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Meet D’Arcy Drollinger, a drag queen who’s now the first drag laureate in the US

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Anti-trans legislation is roiling the nation. Bills prohibiting drag performances are cropping up in statehouses. Violence and vitriol are turning children’s drag story hour events into headline-news protests.San Francisco is fighting back Thursday by naming the nation’s first drag laureate, an ambassador-style position designed to represent the city’s famous LGBTQ+ community at a time when rights are under attack.In a city known for its support of LGBTQ+ rights, San Francisco Mayor London Breed says it was a natural step to create a position that not only embraces drag culture but puts government resources toward it. D’Arcy Drollinger, a well-known drag performer and nightclub owner, will receive a $55,000 stipend in her 18-month role as the city’s inaugural drag laureate.“My goals are to make San Francisco sparkle. I think drag performers bring a lot of sparkle and humor and glamor and silliness to the world. I think that is part of why drag is so ...

New Mexico authorities describe caregivers’ torture of disabled woman who died

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — “Torture” is how New Mexico’s top prosecutor describes the treatment a 38-year-old developmentally disabled woman endured before her death at the hands of her caregivers, who he said were paid thousands of dollars a month through a special program meant to offer an alternative to institutional care.Attorney General Raúl Torrez detailed the woman’s injuries during a news conference Thursday, saying she died after being found in the back of a van as the caregivers tried to take her to Mexico so her wounds could be treated.“The abuse and neglect that she endured was horrific and the injuries she sustained are among the worst I have seen in my career as a prosecutor,” Torrez said. “This was torture. There’s really no other word for it.”Three people were arrested and charged Wednesday with abuse and neglect following an investigation that began with the stop at the U.S.-Mexico border in April. The case spurred a statewide review of New Mexico’s entire...

FDA advisers back RSV vaccine for pregnant women that protects their newborns

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A first-of-its-kind RSV vaccine for pregnant women guards their newborns against the scary respiratory virus -– and federal health advisers on Thursday backed Pfizer’s shot despite some lingering questions.RSV fills hospitals with wheezing babies each fall and winter, and the virus struck earlier than usual and especially hard in the U.S. this past year.If the vaccine pans out, “many infants and their parents will breathe easier in the coming years,” said Dr. Jay Portnoy, a member of the Food and Drug Administration advisory panel from Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.The idea: Give women a single injection late in pregnancy, between 24 weeks and 36 weeks, so they develop RSV-fighting antibodies that pass through the placenta — just like they pass protection against other bugs to their babies.In Pfizer’s international study of nearly 7,400 pregnant women, maternal vaccination proved 82% effective at preventing severe RSV during babies’...

White House vows more federal aid to reduce homelessness in 5 cities and California

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Five major U.S. cities and the state of California will receive federal help to get unsheltered residents into permanent housing under a new plan launched Thursday as part of the Biden administration’s larger goal to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025.The All Inside initiative will partner the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and its 19 federal member agencies with state officials in California and local governments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and the Phoenix metro area. The goal is for the federal government to provide “knowledge, resources and elbow grease” to population centers where nearly half the nation’s unhoused residents live, said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy advisor. The administration will offer “tailored support” for two years to improve efforts toward housing unsheltered people in the participating communities, including embedding a federal official in each area, officials said.In addition, tea...

Lawsuit: FBI failed to protect man slain amid Tennessee political scandal decades ago

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The son of a key federal witness who authorities say was killed decades ago with the help of a former Tennessee governor’s administration during the state’s largest political scandal is suing the FBI, saying it failed to protect his father. Marrell Graham filed the federal lawsuit this week claiming that the United States’ actions led to the deprivation of “the loss of income, services, protection, care, assistance … counsel, and advice of his father.”Details surrounding the movie-like case were first revealed in 2021 after law enforcement officials spent more than 40 years chipping away at the case of Samuel Pettyjohn’s killing. Ultimately, officials unveiled a wild scandal showing that Pettyjohn, an ally of union boss Jimmy Hoffa, was gunned down in 1979 in downtown Chattanooga after testifying about corrupt officials selling prison pardons. The slaying took place during the early phases of Tennessee’s notorious “cash-for-cleme...

