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Vermont governor signs 1st-in-nation shield bills that explicitly include medicated abortion

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Vermont’s Republican governor signed abortion and gender affirming shield bills into law Wednesday that are the first in the country to explicitly include protecting access to a medication widely used in abortions even if the U.S. Food and Drug Administration withdraws its approval of the pill, mifepristone.The bills protect providers from discipline for providing legally protected reproductive and gender affirming health care services.“Today, we reaffirm once again that Vermont stands on the side of privacy, personal autonomy and reproductive liberty, and that providers are free to practice without fear,” Republican Gov. Phil Scott said in a statement.In the identical bills passed by the House and Senate, “reproductive health care services” includes “medication that was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for termination of a pregnancy as of January 1, 2023, regardless of the medication’s current FDA approval status.” Planned Parenthood believes other statesR...

Israeli-Palestinian fighting continues, despite Egyptian cease-fire announcement

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israel on Wednesday, while Israel pressed ahead with a series of airstrikes that have killed 21 Palestinians, including three senior militants and at least 10 civilians.As the fighting continued, a state-run Egyptian TV station announced that Egypt had brokered a cease-fire. But shortly after the announcement, more rockets were fired toward Israel, including a new salvo at the seaside metropolis of Tel Aviv, while Israel struck more targets in Gaza. The continued fighting raised questions about if or when a truce would take effect.In a prime-time TV address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that Israel had dealt a harsh blow to the militants. But he cautioned: “This round is not over.”“We say to the terrorists and those who send them. We see you everywhere. You can’t hide, and we choose the place and time to strike you,” he said, adding that Israel would...

Ex-Raider Henry Ruggs pleads guilty to driving drunk, causing fatal 156-mph crash

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Ex-Las Vegas Raiders player Henry Ruggs pleaded guilty Wednesday to driving his sports car drunk at speeds up to 156 mph on a city street before causing a fiery crash that killed a woman and her dog.“Guilty,” said the former first-round NFL draft pick, 24, who will avoid trial and is expected to be sentenced Aug. 9 to three to 10 years in state prison under terms of his plea deal with prosecutors. The minimum three-year sentence cannot be reduced by converting the year-and-a-half that he has spent on house arrest to time already served.Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson cited possible legal obstacles to obtaining a conviction at trial, said he met several times with relatives of the woman who died, and said the plea agreement with Ruggs “accomplished our three most important goals.” Ruggs was convicted of felony DUI causing death, will go to prison, and won’t be able to appeal his conviction and sentence, the elected district attorney, a Democrat, said in ...

Massachusetts’ high court upholds $37M judgment for woman who smoked Marlboro Lights, got cancer

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

BOURG-DU-BOST, France — The highest court in Massachusetts has upheld a nearly $37 million judgment for a woman who said she developed cancer after switching to Marlboro Light cigarettes because she thought they were less dangerous than the Marlboro Red cigarettes she had previously smoked.The Supreme Judicial Court’s unanimous ruling on Tuesday said that Patricia Walsh Greene might have smoked less or quit sooner had she not been swayed by Philip Morris’ claims that Marlboro Lights were safer.“Philip Morris represented that such products, including Marlboro Lights, delivered lower tar and nicotine and were a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes,” the court wrote in its decision. But Philip Morris never disclosed to its consumers that internal research it conducted in the late 1970s showed that the smoke of Marlboro Lights was more likely to cause the DNA damage that can lead to cancer, the court said.An email seeking comment was left with Altria, Philip Morris’ p...

NYC Mayor Adams calls fatal subway chokehold ‘tragedy that never should have happened’

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that the death of Jordan Neely at the hands of a fellow subway rider was “a tragedy that never should have happened” and pledged to do more to help people experiencing mental health crises.“My heart goes out to Jordan’s family, who is suffering great pain and uncertainty about the circumstances of his death,” said Adams, a former police officer who was criticized for his initial muted response to Neely’s death.Neely died on May 1 when U.S. Marine veteran Daniel Penny put him in a chokehold aboard a subway train in Manhattan.The 30-year-old Neely was a former Michael Jackson impersonator who was well-known to city outreach workers who try to help unhoused people experiencing mental illness.A freelance journalist who recorded video of Neely’s final minutes said Neely had been screaming at other passengers but hadn’t attacked anyone when Penny pulled him to the floor and pinned him. The video shows two other subw...

