LONDON — Because WhatsApp is popular among lawmakers and government employees, detractors claim the British government runs “government by WhatsApp.”

Therefore, it only makes sense that the main focus of Britain’s official investigation into how the nation handled the COVID-19 outbreak is a dispute over WhatsApp communications.

The investigation run by retired judge Heather Hallett included a lot of communications between then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson and cabinet members, advisors, and officials during the pandemic. Since some of the messages are private and unrelated to the investigation, the Conservative administration, currently under the leadership of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, wants the ability to modify them before turning them over. It has challenged Hallett’s directive to turn over the unredacted messages in court.

What is the investigation looking into?
One of the greatest death rates in Europe, more than 200,000 people have died in Britain after testing positive for COVID-19, and Johnson’s government’s choices have been hotly contested. Johnson gave in to pressure from bereaved families in late 2021 and decided to launch an investigation.

The scope of Hallett’s investigation will focus on the United Kingdom’s pandemic preparedness, the government’s response, and whether or not the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.”

The former prime minister and many other top government officials are expected to testify during public hearings starting on June 13 and going through 2026.

WHY IS WHATSAPP Johnson OFF?

The texting service, owned by Meta, has grown to be a favorite among British government officials and the journalists who cover them. Users may feel secure knowing their conversations will remain private because of its end-to-end encryption and ease of use for solo and group chats.

This confidence has occasionally shown to be misplaced. Tens of thousands of his texts were given to a writer who was assisting Matt Hancock, a former health secretary who helped lead Britain’s response to the epidemic, in writing a memoir. The journalist gave them to a newspaper, which ran a series of front-page pieces with unpleasant details.

Johnson’s correspondence with more than thirty scientists and government representatives over two years beginning in early 2020 has been requested by Hallett. She also requests access to Johnson’s contemporaneous journals and notebooks.

WHAT IS THE POSITION OF THE GOVERNMENT?

According to the Sunak administration, some texts that took over after Johnson resigned amid scandals in the middle of 2022 are “unambiguously irrelevant” to the COVID-19 investigation. According to the statement, making them public would violate the public’s “legitimate expectations of privacy and protection of their personal information” and other areas of government activity.

The government’s Cabinet Office challenged Hallett’s request for the documents in court papers filed on Thursday. In the upcoming weeks, a hearing in the High Court will be the next step.

Hallett has the authority to call witnesses and subpoena them to testify per the investigation’s rules established at the outset with the government’s consent.

The former head of the government legal service Jonathan Jones stated, “The government has an uphill task,” in a blog post for the Institute for Government. The court will likely rule that the inquiry chair should choose how to proceed and what materials she needs to review.

WHAT SUGGESTS BORIS JOHNSON?

Johnson and his successor Sunak have a history of conflict; Sunak’s resignation from the administration in July 2022 assisted in Johnson’s overthrow.

Johnson has stated that he is happy to turn over his texts, separating himself from the government’s position. He claimed to have sent Hallett’s inquiry the WhatsApp exchanges on Friday.

However, they only cover a portion of the requested time period in another twist. There are no communications from Johnson that date back before April 2021. That period covers the early stages of the pandemic, during which the government made crucial decisions that are still debated today, three periods of the national lockdown, and the dates of the unlawful parties that took place in government buildings and resulted in a large number of people, including Johnson, receiving fines from the police.

Johnson claims that the messages are on a phone that he has been told not to use after the media discovered that his number had been listed online for 15 years.

According to Johnson, the security services ordered him to stop using the phone and never switch it on again. On Friday, he informed Hallett that he had “requested the Cabinet Office for assistance turning it on securely so I could search it for all pertinent documents. I suggest sending you all of this information directly.

SOURCE – (AP)

NEW YORK — Grammy-winning songwriter Cynthia Weil, who co-wrote dozens of popular songs with her husband, Barry Mann, including “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain,” and many others, has passed away at age 82.

Weil passed away on Thursday at her home in Beverly Hills, California, “surrounded by her family,” according to Weil’s daughter Dr. Jenn Mann. The couple’s sole child, Mann, chose not to give a cause of death.

Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil married in 1961 and were among the most popular music-successful duos. They were part of a unique group assembled by music moguls Don Kirshner and Al Nevins and based in Manhattan’s Brill Building district, close to Times Square. The Brill Building song factory produced many of the biggest singles of the 1960s and beyond with hit-making pairings like Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Jeff Barry, and Ellie Greenwich.

