s beefing with Donna Kelce
J. She’s preparing for the final concerts of the Eras Tour
K. She’s preparing to make some campaign stops for Kamala Harris & Tim Walz
L. She doesn’t want to be blamed if & when the Chiefs lose a game

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Here are photos of Angelina Jolie at the New York Film Festival premiere of Maria, the Pablo Larrain film where she plays Maria Callas. Angelina arrived with her three oldest kids (all of them adults): Maddox, Zahara and Pax. It’s great to see Pax out and about – he recently crashed his motorbike in LA traffic and was hospitalized for several days with “complex trauma.” It looks like there are faint scars on his face, and his wrist is still in a brace. Zahara must have flown up to New York from Spelman College in Atlanta. I don’t know if Maddox has finished college yet. I love that they all came out to support their mom. As a survivor of the Brangeloonie Wars, I remember so many anti-Jolie people predicting that her kids would grow up to hate her. Looks like the kids have grown up to be well-adjusted and thoughtful, and they adore their mom.

I don’t see an ID on Angelina Jolie’s dress – it looks vintage-y to me, but it might be something custom-made from Atelier Jolie, you never know. People are saying that Zahara is wearing one of Angelina’s old dresses, which is possible. Zahara and Shiloh have both done the same thing for other red carpets. I think those are Angelina’s two fashionista daughters, while Vivienne is all about normcore and little-old-lady dressing. Maddox and Pax were both suited up and both of them looked really nice. After the premiere, I think Angelina hosted a party at Atelier Jolie. She did the same after the Tonys too.

Last week, Angelina reportedly “dropped” her FOIA request into the FBI records of the 2016 plane incident. As many of you pointed out in yesterday’s comments, it’s more than likely that Angelina “dropped” the request because she got what she needed from the FBI, and/or she got enough documentation to use in her divorce case AND her countersuit against Brad over Miraval.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.

I’m bored to tears with the “Meghan is a bully” character assassination. It’s been eight years since then-Meghan Markle met a charismatic prince, and an entire national press has smeared her, abused her, tormented her and gaslighted her ever since. Enough. Give it a f–king rest. They’re still desperately trying to claim her and abuse her from afar. The “bully” story was given a second life on September 12th when the Hollywood Reporter mimicked all of the old British smears but claimed that they were being told the same thing by Archewell staffers. Meghan’s rebuttal was to organize a cover story in Us Weekly, wherein her staffers went on the record about what she’s really like as a boss – a lovely person who gives gifts, is understanding about giving people time off, and a boss who gives clear direction. Then the Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes decided to – bizarrely – get in contact with Harry and Meghan’s former staffers in the UK, meaning people who used to or still work for Prince William and Kate. So we’re back to years-old smears from salty, lazy people who were reduced to tears at being assigned tasks by a Black woman. Of course they had unhinged things to say about Meghan being a “psycho.” I bring up that Sykes piece because the Sunday Times decided to give Sykes more space in their paper. Some highlights from yet another idiotic hit piece:

Why Sykes decided to regurgitate the old smears: The outpouring of love that had emerged in Us Weekly was served up by Meghan’s comms team, to push back against The Hollywood Reporter article. After reading this rather odd piece, I decided to call up a number of individuals who worked for Meghan back in Blighty, when she was still a royal. It’s fair to say that their recollections varied. “There definitely were bad, very bad, even psycho moments. I witnessed people being chewed up in person and over the phone and made to feel like s***,” one courtier who worked for Meghan and Harry told me, adding: “It was an incredibly fraught time and I’m inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt. She has said herself she was suicidal at times.”

Meghan screamed at a florist over the phone? Another person who worked with Meghan in the run-up to her wedding told me: “I always thought she was a classic narcissist and getting her staff to tell a magazine how amazing she is only confirms that in my mind. She is lovely when it is all going her way but a demon when the worm turns.” And a third source told me the story of a florist who was “screamed at down the phone” for half an hour after posting insignificant detail online about a bouquet they were working on for Meghan (without identifying that Meghan was the client). “They vowed never to work with her again, despite the prestige of having her as a client. If you were working for her, you were often treated like a tradesman who could be treated like s***.”

