A horrific rape case in France

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Aakriti Anand & Raghav Bikhchandani

The Big Q: Can Kamala Win?

Welcome to our new news show titled ‘The Big Q’. In each episode, we take up one big question and look for answers. As with splainer, we’re trying to understand the world a little bit better—and have a good laugh. It’s more light-hearted than our usual Big Story—but without sacrificing substance. Please take a look and let us know what you think. As with all new projects, it’s Work In Progress.

The first episode tackles the big question on the planet’s mind: Can Kamala win—and save the United States—nay the planet—from a Trump sequel? More important: how the Dems win. This US presidential election is no longer about policy or even politics—but the fab edit! The campaign has turned the extended Harris-Walz khandaan into a feel-good meme. That’s great for TikTok, but is it good for democracy?

Watch the first episode below—and be sure to follow us on YouTube to catch the next instalment.

Content warning: The following item contains graphic details of sexual abuse that may be difficult to read.

A horrific rape case in France

Fifty two men are on trial for raping a woman in her seventies—over the course of 10 years. The survivor’s husband—Dominique Pelicot—was the key instigator of this horror:

Her husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had been crushing sleeping pills into her food and drink to put her into a deep sleep, the police said, and then raping her. He had ushered dozens of men into her home to film them raping her, too, they said, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.

She had no idea until 2020—when Pelicot—her husband of 50 years—was caught trying to take upskirt photos of some women. The police confiscated his two cellphones, cameras and laptop—and found 300 photographs, a video, and Skype messages revealing the crime.

The most appalling bit: While the husband has pled guilty, many of the other men offered a variety of excuses—which reveal appalling ideas about consent:

According to the investigating judge’s report, many claimed that they were tricked into having sex with a drugged woman — lured by a husband for a three-way encounter and told she was pretending to sleep, because she was shy. Several said they believed that she had consented to being drugged and raped as part of a sex fantasy. Some said they did not believe it was rape, because her husband was there and they believed he could consent for both of them.

These men raped her 92 times. And she will see the images of what was done to her for the first time during the trial. She could have opted for a trial behind closed doors, but says "that's what her attackers would have wanted.”

New York Times (login required) and BBC News have more on the case and its implications. Our Big Story on the wave of MeToo allegations during Cannes has more on France’s rape culture.

Moving on to an anti-rape bill: The West Bengal Assembly passed a new anti-rape law—with three key provisions. One, it ratchets up the punishment. A person can receive the death penalty if the sexual assault also results in the victim’s death—or leaves her in “a vegetative state.” Two, the investigation must be concluded within 21 days of the initial report. Three, it limits reporting of court proceedings in rape cases—primarily to save the government from embarrassing social media clips spawned by live streaming. Needless to say, great political tamasha accompanied proceedings—with the Opposition demanding penalties for the police. The Hindu has all the details.

Speaking of the RG Kar case: Protesting junior doctors met with the commissioner of Kolkata Police—and came carrying gifts: a bouquet of roses, letter demanding his resignation and the replica of a human spine. (The Hindu)

Meanwhile, in Mollywood: The police have registered an FIR—filed by a 40-year-old woman—accusing actor Nivin Pauly of sexual assault. He has been named alongside six others—including a woman. Details of the alleged crime have not been released. Pauly has strongly denied the accusation. (The Telegraph)

Paralympics 2024: India breach 20!!!!

Our Paralympic athletes have put in some more excellent performances, as we have now won 20 medals and rank at 19th in the overall table. The official tournament website has more on the winners and the medal count—which now sits at three gold, seven silver, and ten bronze. As a result, our medal total has surpassed the 19 we won at Tokyo, although that tally had included five gold medals.

Jeevanji secures bronze: The evening began with the women’s 400-metre T20—a track event classification which denotes intellectual impairment. Born with a cognitive disability in a truck worker’s family, 20-year-old Deepthi Jeevanji raced to an impressive third place with a time of 55.82. Indian Express has more on her background. You can see the highlights of her race below.

Two javelin medallists: It wasn’t enough to unseat Cuba’s Guillermo Varona Gonzalez at the top in their javelin category, but India’s Ajeet Singh Yadav and Sundar Singh Gurjar threw a personal best of 65.62 metres and a season best of 64.96 metres respectively, to win silver and bronze. Check out the two of them posing together below.

