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Abortion debate churns with legislation and lawsuits

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

Nine months after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a nationwide right to an abortion, the landscape is far from settled, with lawmakers considering broader bans or stronger protections and legal challenges popping up nationwide.It’s been a hectic week for abortion policy with Republican-dominated states seeking to tighten restrictions, Democratic lawmakers trying to protect abortion access — and court fights playing out on multiple fronts.Here’s what’s happening: WHAT’S THE STATUS OF ABORTION PILLS?This question lies at the heart of the most closely watched current abortion-related lawsuit.A combination of two drugs is the nation’s most common method for ending pregnancies.But Alliance Defending Freedom, which opposed abortion, has asked a Texas judge to revoke or suspend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of one of the drugs, mifepristone. The legal question looms as the Biden Administration is working on rules to make the pills more widely av...

NTSB: Pilot error in crash killing diet guru Gwen Shamblin

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A small plane crash in Tennessee that killed weight-loss guru Gwen Shamblin Lara and six others likely happened when her husband piloting the plane — actor Joe Lara — became disoriented in heavy clouds, a final report by the National Transportation Safety Board says.Joe Lara, who played Tarzan in the 1990s TV series “Tarzan: The Epic Adventures,” was flying a Cessna C501 on March 29, 2021, when the aircraft plunged into Percy Priest Lake, minutes after takeoff from an airport just outside Nashville. Flight track data found that the plane “made a series of heading changes, along with several climbs and descents, before it entered a steep, descending left turn,” according to the crash report released Wednesday. The maneuvering is consistent with a type of spatial disorientation called somatogravic illusion, and it likely caused the pilot to perceive that the airplane was pitching up even though it was actually in a continuous descent, according to an NTSB...

Otieno family attorneys push back against officers’ defense

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — As a video was released publicly this week showing sheriff’s deputies and employees of a Virginia mental hospital pinning Irvo Otieno to the floor, attorneys for several of the defendants charged with second-degree murder in his death began to weigh in to defend their clients.During bond hearings and through statements, lawyers sought to distinguish their clients from the mass of bodies involved in holding Otieno to the floor for over 10 minutes. One said in court that his client only worked to secure leg irons on Otieno, while another said his client put his body weight on the man for just a short period of time and then tried to position Otieno on his side so he would not have trouble breathing.Some defense attorneys also said their clients were only trying to restrain Otieno and there was no evidence of an intent to kill the 28-year-old Black man as deputies sought to have him admitted to Central State Hospital on March 6.“At no time did he realize that Mr. O...

Judge halts Wyoming abortion ban days after it took effect

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Abortion will again be legal in Wyoming — at least for now — after a judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a ban that took effect a few days earlier.Teton County District Court Judge Melissa Owens’ decision halts the ban amid a challenge in her court to a law that took effect Sunday. The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the law despite earlier rulings by Owens that had blocked a previous ban since shortly after it took effect last summer.Owens put the new ban on hold after a hearing Wednesday in which abortion-rights supporters said the law harms pregnant women and their doctors. Owens suspended the ban for at least two weeks.The law prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy except in cases of rape or incest that’s reported to police, or to save a woman’s life.The judge did not weigh in on another new abortion law that’s also being challenged in her court: Wyoming’s first-in-the-nation ban on abortion pills. That law, signed by Republican Gov. Ma...

NYC neighborhood carries on during wait for Trump grand jury

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — As the world waits to see whether a grand jury in lower Manhattan indicts former President Donald Trump, neighborhood resident Barbara Malmet decided to give up her front-row seat.While police erected barricades around the courthouse where any criminal case would be brought, the retired New York University professor packed a bag and prepared to leave town.Malmet, 70, lives a few blocks from the city’s civic center and said she is concerned about “a smaller repeat of Jan. 6” if Trump incites “his cult followers into violence.” She wants ”a little more peace of mind not being within walking distance of the courthouse.”So far, Trump’s call for protests has not resulted in any lawlessness, and life has generally gone on as usual in the neighborhood of government buildings and office towers on the edge of Chinatown. Another day passed Wednesday without any decision on possible legal action.Asked if the situation was straining city resources or the New York Police De...

