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Defending Bodily Autonomy Is Real Child Protection

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

A participant at the Reclaim Pride Coalition’s fifth annual queer liberation march in New York City on June 25, 2023.Photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty ImagesThis month, Ohio reproductive freedom advocates delivered 42 boxes of petitions — over 700,000 signatures — to state officials to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot. The proposed amendment guarantees every individual the right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions, including but not limited to decisions on contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, miscarriage care, and abortion,” until fetal viability. It also prohibits the state from interfering with or penalizing “a person or entity that assists an individual exercising this right.” Both clauses contain exceptions for medical necessity. And neither limits these rights to adults.Protect Women Ohio, an anti-abortion coalition that includes Ohio Right to Life and the Center for Christian Virtue, calls the proposal an...

Maryland man charged with hate crimes in parking dispute killings

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland prosecutors have filed hate crime charges against a man accused of killing three people and wounding three more in a dispute over parking. The three people shot to death were Latino; the man accused of shooting them is white. Their families have lived on the same street for years and have had a history of disputes, including allegations of racial slurs against one of the victims.Charles Robert Smith, 43, had been charged with second-degree murder. Now he faces first-degree murder and hate-crime charges in the killings of Mario Mireles, his father Nicholas Mireles, and Christian Segovia, under an indictment returned by an Anne Arundel County grand jury on Friday, according to online court records. The 42-count indictment also includes six charges of attempted first-degree murder. Smith’s initial court appearance was scheduled for next Monday. His initial lawyer is no longer representing him, and another attorney did not immediately respond Monday ...

Friendship between Marcus Stroman and former Duke teammate-turned-rapper mike. grows over the years

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — Way back in the beginning, when Mike Seander started making music, he used a closet in his apartment as a makeshift recording studio. There was a cheap microphone, and some towels were hung up for sound proofing.Seander had no idea where it might go, but he was backed by a supportive friend, a fellow pitcher on the Duke University baseball team named Marcus Stroman.“Really he was the first person who ever heard it and just was like ‘Dude, you’re pretty good at this,’” Seander said. “I remember him being a fan. … I think in hindsight he kind of instilled a confidence in me when I didn’t know what the hell I was doing at all.”That friendship grew over the years, as Stroman found success in the major leagues and Seander — stage name mike. — continued to evolve with his music, which he describes as a hybrid of hip-hop and country. Stroman, 32, made the All-Star Game for the second time this year, while Seander, 34, has been playing live shows and working...

How David Bowie, long thought ambivalent to country music, became a writer on a Chris Young song

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Country star Chris Young’s latest single, “Young Love & Saturday Nights,” is a vivid love letter to summertime weekends, old trucks, dive bar bands, and crushes. And it might sound immediately familiar: The guitar lick that opens the track is lifted directly from David Bowie’s 1974 hit “Rebel Rebel.” Bowie is credited posthumously as a songwriter on the track, making it one of the genre-melding icon’s few forays into country music — noteworthy, because Bowie himself was not quite a fan of the genre.“I think the only music I didn’t listen to was country and western, and that holds to this day,” Bowie told NPR’s Terry Gross in 2002. “It’s much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn’t listen to was pretty much that.”So how did Bowie, who died in 2016, end up on the track?Warner Chappell Music became the custodian of Bowie’s musical legacy — acquiring the worldwide rights to over 400 of his songs, including “Rebel Rebel” ...

South Korea says North Korea fired ballistic missile into sea

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea says North Korea fired ballistic missile into sea.Source

Grains higher, Livstock lower.

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

CHICAGO (AP) — Grain futures were higher Monday in early trading on the Chicago Board of Trade. Wheat for Sep. advanced 43.50 cents at $7.5250 a bushel; Sep. corn rose 19.75 cents at $5.5225 a bushel; Sep. oats gained 21 cents at $4.4950 a bushel; while Aug. soybeans was up 18.75 cents at $15.1825 a bushel.Beef and pork were lower on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.Aug. live cattle fell .48 cent at $1.7952 a pound; Aug. feeder cattle lost 1.50 cents at $2.4392 a pound; Aug. lean hogs was off .48 cent at $1.0037 a pound.Source

Police investigating possible armed robbery aboard yacht on Miami River; rapper Quavo onboard during incident

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

Police are investigating reports of a possible armed robbery aboard a yacht along the Miami River.7News cameras captured a heavy police presence and several City of Miami Police cruisers with their lights on parked in the area of Southwest North River Drive and Second Street, near The Wharf Miami, just after 10 p.m., Sunday.The owner of the yacht said they chartered the vessel earlier in the day, and between 13 and 17 people were on board. The people who they chartered the yacht to paid for the service, but at some point, when it came time to bring the yacht back to its proper dock, they held up the captain of the boat at gunpoint and demanded their money back.The captain told police that one of the men who held him at gunpoint threatened to kill him and throw him off the boat. The suspect then removed the captain’s wallet and phone from his pocket before threatening another crew member. According to a police report, rapper Quavo, whose real name is Quavious Marshall, was also...

Challenge to Florida drag shows law won’t go to trial until next spring

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — A trial to determine if a new Florida law targeting drag shows is constitutional won’t start until next spring.A filing posted in federal court in Tallahassee late last week shows that the trial won’t start until the beginning of June 2024. It is scheduled to last two days and will be decided by a judge instead of a jury.The law, championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is on hold for now. A federal judge last month issued a temporary injunction preventing it from being enforced until the trial is held. The state of Florida has appealed that decision.Last week, U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell issued an order clarifying that the injunction applied to all venues in Florida, not just the restaurant that had sued the state challenging the law’s constitutionality.The new law punishes venues for allowing children into “adult live performances.” Although it does not specify drag shows, the sponsor of the legislation said it was aimed at those per...

Investigation underway after human remains found in suitcases along Delray Beach Intracoastal Waterway

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

DELRAY BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) – The Delray Beach Police Department responded to a 911 call reporting a suspicious item in the water along the intracoastal waterway near the 1000 block of Palm Trail in Delray Beach, Friday afternoon. Upon arrival, officers made a grim discovery – a suitcase containing human remains. Subsequently, two more suitcases were found at nearby locations along the intracoastal, both also containing human remains.As the investigation unfolds, authorities have determined that the human remains belong to one unidentified adult female. The three suitcases were located at separate sites, with one at the initial location on Palm Trail, and the others found near SE 7th Avenue and Casuarina Road.Picture of the floral tank top the victim was wearing (Courtesy Delray Beach Police Department)According to police, the victim is a white or Hispanic middle aged woman with brown hair and stands approximately 5’4″ tall. She may have had tattooed eyebrows a...

North Korea fires 2 short-range ballistic missiles after US submarine arrives in South Korea

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 11:14:29 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into its eastern sea, South Korea’s military said Tuesday, adding to a recent streak in weapons testing that is apparently in protest of the U.S. sending major naval assets to South Korea in a show of force.In its third round of launches since last week, North Korea fired the missiles consecutively between around 11:55 p.m. local time Monday and midnight from an area near its capital, Pyongyang, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It said both missiles traveled around 400 kilometers (248 miles) before landing in waters off the Korean Peninsula’s eastern coast and that the South Korean and U.S. intelligence agencies were analyzing the launches.Japan’s Coast Guard urged vessels in affected areas to watch out for falling debris but there were no immediate reports of damage.The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff in a statement condemned North Korea’s missile launches as a “grave provocation” tha...