Two high jump medallists: Similarly, Sharad Kumar and Mariyappan Thangavelu put in strong showings at their high jump event, breaching the 1.88 and 1.85 metre marks respectively to win silver and bronze. But the star of the show was the US’ Ezra Frech, who dominated the competition by breaching 1.94 metres.

You can see the three of them posing below.

Check out Mariyappan’s bronze-winning effort below.

The Kandahar row: Netflix surrenders

The context: The new Netflix series on the 1999 hijacking of an Air India flight—titled ‘IC814: The Kandahar Hijack’—is under fire for director Anubhav Sinha’s artistic choices. Specifically, his decision to retain the aliases used by the real-life Pakistani hijackers: Chief, Doctor, Burger, Bhola, and Shankar. The problem: Two of these aliases are Hindu. The Information & Broadcasting Ministry summoned the India office’s head of content to “demand an explanation.”

What happened now: Netflix has buckled to government pressure—and announced plans to “conduct a content review and guarantee that all future content on their platform will be sensitive to and in accordance with the nation's sentiments.” As for the series, don’t worry, it will not be taken down. Netflix will instead update the disclaimer at the beginning—to include the real and code names of the hijackers.

We also have more on what ticked off the government—apart from the aliases—from unnamed sources:

[W]e also said that while the hijackers and terrorists were shown in a sympathetic light and as firm in their negotiations with the Indian government, officials were shown as dithering without real information, which wasn’t an accurate portrayal. It amounted to whitewashing the role of Pakistan-backed hijackers.

Reminder: The BJP-led Indian government cut a deal to release three terrorists—including Masood Azhar. He went on to found Jaish-e-Mohammed—which was responsible for the bloody Pulwama attack in 2019. Azhar also is linked to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar—and the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. He remains at large—under Pakistani protection—to this day. Shishir Gupta in Hindustan Times offers a scathing take on the intelligence and diplomatic disaster. This 2020 New York Times profile of Azhar is a must-read. You can watch the Netflix announcement below. (The Hindu)

Google AI can ‘hear’ tuberculosis

Google’s AI model can tell if you’re sick from the sound of your coughs and sneezes—and can potentially predict the onset of tuberculosis. Called HeAR—Health Acoustic Representations—it has been trained on 300 million sounds—including 100 million coughs. Data point to note: three to four million TB cases go unreported each year. And if left untreated, TB has a mortality rate of 50%. Quartz has more details.

Also, a breakthrough blood test: A new study shows that a routine blood test can predict a woman’s risk of heart disease—for the next 30 years! Until now, doctors have only looked at bad cholesterol (LDL) in blood reports as a marker for potential risk. This research has identified two other markers: a type of fat in the blood called lipoprotein (a)—or Lp(a)—and c-reactive proteins (CRP)—which is an indicator of inflammation. The key conclusion:

Women with the highest levels of LDL cholesterol had a 36% higher risk for heart disease compared with those with the lowest levels. The highest levels of Lp(a) indicated a 33% elevated risk, and those with the highest levels of CRP were 70% more at risk for heart disease.

Women who had the highest levels of all three were 1.5X more likely to have a stroke and 3X more likely to develop coronary heart disease over the next 30 years. (NBC News)

Paris doesn’t want to lose its rings!

The city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo announced plans to keep the Olympic rings—which were welded onto the Eiffel Tower for the Summer Olympics. But Parisians are divided on the matter—and the family of architect Gustave Eiffel flat out hate the idea. They say the Eiffel Tower was “not intended as an advertising platform.” But Hidalgo doesn’t care about the naysayers: “The decision is up to me, and I have the agreement of the IOC [International Olympic Committee. So yes, they [the rings] will stay on the Eiffel Tower.”

But there’s one more small hitch:

The 30-tonne, 29-metre x 13-metre ring structure is too heavy to be kept permanently on the Eiffel Tower — but Hidalgo said she envisaged replacing it with a lighter steel replica “as soon as possible”.

A bit of relevant trivia: The Eiffel Tower was turned into a giant Citroën advert from 1925 to 1936”:

The letters, each more than 100 feet high, created a gigantic display so bright that it could be seen 60 miles away, and it came to be recorded in The Guinness Book Of Records as the world’s largest ad.

