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Nebraska lawmakers pass 12-week abortion ban, restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Legislature on Friday approved a 12-week abortion ban and restrictions on gender-affirming care for children in a move so contentious that lawmakers on both sides have said they may be unable to work together in the future.Conservative lawmakers wrangled just enough votes to end a filibuster and pass a bill with both measures. Republican Gov. Jim Pillen, who pushed for the bill and met with various lawmakers to shore up support, has promised to sign it into law.The mood in the Nebraska Capitol has been volatile since lawmakers on Tuesday advanced by a single vote the hybrid measure that ties together restrictions that Republicans across the U.S. have been pushing. Nebraska’s lawmakers have traded insults and promises of retribution, while protesters have loudly voiced their displeasure. Friday’s debate was briefly stopped when protesters in a chamber balcony stood and yelled obscenities at conservative lawmakers while throwing what appea...

Famed R&B group The Spinners donate performance outfits to Motown Museum in Detroit

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

DETROIT (AP) — Henry Fambrough had a musical homecoming of sorts Friday at “Hitsville U.S.A.”Fambrough, one of the founding members of the iconic R&B group The Spinners, took a tour of Motown’s Studio A in Detroit as part of a ceremony that included the donation to the Motown Museum of 375 outfits worn by the group during performances.It “was a long time ago,” Fambrough said of the 1960s, when he first walked into the studio. “I used to dream about this place.”He told reporters that he had to convince his wife that the studio was where he was going for 3 a.m. rehearsals and recording sessions with other members of the group. Their first big hit for Motown was “It’s A Shame,” which peaked at No. 14 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart in 1970.The Spinners would later sign with Atlantic Records and turn out a string of hits that included “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love,” “Then Came You,” “The Rubberband Man” and “Mighty Love.”“Then Came You,” which featured singer Dionn...

Group accused of making up story about homeless vets being evicted to make room for migrants

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The founder of a nonprofit group has been accused of fabricating a story about homeless military veterans being evicted from a New York hotel to make room for migrants, a tale that stoked days of outrage on cable news networks.One Republican lawmaker in New York who helped spread the story is now calling for an investigation, saying he and others were duped.The uproar began after New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, bused a small group of asylum seekers to a suburban hotel as the city’s homeless shelter system struggled to accommodate an influx of migrants from the U.S. border with Mexico.The group’s transfer prompted a political backlash from Republican county officials, who accused the mayor of trying to offload his problems on unprepared communities. Then, the founder of a small charity in the area added an explosive claim: To make way for the migrants, a hotel in Newburgh, New York, evicted nearly two dozen homeless veterans.That story, told by...

Wisconsin man charged with hacking sports betting accounts

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man has been charged in a plot to hack and steal from thousands of sports betting accounts, court documents show.Joseph Garrison, 18, and others allegedly stole roughly $600,000 from 1,600 accounts on an unnamed sports betting site. Garrison surrendered to authorities in New York on Thursday and faces six charges including unauthorized access to computers and wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced.If convicted of all the charges against him, Garrison could be sentenced to up to 57 years in prison.Prosecutors alleged that Garrison and others used credential stuffing attacks, which entail using stolen usernames and passwords from previous data breaches, to access accounts on other platforms. According to the criminal complaint against Garrison, hackers accessed roughly 60,000 accounts on the sports betting website.About five months before the sports betting website was hacked, Garrison told investig...

Shooting that killed OPP officer near Ottawa was not an ambush: suspect’s lawyers

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

The lawyers for a man accused of killing an Ontario Provincial Police officer and injuring two others are disputing the characterization of the shooting in Bourget, Ont., as an ambush.Lawyers John Hale and Cassandra Richards say in a statement that the officers were not ambushed, as OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique has said.OPP Sgt. Eric Mueller died in hospital after a shooting at a home in Bourget in the early morning hours of May 11.He and two other officers had been responding to a disturbance call when they were shot at, police have said.RELATED:OPP officer dead, two others injured in ‘ambush’ shooting east of Ottawa: policeFamily man, exemplary officer: thousands pay tribute to murdered OPP officerAlain Bellefeuille, 39, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder in the case.Bellefeuille’s lawyers say he neither requested nor expected the police to come to his home in the middle of the night, and that he was in his bed...