Videos show gunman saying ‘kill me’ to rushing officers in New Mexico rampage that killed 3

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Videos released by police Thursday of this week’s deadly rampage in New Mexico recorded a voice said to be the shooter urging police to “kill me” and officers rushing toward the 18-year-old gunman before fatally shooting him outside a church. “He is yelling on the Ring footage, ‘Come kill me,'” Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said of Beau Wilson, the high school senior who authorities say killed three older women during the attack.“He’s making a stand, he has opportunities to run off, he does not use those opportunities,” Hebbe said. “So yes it’s my belief that ultimately in his head, he has made the decision that he is going to stand and fight it out until he is killed.”At least six other people were wounded in Monday’s shootings, which sent waves of grief rippling through Farmington, a community of 50,000 people in the state’s northwest. The wounded included two police officers, who have been released from medical care as they recover. S...

Mexico’s Supreme Court rules tourist train, other projects are not issues of national security

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday the government cannot simply decree that tourist trains or other public work projects are issues of “national security,” because that violates the public’s right to information. The ruling is the latest in a string of setbacks for President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has sought to broaden the discretionary powers of the presidency.López Obrador has tried to rush through his Maya Train tourism project by exempting it from normal permitting and public reporting, claiming it is vital to national security.It is unclear whether Thursday’s ruling only affects the public’s right to get information on spending, costs and other data on such projects, or whether it also repeals the fast-track permitting process. López Obrador is already angry at the court for throwing out some of his planned electoral reforms, and has called for a change to make the Supreme Court an elected body. At present, slates of potential justices are sugges...

Quebec Muslim groups sue government over prayer room ban in schools

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

MONTREAL — Quebec Muslim groups are taking the provincial government to court over its recently enacted prayer room ban in public schools, arguing that the order is discriminatory and violates the Charter rights to freedom of religion and association.Five Muslim organizations filed their case this week in Quebec Superior Court, seeking a judicial review of the ban and to have it declared unconstitutional. The groups are also seeking a judgment on how secularism and the notion of religious neutrality is interpreted by the government.“The plaintiffs request that a declaratory judgment concerning the interpretation to be given to the principles of laicity and religious neutrality of the state be rendered so that these principles cannot be used to order prohibitions of prayers or other religious practices in public places,” the filing reads.Education Minister Bernard Drainville ordered the ban April 19 after reports of at least two Montreal-area schools permitting students t...

B.C. food bank gets $7M for warehouse as it struggles with abundance, not scarcity

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

NANAIMO, B.C. — The head of a Vancouver Island food bank says the problem it’s been grappling with in recent years isn’t scarcity — it’s abundance.Peter Sinclair, executive director of the Loaves and Fishes Food Bank in Nanaimo, B.C., said the group needs more space to deal with the volume of donations it receives, as it works to meet a “dramatic increase” in demand for its services.it is, however, the preferred problem for an organization that distributes food to those in need all over the island, much of it recovered from retailers who would otherwise dispose of it.The British Columbia government announced Thursday that it’s kicking in $7 million toward building a new 25,000-square-foot warehouse for Loaves and Fishes to enable the non-profit to scale up and expand its offerings. Sheila Malcolmson, minister of social development and poverty reduction, told a news conference that food price inflation has put intense pressure on both individuals a...

GOP pauses Blinken contempt push after gaining access to classified Afghanistan cable

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 18:11:50 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says he is pausing an effort to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress now that the State Department offered to let him review a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, agreed Thursday to review the July 2021 communication that reportedly warned the U.S. about the potential fall of Kabul via a special dissent channel. State Department officials have used the classified messaging platform for decades to issue warnings or express contrarian views directly to senior agency officials.McCaul accepted the condition to view the document with the names of those who signed it redacted. The same offer was made to the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, but McCaul urged State to grant access to all other committee members also.The State Department did not immediately return a request for...