So the rings aren’t quite as unprecedented as claimed. And they are hella lot more subtle. You can see what the Citroën era looked like below:

And this the tower with the Olympic rings:

BBC News has more on the controversy. Campaign has more on the Citroën ad—you can see more photos of those on the carmaker’s museum website.

what caught our eye

business & tech

The Indian workplace is going through it right now—from firms advertising “ghost jobs” to 85% of employees expressing unhappiness in a recent survey.
In an unprecedented move, Volkswagen could be closing some of its manufacturing plants in Germany, as part of cost-cutting measures.
OpenAI is going for another round of funding—which could drive its valuation up beyond $100 billion. Potential investors on the list? Apple and Nvidia.
After Delta Airlines threatened to sue CrowdStrike for $500 million for the infamous software update, the tech company could be facing an onslaught of legal action. ICYMI: This Big Story has all the details of the outage.
A media company called Cox Media Group has been pitching a new advertising tool that lets companies capture voice data from phones and personal devices to send them targeted ads. The kicker? It claims to partner with Google, Amazon, and Meta.

sports & entertainment

Bangladesh recorded a historic 2-0 whitewash away to Pakistan in men’s Test cricket. Mehidy Hasan Miraz won the Player of the Series award, which he dedicated to the student protestors back home. Aww!
‘One Tree Hill’ fans, rejoice! Netflix is finally making that long-rumoured sequel to the hit series, with Sophia Bush and Hilarie Burton set to reprise their roles.
The advance sales for Thalapathy Vijay’s action film ‘The Greatest of All Time’ aka GOAT, have hit Rs 16 crore. This may be his penultimate film before he takes on a career in politics.

as for the rest

The UK has decided to suspend part of its arms sales to Israel because of the “clear risk” that Israel could use the arms to commit serious violations of humanitarian law.
The final investigation report into the death of former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi says that the helicopter crashed due to bad weather. ICYMI: This Big Story has more background.
Results from a new clinical trial show that semaglutide—which is the main ingredient in weight loss drug Wegovy—can reduce the risk of dying from COVID-19 by 34%.
Washington has seized Venezuela president Nicolas Maduro’s plane claiming that it was bought through a shell company, and smuggled out of the US, which violates export law.
Researchers have found that larger sharks are preying on the already endangered porbeagle sharks. The trigger for the discovery? A swallowed tracking tag showing strange temperature readings.
In a mass polio drive, WHO claims it has already vaccinated 161,000 children in central Gaza in a span of three days, exceeding its target of 150,000.
The new trend among college students in the US? Spending lavishly on a well-decorated dorm room.
Activists cite major issues in the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) new Competency-Based Medical Education Curriculum (CBME 2024) guidelines for MBBS students, which axes disabilities training from the foundation course, calls sodomy and lesbianism sexual offences, and cross-dressing a “perversion”.
Climate change is coming for your beloved Kimchi! Studies show that the warmer it gets, the less like the signature Napa cabbage is to survive.

Five things to see

One: In a fresh attack of Trumpian terrorism, the Donald’s daughter-in-law Lara has released a new single titled ‘Hero’—dedicated to firefighters—who did absolutely nothing to deserve this fate. This presumably explains why she’s hanging out in an apartment fire escape in the music vid. To preserve your senses, we are only flagging a short clip below. (The Independent)

Two: Moving on to far more aesthetically pleasing things—here’s Deepika Padukone looking gorgeously pregnant. Of course, these hot mamas-to-be photoshoots have become a routine part of celebrity pregnancies (see: the OG Demi Moore)—while we plebes have to settle for sonograms. But hamaari DP manages to make it look special. You can see the rest of the photos here. (Hindustan Times)

Three: Here’s a sickly sweet collab between Barbie and Krispy Kreme for the doll’s 65th birthday. The four new doughnuts include this one with “Malibu blue icing and sparkly graham sand, topped with a Barbie DreamHouse piece.” Err… yum? (USA Today)

Four: All that glitters is… Rihanna! She is the new face of J’adore by Dior in a golden and glowing ad shot in Versailles. Watch it here. (Harper’s Bazaar)

Five: Last not least: a riveting trailer for the dystopian thriller ‘2073’—directed by Asif Kapadia (best known for his Amy Winehouse documentary flick). Described as “a mixture of visionary science fiction and speculative nonfiction,” it stars Samantha Morton, Naomi Ackie, and others. The film premiered at the ongoing Venice Film Festival last night, but doesn’t have a public release date yet. (Deadline)