Names and faces
Researchers using digital technology deciphered the writing on two pages of Anne Frank’s diary that she had pasted over with brown masking paper, discovering four naughty jokes and a candid explanation of sex, contraception and prostitution. “Anyone who reads the passages that have now been discovered will be unable to suppress a smile,” said Frank van Vree, director of the Netherlands Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. “The ‘dirty’ jokes are classics among growing children. They make it clear that Anne, with all her gifts, was above all also an ordinary girl.” Anne, age 13 at the time, wrote the two pages on Sept. 28, 1942, less than three months after she, her family and another Jewish family went into hiding from the Nazis in a secret annex behind a canal-side house in Amsterdam. Later on, possibly fearing prying eyes or no longer liking what she had written, she covered them over with brown paper with an adhesive backing like a postage stamp, making the content a tantalizing mystery. It turns out the pages contained four jokes about sex that Anne herself described as “dirty,” including “Do you know why the German Wehrmacht girls are in Holland? As mattresses for the soldiers.” The pages also include passages about women’s sexual development, sex, contraception and prostitution.
Stormy Daniels has raised nearly a half-million dollars to fund her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, relying on contributions from a crowdfunding site. Through Tuesday, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, raised more than $492,000 on CrowdJustice.com, a public site dedicated to helping people raise money for legal fees. Avenatti says the site is evidence that the lawsuit isn’t being bankrolled by Trump’s political foes. But, no one knows precisely who is funding the effort since most of the more than 14,400 donations have been made anonymously in amounts ranging from $10 to $5,000. Kathleen Clark, a professor of ethics law at Washington University, said anonymous donations can be “fodder for public debate on who is actually backing this lawsuit.” But added, “Of course when the third party is actually 14,000 different people, it seems actually less of a danger than it would be in an ordinary case where a single third party would be paying.” Daniels has said she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied, and she is suing to invalidate a confidentiality agreement she signed days before the 2016 presidential election. She is also suing Trump and his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, alleging defamation. Avenatti said the “fascination” with who is paying Daniels’ legal bills has become absurd. “Who is paying Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Cohen’s legal bills? Do we know?”