Jenn Mann remarked, “I grew up around a lot of music and two wonderful, smart, creative geniuses. “My parents were each other’s greatest musical influences. When things were wonderful, people had each other, and when things weren’t so good, people had their music, according to my mother.

On songs for the Ronettes (“Walking in the Rain”), the Crystals (“He’s Sure the Boy I Love”), and other acts, Weil and Mann worked closely with producer Phil Spector. They also wrote hits for everyone from Dolly Parton to Hanson. James Horner and his team’s song “Somewhere Out There,” created for the “An American Tail” soundtrack, won Grammy Awards in 1987 for best song and best song for a Movie or Television and received nominations for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe. They collaborated on writing the Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville duet “Don’t Know Much,” which peaked at number five and won the Grammy for best pop performance in 1990.

“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” an anthem of “blue-eyed soul” composed by Spector as if scoring a tragedy and performed by the Righteous Brothers with frantic passion, is their most well-known song and a piece of history in general. In 1965, “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was the number-one song on the charts and was covered by several other musicians. No other song was played more frequently on radio and Television in the 20th century, according to Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI).

Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield’s reactions to Weil and Mann’s debut performance of “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” for the Righteous Brothers were “dead silence.”

She said to Parade Magazine 2015 that Bill had responded, “Sounds good for The Everly Brothers, not the Righteous Brothers.” “We said, ‘Oh, God.’ What should I do while the large guy is singing? Bobby then asked. Spector’s Phil said, “You can go to the bank.”

When the Beatles became popular in the middle of the 1960s, many of Weil’s contemporaries struggled, but she persisted in scoring hits, occasionally with Mann or with collaborators like Michael Masser, David Foster, and John Williams, with whom she co-wrote “For Always” for the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence.” Weil contributed to the songs “Here You Come Again,” Parton’s pop breakthrough, “If Ever You’re In My Arms Again” by Peabo Bryson, “Just Once” by James Ingram, “He’s So Shy” by the Pointer Sisters, and “Running With the Night” by Lionel Richie. She again made the top 10 in 1997 with Hanson’s “I Will Come to You.”

“When songs are successful, they’re like little stories. They have an introduction, a middle, and a conclusion. Weil, who eventually published the novel “I’m Glad I Did,” told Parade that the song “paints a picture of the human condition” and makes you feel how the person singing it is feeling.

Her abilities extended far beyond love songs. She and Mann co-wrote “Kicks,” a success for Paul Revere and the Raiders in 1966, one of rock’s earliest anti-drug songs. She also had a talent for writing lyrics full of desire and aspiration, as evidenced by the song “On Broadway” and its iconic opening line, “They say the neon lights are bright/on Broadway.” With their account of working-class angst, “We’ve Got to Get Out of This Place,” The Animals enjoyed success. The 1961 hit song “Uptown” by The Crystals dealt with race and class in a way that wasn’t frequently heard in the early days of rock.

____

He is simply one of a million males downtown.

He receives no breaks.

And he takes everything they have to offer.

Because he needs to live.

He then moves uptown, nevertheless.

Where he can proudly raise his head

He is aware that I am nearby in Uptown.

_____

Weil and Mann were introduced by King at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2010.

Weil and Mann were introduced by King at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony in 2010, and they were inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1987. Mann and Weil played minor roles in the popular King musical “Beautiful,” which debuted on Broadway in 2013 and chronicled the passionate camaraderie and competition between the two married couples. “They Wrote That?” by Mann and Weil was performed for a limited time in 2004.

“Cynthia’s high level of professionalism improved all of us as songwriters. The line “Just a little lovin’ early in the mornin’ beats a cup of coffee for startin’ out the day” is one of my favorite Cynthia lyrics; King posted on her social media pages on Friday, quoting the Mann-Weil song “Just a Little Lovin’,” which has been performed by Dusty Springfield and others.

If we’re lucky, we’ll know this to be true, but she composed it — and in the following line, she made the words “morning” and “yawning” rhyme. I hope Cynthia Weil’s lyrics will live on and communicate to future generations.

Weil, a native of New York City and the daughter of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe was trained in dance and piano as a young girl. At Sarah Lawrence College, she concentrated on theatre, but an agent persuaded her to attempt music. At age 20, she began working for the publishing house of “Guys and Dolls” composer Frank Loesser, where she met the man who would become her husband.

Barry walked in to play Teddy Randazzo a song as she was writing it, she said to the Los Angeles Times in 2016. Teddy Randazzo was a young Italian boy singer who was the Frankie Avalon of his time. “I questioned the front desk clerk, ‘Who is this guy? Has he ever been with a girl? ‘He’s signed to a friend of mine, Don Kirshner, and if I call Donny, maybe you can go up there to show him your songs and meet Barry again,’ she suggested. So she took that action. That’s what I did as well. He had no chance at all.