Google is giving its dominant search engine an artificial-intelligence makeover

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Google on Wednesday disclosed plans to infuse its dominant search engine with more advanced artificial-intelligence technology, a drive that’s in response to one of the biggest threats to its long-established position as the internet’s main gateway. The gradual shift in how Google’s search engine runs is rolling out three months after Microsoft’s Bing search engine started to tap into technology similar to that which powers the artificially intelligent chatbot ChatGPT, which has created one of Silicon Valley’s biggest buzzes since Apple released the first iPhone 16 years ago.Google, which is owned by Alphabet Inc., already has been testing its own conversational chatbot called Bard. That product, powered by technology called generative AI that also fuels ChatGPT, has only been available to people accepted from a waitlist. But Google announced Wednesday that Bard will be available to all comers in more than 180 countries and ...

Elon Musk’s tweets about Texas mall gunman spread misleading claims, question shooter’s background

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Misleading claims about the neo-Nazi gunman responsible for Saturday’s mass shooting at a Dallas-area shopping center are reverberating across Twitter, in large part because of Twitter owner Elon Musk.Musk has questioned whether the man identified by authorities as the shooter, Mauricio Garcia, really had an account on a Russian social media platform, and Musk suggested that revelations about the shooter’s background could be a “psyop,” or psychological operation, in which the public is misled about the real details of the shooting.Garcia proclaimed his white supremacist views on social media and sported Nazi tattoos. Authorities and independent researchers have confirmed his interest in far-right extremism and white supremacism. When police killed Garcia, he was wearing a patch that read “RWDS,” an acronym that stands for “ Right Wing Death Squad.”“We do know he had neo-Nazi ideation,” Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Hank Sibley sai...

After sex assault verdict, Trump could face tough questions at CNN town hall

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Former President Donald Trump will return to CNN on Wednesday night, joining the network for a two-hour town hall event in early-voting New Hampshire a day after a civil jury found him liable for sexually assaulting a woman nearly three decades ago.The prime-time forum, which was publicly announced last week, was expected to be notable because it would be bringing together a network and a candidate who have long sparred with each other. But the stakes were raised considerably Tuesday after jurors in New York found Trump had sexually abused and defamed advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, though they rejected her claim that he raped her. The jury awarded her $5 million in damages. Trump said the ruling was “A DISGRACE” and he vowed to appeal.While the civil trial verdict carries no criminal penalties, it nonetheless revives attention on the myriad investigations facing Trump, who was indicted in New York in March for hush money payments made to women who had accused him of sexual ...

West Virginia’s Huggins agrees to $1M pay cut, 3-game suspension for homophobic slur

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

Bob Huggins has agreed to a three-game suspension and a $1 million salary reduction and will be required to meet with LGBTQ+ leaders for using a homophobic slur during a radio interview, the university announced Wednesday.The agreement allows Huggins to keep his job as the school’s basketball coach, but the blunder will leave a lasting mark on his Hall of Fame career.West Virginia University President Gordon Gee and athletic director Wren Baker said in a joint statement that the university has “made it explicitly clear to Coach Huggins that any incidents of similar derogatory and offensive language will result in immediate termination.”Under the agreement, Huggins and all current and future athletics coaching staff will be required to undergo training that will be developed by the university’s LGBTQ+ Center to address all aspects of inequality, including homophobia, transphobia and sexism. Huggins also will be required to meet with LGBTQ+ leaders from across the state.“W...

Pakistan deploys troops to halt unrest after ex-Prime Minister Khan is ordered held on new charges

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 17:00:00 GMT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s government called out the military Wednesday in areas roiled by deadly violence following the arrest of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was dragged from a courtroom and ordered held for another eight days on new corruption charges that outraged his supporters and deepened the country’s political turmoil.In an address to the nation, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said the unrest by Khan’s supporters “damaged sensitive public and private property,” forcing him to deploy the military in the capital of Islamabad, the most populous province of Punjab and in volatile regions of the northwest.After Khan was arrested Tuesday, crowds in Islamabad and other major cities blocked roads, clashed with police, and set fire to police checkpoints and military facilities in violence that left six people dead and hundreds arrested. On Wednesday, protesters stormed a radio station in the northwestern city of Peshawar.“Such scenes were never seen by the peopl...