IOC’s Bach defends Russia stance amid pro-Ukraine protest

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

ESSEN, Germany (AP) — International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach defended his organization’s efforts to create a pathway for Russian and Belarusian athletes to return to competition in a speech in his home country of Germany which took place amid a pro-Ukraine protest Wednesday.Bach reiterated the IOC’s position that it would be discriminatory to exclude Russians and Belarusians based on citizenship alone and argued the Olympics can help promote dialogue at a tense time. Public broadcaster WDR reported nearly 200 pro-Ukraine protesters gathered outside the venue calling for Russia to be excluded entirely from the Olympics.The IOC recommended excluding Russia and Belarus on safety grounds soon after the invasion last year but now argues for letting the two countries’ athletes compete as neutrals without national symbols ahead of a packed calendar of qualification events for the 2024 Paris Olympics.Bach said he opposed political influence on sports and any...

Jill Biden: It’s time for men to step up for women’s rights

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — First lady Jill Biden on Wednesday used a Women’s History Month event at the White House to call on men to step up and fight to protect women’s rights.The first lady, speaking ahead of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, didn’t mince words as she lamented that women find themselves relitigating “battles that we thought we had won a long time ago.”“We need more men to hold each other accountable when women are being hurt or being left behind,” she said.The Supreme Court declared last June that states can ban abortion. Since then, Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have rolled out regulations shortening the period when a woman can get an abortion and otherwise restricting abortion access.“The fight for women’s equality should have an end,” the first lady said.President Biden in his remarks vowed that his administration remained focused on improving the economic status of women, and argued that all maj...

Uniquely New Orleans mayoral recall effort fails

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Because it happened in New Orleans, an effort to oust the mayor over typical big city complaints — high crime rates, slacking services, alleged misuse of taxpayer property — was anything but typical.Recall petition signatures were gathered during Mardi Gras parades. A brass band played and people danced on the sidewalk as organizers lugged boxes of signatures into City Hall. Disgruntled residents complained that dead people were still populating the voter rolls. It was political tumult, Louisiana style.In the end, the effort failed. The petition to force Mayor LaToya Cantrell into a recall election resulted in only 27,243 valid signatures, state officials announced Tuesday — about 18,000 short of what organizers needed. “Clearly, a weight lifted,” Cantrell, the city’s first woman mayor, said at a Wednesday news conference. She also made it clear she doesn’t think her political battles are over.“There’s been intentional orchestration to discredit ...

North Carolina House passes bill limiting racial teachings

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s Republican-controlled House passed a previously vetoed proposal Wednesday to restrict how teachers can discuss certain racial topics that some lawmakers have equated to “ critical race theory.”The House voted 68-49 along party lines for legislation banning public school teachers from compelling students to believe they should feel guilty or responsible for past actions committed by people of the same race or sex. United in their opposition, House Democrats challenged Republican claims that the bill would reduce discrimination and argued that a comprehensive history education should make students uncomfortable.Republican seat gains in the midterm elections give them greater leverage this year to override any veto by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, who successfully blocked a similar proposal in 2021 and urged legislators this month in his State of the State address, “Don’t make teachers re-write history.” But Republicans, who are one seat ...

Texas university students protest drag show’s cancellation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:45:00 GMT

CANYON, Texas (AP) — Protests continued Wednesday at a university in the Texas Panhandle after the school’s president said a planned campus drag show wouldn’t be allowed and expressed the view that such events “discriminate against womanhood.”Dozens of students gathered for the protests for a second day at West Texas A&M University, located in Canyon, just south of Amarillo. The students have been waving gay pride flags and holding signs that included the sayings “Women for Drag,” “Drag is Rad” and “Everybody Say Love.” In a Tuesday opinion column laden with religious references, the university’s president, Walter Wendler, wrote that “drag shows are derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny, no matter the stated intent.” He also wrote that “drag shows stereotype women in cartoonlike extremes for the amusement of others.”In recent months, drag shows across the country have been targeted by right-wing activists and politicians, with Republica...