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Escondido teachers suing school district over gender identity policy

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

ESCONDIDO, Calif. -- Two teachers at Rincon Middle School are suing the Escondido Union School District and the State Board of Education over gender identity privacy policy.According to state and district guidelines, a transgender student’s identity must be kept private, even from parents, unless the student says otherwise.“It forces them to lie to parents and to deceive parents and to participate in a student's social transition," said Paul Jonna, the attorney representing the teachers. 2 killed in house party shooting identified According to the lawsuit, policy requires teachers to refer to students by preferred names and pronouns at school, while reverting to biological pronouns and legal names when speaking with the students’ parents.“Experts on both sides of the spectrum agree that when you're dealing with a child that has gender dysphoria the solution is not to leave the parents out of the picture, the solution is not to leave the parents in the dark," Jonna said. "Thes...

Met Gala: Vintage, Jared Leto as Choupette, Kim K. in pearls

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The Met Gala’s starry carpet was on fire with vintage haute couture Monday as Dua Lipa walked in a Chanel ballgown from the fashion house’s archive and Nicole Kidman chose a look Karl Lagerfeld himself made for her 20 years ago.But elegant wasn’t entirely the hallmark of the evening. Jared Leto dressed as Choupette, the beloved fluffy cat of Lagerfeld, the evening’s honoree. And there were some bombshells: Serena Williams wore a flapper Gucci look when she announced she’s pregnant with her second child.Lipa, a gala co-chair, wore a Tiffany & Co. diamond around her neck that she called “very special.” The singer’s cream-colored dress, by Chanel from 1992, was also “very, very special” as it has been on her mood boards, she said.Claudia Schiffer wore the gown on the runway for its debut, although hers had a matching hat. Lipa’s necklace in platinum included a center diamond of more than 200 carats.Nicole Kidman said it was Lagerf...

B.C. coroner’s jury says Vancouver police should expedite use of body cameras

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

BURNABY, B.C. — The jury in the British Columbia coroner’s inquest into the police beating death of Myles Gray has recommended that the Vancouver Police Department expedite its use of body-worn cameras for all officers. The five-member jury began deliberating Monday at the end of 11 days of testimony about the 33-year-old man’s death in August 2015.The jury found Gray died by homicide, a death due to injury intentionally inflicted by another person, but coroner Larry Marzinzik told jury members that it was a neutral term and doesn’t imply fault or blame.The jury also recommended to Vancouver’s police chief that his department review and enhance the crisis de-escalation and containment training that its officers receive.Several police officers told the inquest that Gray appeared not to feel pain as they hit him with their batons, punched him in the face, kneed him and held him to the ground.   A forensic pathologist who preformed the autopsy on Gray’s body tol...

Southern Baptist leader selection process fails amid dispute

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

A powerful Southern Baptist committee was looking to appoint a new leader Monday who could navigate controversies over its handling of sexual-abuse reforms and the ousting of churches with women serving as pastors.Instead, the Executive Committee found itself tangled in yet another dispute, voting down a recommendation to make its own former chairman its president in what had become a racially fraught decision.That 50-31 vote came after some of the denomination’s prominent Black clergy questioned the selection process, which they saw as bypassing an African American pastor who has led the committee as interim president for more than a year. The selection process hit a nerve in a denomination that has lost some Black clergy in recent years over what they have seen as a failure of the mostly white-led denomination to make good on its pledges to reform after its history of supporting slavery and segregation. While the SBC elected its first Black president in 2012, no African Amer...

Jackson needs federal funds to cover repairs, appointee says

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The manager appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to oversee reforms to the beleaguered water system in Mississippi’s capital city says he won’t have enough money to cover expenses until more federal funds arrive. Ted Henifin was appointed in November after the Justice Department won a federal judge’s approval to carry out a rare intervention to fix Jackson’s water system, which partially failed in August. For days, people waited in lines for water to drink, bathe, cook and flush toilets in the majority-Black city of about 150,000. Henifin, who has begun to implement a range of reforms, said he is still waiting for hundreds of millions of dollars in funds the federal government set aside for Jackson’s water infrastructure. Meanwhile, the city is waiting to pay companies it has done business with for water system improvements. Current monthly transfers are no longer enough to cover operations, maintenance and repairs, Henifin says.“We’re&...