The Us Weekly story was one-sided, unlike all of the British reporting!! But the ridiculously one-sided article in Us Weekly gave the media the perfect opportunity to revive these dormant controversies. Yet again, the melodrama had overtaken the good works.

Harry’s trip to the UK: Much more important [than the WellChild Awards] to Brand Harry, however, will be whether his father agrees to see him during his sojourn in his homeland. Neither side would definitively tell me whether a meeting is planned on this trip, but all the indications so far are that it is not. The King is in Scotland, gathering his strength for a forthcoming trip to Australia. The Queen, her friends have told me, is keen that Charles doesn’t get unnecessarily stressed out and is not encouraging a meeting. For Harry, there can be no meaningful rehabilitation as a royal without reconciliation. His father’s recent health scare has added a sense of urgency to that quest.

That pathetic Hallmark video: Relations between William and Harry are very poor. Yet because of the king’s health issues, some executive power and influence is already flowing William’s way. If you doubt that, just look at the glossy Instagram video William and Kate published last month to announce her recovery from cancer. Despite relentless messaging from the palace that Charles and Kate’s bond has deepened and strengthened in the course of their separate cancer battles, Charles didn’t even make the final cut. Kate’s parents, Mike and Carole Middleton, did.

Meghan DGAF about the UK: Subtle shifts in power between William and Charles won’t really affect Meghan, who seems to have little interest in spending time with the Windsors and is quite happy to be the commercial arm of Sussex Inc, selling jam and making TV shows.

Harry wants to leave the celebrity stuff behind? But speaking to sources close to Harry, it’s quite clear that he wants to leave behind the celebrity nonsense typified by last week’s debacle with Us magazine, recover his reputation as an honest dealer and become known as a serious philanthropic player. Sources have also been clear to me that Harry does not want his old royal life back: he adores the California sunshine and treasures his wife and family. But he undoubtedly would like to reoccupy the space he briefly held on stage at the Clinton Initiative, and will hold again at WellChild.

Harry must reconcile with the crown? However, it’s going to be incredibly difficult, nigh on impossible, to transform back into a credible quasi-royal unless he reconciles with the crown. If Charles were to welcome Harry back into the fold, the nation would probably follow his lead; the reservoir of affection for Diana’s boy is deep. But unless Harry can switch the narrative away from the kind of tit-for-tat melodrama we’ve seen this month, he may never be able to find his way back.

[From The Times]

Let’s take this in pieces. First, the Meghan stuff – they’re mad that the Us Weekly story was “one-sided” or they’re mad that their “unnamed sources” with an ax to grind and zero specific stories can’t compete with named staffers saying that Meghan is a good boss? If “one-sided” is a reason to toss out certain reports, surely we can toss out the overwhelming majority of British royalist reporting? The story about Meghan bitching out a florist… lol. First of all, at least it’s something specific! It took years, but we finally got one story! Now. I don’t believe that she screamed, but I bet Meghan did call the florist and ask the woman to not publicize anything to do with her, and the florist was probably in a snit about it. Sidenote: remember how the Middletons didn’t pay for Kate’s wedding cake and we didn’t find out until years later? Well, at least it wasn’t a curt phone call!

As for the stuff about Harry… he literally has that polo show coming out. He was literally just in New York with a whole lot of business to conduct. He doesn’t “need” to have a connection to those dreadful people. THEY need HIM. They need him to need them. Harry keeps showing everyone how meaningless and awful they are and they keep running after him, screaming “you need us!!”

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Instar. Cover courtesy of Us Weekly.