SOURCE – (AP)

Brad Pitt and ex-Angelina Jolie are still embroiled in a contentious argument over a winery amid their custody case.

The Maleficent actress allegedly carried out a “vindictive and unlawful sale” of her part of their French estate and vineyard, Château Miraval, according to fresh records filed in Los Angeles on June 1 and obtained by E! News. The actor from Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood makes this claim.

Pitt, referring to his ex’s company, said in his amended complaint that “Jolie went forward with the vindictive putative sale in breach of her and Nouvel’s contractual obligations,” preferring to sell her stake in Miraval to a designated Russian oligarch and prevent Pitt from continuing to pursue his successful vision and strategy in developing the property and business that was intended to be their children’s legacy.

The purchase of 50% of Chateau Miraval and the Miraval trademark from Angelina Jolie was revealed in a press release by Tenute del Mondo, a division of the alcohol manufacturer Stoli Group, in October 2021. The statement continued, “We are thrilled to have a position alongside Brad Pitt as curators of their extraordinary vintages.”

Brad Pitt and ex-Angelina Jolie are still embroiled in a contentious argument over a winery amid their custody case.

And in his most recent filing, the actor claims that he learned about “Jolie’s putative sale” to Stoli from the press release and that she “collaborated in secret” with the company’s founder, Russian-born billionaire Yuri Shefler, and his associates to “pursue and then consummate the purported sale, ensuring that Pitt would be kept in the dark.” Pitt also mentioned that he rejected Shefler’s offer to purchase Miraval.

According to CNN, the billionaire was exiled from Russia in 2000 due to his opposition to President Vladimir Putin. The Oscar winner also claimed in his paperwork that the U.S. Treasury Department had branded Shefler as an “oligarch in the Russian Federation.”

In addition, the actor claims that Jolie changed her mind about giving him her interest after a temporary custody decision went in his favor. About four months before the announcement, in late May 2021, Pitt was given joint custody of the former couple’s children by a retired judge who had been retained to resolve the dispute.

The actress for Eternals, who has seven children with her ex—Maddox, now 21; Pax, 19, Zahara, 18, Shiloh, 17, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 14—later filed a lawsuit, and a California appeals court agreed with her that the judge who issued the decision should be removed from the case because he failed to adequately disclose his professional relationships with Pitt’s attorneys. The custody dispute is still pending.

Despite her contractual duties and years of pledges to Pitt, the actor claims in his amended complaint that “in the wake of the adverse custody ruling, she no longer wanted to sell to Pitt.”

Jolie had stated in court records from 2022 that she was not required to sell her stake to her ex, but she has yet to react to Pitt’s most recent filing. Her lawyer was contacted by E! News for comment, but no response was received.

The conflict between the ex-couple and the winery began in 2022. Pitt filed a lawsuit against Jolie in February of that year for allegedly selling her shares in Chateau Miraval without his permission. In 2008, the two invested together to purchase the winery. In front of their six children, they married in 2014 on the vineyard’s property.

Brad Pitt and ex-Angelina Jolie are still embroiled in a contentious argument over a winery amid their custody case.

After that, in September 2022, Jolie’s business filed a $250 million countersuit against Pitt, claiming that he had organized an effort to “seize control” of Chateau Miraval “in retaliation for the divorce and custody proceedings.” Although a judge pronounced the couple legally separated in 2019, the divorce between the Girl, Interrupted actress and the actor has not yet been finalized. The actress filed paperwork to break her marriage to the actor in 2016.

According to Jolie’s petition, the Babylon star allegedly “ignored” a “final offer to sell her interest in the winery,” thus, Jolie sold Nouvel to a global beverage corporation in 2021.

Jolie offered to sell Pitt her investment despite not being required to do so and engaged in months-long negotiations with him, according to her declaration. “Pitt’s hubris got the better of him, and as a deal was about to be struck, he made an eleventh-hour demand for onerous and irrelevant conditions, including a clause designed to prevent Jolie from publicly speaking about the circumstances that had caused their marriage to end.”

Pitt responded to Jolie’s countersuit on June 1 by stating that he vigorously refutes all of the charges and requests that the court dismiss Jolie’s cross-complaint with prejudice.

Pitt is suing Jolie for punitive and exemplary damages and a statement that her alleged sale of Nouvel was invalid. Pitt is also demanding a jury trial.

SOURCE – (AP)