Example of a rewritten Parks Canada plaque at N.L. historic site

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

Parks Canada is in the process of rewriting many of historic plaques and markers to reflect new scholarship and changing interpretations of Canada’s history. Here is one example of original and rewritten text from the L’Anse Amour National Historic site in Newfoundland and Labrador:1984 text:L’ANSE AMOUR BURIALThis mound of rocks is the earliest known funeral monument in the New World and marks the burial place of an Indian child who died about 7,500 years ago. The Maritime Archaic people, to whom the child belonged, occupied this area between 9,000 and 3,500 years ago. The body was covered with red ochre, wrapped in skins or birch bark, and placed in a large pit 1.5 metres deep. Fires were lit on either side of the body, and several spearheads of stone and bone placed beside the head. A walrus tusk, harpoon head, paint stones and a bone whistle were also placed with the body.2022 text: L’ANSE AMOURThis is the site of the oldest known First Nations funerary monumen...

Bolivian Catholic priest accused of abusing seminary students

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — A Bolivian priest has been detained on suspicion of abusing seminary students a decade ago in a case that emerged after news broke earlier this month of a pedophilia scandal involving a late Jesuit priest in the Andean country.Milton Murillo, a Catholic parish priest at the Church of San Roque in the southern region of Tarija, was sent to pre-trial detention for three months during a hearing late Thursday, regional prosecutor Sandra Gutiérrez Salazar said.“With this, we want to express that the Public Prosecutor’s Office is taking stern action to ensure these crimes are punished,” she told reporters Friday.The Murillo case came to a head in part because of the scandal that erupted earlier this month over Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas. Pedrajas died of cancer in 2009 and left behind a personal diary in which he confessed to having abused around 85 minors in Bolivia during the 1970s and 1980s in Catholic boarding schools, as reported by the Spanish newspaper E...

Woman charged in death of boy found in suitcase seeks change of Indiana venue

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

SALEM, Ind. (AP) — A Louisiana woman charged in the death of a boy whose body was found last year inside a suitcase in rural southern Indiana is seeking a change of venue, arguing that public outrage over the child’s death would prevent her from getting a fair trial.Dawn Coleman’s attorney, Ryan Bower, filed the venue change request on her behalf Monday. He contends the Shreveport, Louisiana, woman would not receive a fair trial in southern Indiana’s Washington County due to public hostility against her, outrage over the boy’s death and media coverage, WTHR-TV reported.A hearing is set for June 1 on the change of venue request for Coleman, who was arrested in San Francisco in October in connection with the death of 5-year-old Cairo Ammar Jordan of Atlanta, Georgia. She’s charged with aiding, inducing or causing murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death and obstruction of justice.A felony murder arrest warrant was issued in November for CairoR...

Lawyers argue Liberals’ proposal to clarify sanctions regime does the opposite

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

OTTAWA — Reforms in the federal budget bill that seek to clarify Canada’s sanctions regime will actually have the opposite effect, warn The Canadian Bar Association and a lawyer helping firms navigate the rules.“From the perspective of assisting Canadian businesses doing business with Russia … the legislation is flawed, in that it is incomplete and lacks clarity,” saidWilliam Pellerin, an Ottawa-based trade lawyer with the firm McMillan LLP.The Liberals are proposing changes that would specify which entities are barred from doing business with Canadians, such as companies that are 50 per cent or more owned by someone whom Ottawa has sanctioned.While thatchange puts Canada in line with its allies, Pellerin argued many of theother proposals are too vague.“Maybe the government’s intention here is to make the legislation unworkable for Canadian businesses. And if that’s the case, then they’re accomplishing their objective,” he said in an i...

Firefighting foam ban possible as Canada looks at risks of ‘forever chemicals’

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 20:59:18 GMT

OTTAWA — Firefighting foams, cosmetics and food packaging that contain cancer-causing “forever chemicals” could be limited or outright banned in Canada following a federal government risk assessment of the products that inches closer to declaring them “toxic.”“Only diamonds should be forever, not human-made substances that are polluting our environment,” Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said Friday, as his department released a draft report on PFAS chemicals.PFAS stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, a group of more than 4,700 chemicals used in dozens of products including lubricants, water and dirt repellents, textiles, foams and packaging.The draft report says there is growing evidence that the chemicals carry significant health risks to humans. These include increased rates of cancers such as kidney and testicular cancer, thyroid problems, infertility, skin issues and vision problems, including blindness.Because they don’t...