All of these celebrity deaths in recent days are so depressing. Dame Maggie Smith passed last week, then Drake Hogestyn, a beloved Days of Our Lives star died on Saturday. Then we learned on Sunday that Kris Kristofferson passed as well. Kristofferson was truly the jack of all trades, a true Renaissance man who loved women and art and life. He wrote beautiful music, was friends with artists around the world, he was a lovely actor and supportive friend to all. He was also a veteran. I remember watching Ken Burns’ Country Music docuseries and realizing how many country music people believed that Kris and Emmylou Harris were basically the soul of country.

Kris Kristofferson, a Rhodes scholar with a deft writing style and rough charisma who became a country music superstar and an A-list Hollywood actor, has died. Kristofferson died at his home on Maui, Hawaii, on Saturday, family spokeswoman Ebie McFarland said in an email. He was 88. McFarland said Kristofferson died peacefully, surrounded by his family. No cause was given.

Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

He starred opposite Ellen Burstyn in director Martin Scorsese’s 1974 film “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” starred opposite Barbra Streisand in the 1976 “A Star Is Born,” and acted alongside Wesley Snipes in Marvel’s “Blade” in 1998.

Kristofferson, who could recite William Blake from memory, wove intricate folk music lyrics about loneliness and tender romance into popular country music. With his long hair and bell-bottomed slacks and counterculture songs influenced by Bob Dylan, he represented a new breed of country songwriters along with such peers as Willie Nelson, John Prine and Tom T. Hall.

“There’s no better songwriter alive than Kris Kristofferson,” Nelson said at a 2009 BMI award ceremony for Kristofferson. “Everything he writes is a standard and we’re all just going to have to live with that.”

Kristofferson retired from performing and recording in 2021, making only occasional guest appearances on stage, including a performance with Cash’s daughter Rosanne at Nelson’s 90th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles in 2023. The two sang “Loving Her Was Easier (Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again),” a song that was a hit for Kristofferson and a longtime live staple for Nelson, another great interpreter of his work.

[From The Associated Press]

Barbra Streisand has already paid tribute to her dear friend (they adored each other) and I imagine Nashville is in mourning. What a life he lived, what a legend. I’m including the Sinead O’Connor story too.

Here’s Kris Kristofferson talking about a Bob Dylan tribute concert at MSG in 1992 where Sinéad O’Connor was getting booed after ripping up a photo of the Pope on SNL and he was asked to get her off the stage.

He refused.

“Don’t let the bastards get you down.”

RIP to an icon pic.twitter.com/57hkHte6EM

— Mike Beauvais (@MikeBeauvais) September 29, 2024

Photos courtesy of UPPA . / Avalon, Joy Scheller / Avalon, Tina Paul / Wenn / Avalon and Avalon Red.

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In January 2018, Lumi and Pyry uprooted their lives by moving from their native China to embark on a new life in Finland. At first it seemed like things were going to work out for the pair: they’d secured a $9 million home for 15 years, along with an annual income of about $1.675 million. And all they had to do was lie around all day and be doted on! Did I mention Lumi and Pyry are giant pandas? They are indeed Ailuropoda melanoleuca, and they were loaned by the Chinese government to Ahtaria, a private Finnish zoo. This kind of exchange — bears for good foreign relations — is part of China’s infamous “panda diplomacy.” But sadly, in this case, the cost of caretaking for the giant pandas proved to be too large for Ahtaria Zoo. Lumi and Pyry will begin a month of quarantine before they begin the long voyage home.

Finland will return two giant pandas to China in November, more than eight years ahead of time, as the zoo where they live can no longer afford their upkeep, the chair of the zoo’s board told Reuters on Tuesday.

The pandas, named Lumi and Pyry, were brought to Finland in January 2018, months after Chinese leader Xi Jinping visited the Nordic country and signed a joint agreement on protecting the animals.

Since its founding in 1949, the People’s Republic of China has sent pandas to foreign zoos to strengthen trading ties, cement foreign relations and boost its international image.

The Finnish agreement was for a stay of 15 years, but instead the pandas will soon go into a month-long quarantine before they are shipped back to China, according to Ahtaria Zoo, the pandas’ current home.