Muslim mayor blocked from White House Eid celebration

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Secret Service said Monday it blocked a Muslim mayor from Prospect Park, New Jersey, from attending a White House celebration with President Joe Biden to belatedly mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.Shortly before Mayor Mohamed Khairullah was set to arrive at the White House for the Eid-al-Fitr celebration, he received a call from the White House stating that he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the celebration where Biden delivered remarks to hundreds of guests, according to the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex, but declined to detail why. Khairullah was elected to a fifth term as the borough’s mayor in January.“While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not allowed to enter the White House complex this evening,” Guglielmi...

Texas Gov. Abbott to Chicago Mayor Lightfoot: Tell Biden to secure the border

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday responded to calls from the mayor of Chicago to stop sending migrants to her city, saying she should instead call on President Joe Biden to secure the border. ‘We simply have no more shelters:’ Lightfoot implores Abbott to stop sending migrants Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot had penned a letter to Abbott, asking him to stop sending people, even as more migrants were expected to arrive Monday, adding that Chicago had no more shelter, space, or resources to accommodate an increase of individuals at this level.In response to Lightfoot, Abbott said Texas' busing strategy was needed to "provide much-needed relief to overwhelmed, small border communities amid the Biden Administration's growing border crisis.""If you truly want to 'work together to find a real solution' to this border crisis gripping our nation, you must call on the Biden Administration to do its job by securing our border, repelling the illegal immigrants f...

Police: Chicago carjacking suspect could be elementary student

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

CHICAGO -- The Chicago Police Department believes a recent car jacking suspect could be an elementary school student.An attempted car jacking in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood happened on the 7000 block of South Merrill around 12 a.m. Friday.Chicago police sent out a community alert Sunday. A half an hour before Friday nights incident, CPD said someone grabbed a victim's keys near the 2100 block of East 70th Street, taking their vehicle. Both incidents happened within block of O'Keefe Elementary School. 6 dead after dust cloud cause 60-car crash, closes I-55 for 28 miles "She came face to face with a young boy that couldn’t be any more than ten-years-old," Block President of Paradise on Merrill Diane Hodges said.The suspects in two car jackings in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood have different descriptions. The first incident, involved a man wearing a furry jacket and a red and black ski mask. The younger offender wore a hooded sweatshirt, black jeans, and a mask."It’s...

VIDEO: Black bear surprises principal at West Virginia school dumpster

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

NICHOLAS COUNTY, W.Va (WOWK) – The principal at Zela Elementary School in West Virginia's Nicholas County got quite a surprise while checking the dumpster Monday morning.According to security footage posted by the Nicholas County Board of Education, Zela Elementary School Principal James Marsh was unlatching the lid of a dumpster outside the school around 7:15 a.m. Monday, May 1. As he removed the latch, the lid began to move and a black bear poked its head out of the dumpster, inches away from Marsh. 7 bodies found in search for two missing Oklahoma teens: authorities The video shows Marsh dart away from the dumpster as he spots the bear. The bear then immediately runs in the opposite direction around a shed and toward a wooded area."Who says principals don't deserve hazard pay????" the Nicholas County BOE said in a Facebook post accompanying the video.There is no word at this time how the bear ended up in the dumpster. Nexstar's WOWK has reached out to the school board to learn ...

White House estimates 20K Russians killed in Ukraine war since December

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:42:17 GMT

The Biden administration estimates that since December Russia has suffered 100,000 casualties, including more than 20,000 killed, White House national security council spokesman John Kirby said Monday.  Among those killed, Kirby estimates that nearly half were soldiers from the private military company Wagner Group, which is heavily involved in the grinding fight for Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine.  “Russia has exhausted its military stockpiles and its armed forces,” Kirby told reporters. “Just since December, we estimate that Russia has suffered more than 100,000 casualties, including over 20,000 killed in action. . . . It’s really stunning, these numbers.” Kirby said the source of the new 100,000 figure is “based on some downgraded intelligence that we’ve been able to collect,” though he did not elaborate. He would not give the estimated number of casualties for Ukrainians, deferring to Kyiv on the information.  “We've never talked about Ukrainian casualties in the war,” Kirby sa...