The zoo, a private company, had invested over 8 million euros (about $9 million) in the facility where the animals live and faced annual costs of 1.5 million euros for their upkeep, including a preservation fee paid to China, Ahtaria Chair Risto Sivonen said.

The zoo had hoped the pandas would attract visitors to the central Finland
location but last year said it had instead accumulated mounting debts as the pandemic curbed travel, and that it was discussing a return.

Rising inflation had added to the costs, the zoo said, and Finland’s government in 2023 rejected pleas for state funding.

In all, negotiations to return the animals had lasted three years, Sivonen said.

“Now we reached a point where the Chinese said it could be done,” Sivonen said.

The return of the pandas was a business decision made by the zoo which did not involve Finland’s government and should not impact relations between the two countries, a spokesperson for Finland’s foreign ministry said.

Despite efforts by China to aid the zoo, the two countries in the end jointly concluded after friendly consultations to return the pandas, the Chinese embassy in Helsinki said in a statement to Reuters.

[From CNN]

Inflation affects everything — even pandas! I just want to make something very clear to Lumi and Pyry: it’s not your fault. No, listen to me! It’s. Not. Your. Fault! You have each served your country and your species to the greatest of your ability in your impactful, if brief, tenure as national ambassadors. And you absolutely shouldn’t in any way feel you bear responsibility for whatever geopolitical relations fall to pieces or trade war calamities ensue following the early and abrupt end of your mission. Both countries knew the risks involved when negotiating this transaction; if they can’t handle the fallout, then that’s on them. So to whoever will be receiving Lumi and Pyry upon their return, can we please get some regular, photographic updates on the floofs? To make sure they’re reacclimating and happy not hanging on to any shame?

And a quick update from our last coverage on panda diplomacy: Yun Chuan and Xin Bao made it safely to from China to San Diego, California and are living their best lives at the Zoo’s Panda Ridge. Of course in light of this Finnish news, the real test will be to check on them in about seven years from now…

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Boris Johnson’s memoir will be out on October 10th, and his publisher is trying to hype the book by releasing choice excerpts and previews. One of the big excerpts – the one which has gotten the most attention in the UK – is Boris Johnson writing that in January 2020, he was tasked with prevailing upon Prince Harry to stay in the UK. The timeline: BoJo became prime minister in the summer of 2019, and Harry and Meghan left the UK for a “Christmas holiday” in Canada in December 2019. By early January, they announced their intention to step away from the royal family, and by January 13th, Harry was meeting with his family and the courtiers alone at Sandringham and working out the terms of Sussexit. Then, just days later, Harry and Boris both attended the UK-Africa investment summit. Boris pulled Harry aside and they spoke alone for twenty minutes as Boris tried to convince him to stay in the UK. Boris apparently writes that the meeting was not his idea – that Buckingham Palace and Downing Street asked him to speak to Harry and make the last-ditch appeal. Now Buckingham Palace claims that they didn’t ask BoJo to do anything.

Boris Johnson was not asked by Buckingham Palace to try and persuade Prince Harry to stay in the UK, The Telegraph understands. The former prime minister claims in a new book that he was asked to give the Duke of Sussex a “manly pep talk” to convince him not to step back from his royal duties. He says that officials from Buckingham Palace and Downing Street made the request in the belief that a last-minute intervention, in January 2020, might encourage the Duke to change his mind.

In Unleashed, his memoir which will be published on Oct 10, Mr Johnson describes “a ridiculous business… when they made me try to persuade Harry to stay. Kind of manly pep talk. Totally hopeless”. The pair enjoyed an “informal” 20-minute meeting, which took place behind closed doors on the margins of a UK-Africa investment summit in London’s Docklands, on January 20, 2020.

Sources close to the Duke confirmed that the then prime minister did suggest that both he and Meghan remain in the UK.

However, sources with knowledge of such meetings at the time insisted that the Palace did not ask Mr Johnson to intervene. While it cannot be ruled out that a member of the Downing Street team suggested that it might be worth mentioning to the Duke, there was no specific formal request. By that point, all involved had realised that any attempt to persuade the Sussexes to stay would be futile. The following day, Prince Harry flew to Canada to be reunited with Meghan and their son, Archie.

The previous evening, the Duke had delivered a speech at an event for Sentebale, his charity based in Lesotho, in which he said he had “no other option” but to step back from royal life and spoke of his sadness that it had “come to this”. A week earlier, on Jan 13, the Duke had joined his grandmother, Elizabeth II, father and elder brother for the so-called Sandringham Summit, to thrash out the terms of his exit.

[From The Telegraph]

The current “Buckingham Palace” saying this is not the same as the “Buckingham Palace” in January 2020. Different courtiers, different CEO. It’s possible that QEII and her courtiers did request it, but then-Prince Charles and Clarence House did not. We know for sure that Kensington Palace didn’t request jacksh-t – they were doing the most to push Harry out and leak everything that was said during the summit. This is a beef between Charles and his dead mother about what to do about Harry – QEII clearly wanted Harry’s exit to be handled with more sensitivity, more delicacy and more warmth. But the whole point of the “hard Sussexit” was, in Charles’s mind, to force the Sussexes to capitulate and come back, broke and broken. The fact that it now looks like the monarchy asked the whole-ass prime minister to beg Harry to stay is not the image the current monarchy wants to project.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

In April 2022, Politico and TMZ reported that Angelina Jolie had filed (as a Jane Doe) for the FBI’s records on their investigation into the 2016 plane incident. The 2016 incident was the game-changer for Angelina. That was where a likely blackout-drunk Brad Pitt terrorized and assaulted Angelina and their children for hours on and off the plane. In 2022, Angelina was technically getting a Freedom of Information Act request, but really, she was trying to piece together what exactly happened with the FBI investigation and why the FBI didn’t file any charges against Pitt. Angelina did manage to get her hands on some of the partially-redacted records, including the FBI’s records of Jolie’s own statements to them about what Brad did to her and the children. Many of those records were then FOIA-requested by media outlets who then published their own coverage, much to Team Pitt’s chagrin. Well, long story short, after two years of trying to figure out why the FBI didn’t charge Pitt with any crime, Jolie is now dropping it.

Angelina Jolie is ending her legal battle against the Department of Justice and FBI over documents connected to the alleged 2016 plane incident involving her then-husband Brad Pitt.

Under the anonymous “Jane Doe,” Jolie, 49, had requested in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 2021 that FBI documents about the incident be released to her. Court documents obtained by PEOPLE indicate the Maria star dropped the case on Wednesday, Sept. 25.

The highly redacted documents Jolie had been pursuing detailed an allegedly drunken altercation on Sept. 14, 2016, between Pitt, 60, and his then-wife — which came days before Jolie filed for divorce, ending a relationship that began in 2005.

Their children were reportedly present for the alleged conflict on a private plane that had caused the Los Angeles Department of Child and Family Services and FBI to investigate Pitt. A source said at the time that Pitt became “verbally abusive” and “physical” with one of their kids, which he denied. Later in 2016, the FBI closed its investigation with no charges against Pitt and DCFS also concluded its investigation, concluding no findings of abuse.

Amid the ongoing legal battle over their French vineyard Château Miraval and wine company, Jolie responded to a 2022 lawsuit from her ex with details of the alleged incident, including that Pitt had “choked one of the children and struck another in the face.” A source close to Pitt told PEOPLE at the time, “It’s incredibly sad that she continues to rehash, revise and reimagine her description of an event that happened 6 years ago, adding in completely untrue information.”

[From People]

I don’t know why she dropped this, other than she was tired of being stonewalled by the FBI and she likely achieved some of her goals anyway. It’s also worth noting that back in 2022, Jolie/Jane Doe’s lawyer told Politico that Jolie had been trying to get the FBI records for years without having to file a FOIA action, and the FBI stonewalled her that entire time too. It feels like Angelina has her suspicions that something went down between the FBI and Pitt and both parties are doing the most to cover it up.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.