House approves sweeping bill to expand gay rights
WASHINGTON — Democrats in the House approved sweeping anti-discrimination legislation Friday that would extend civil rights protections to LGBT people by prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The protections would extend to employment, housing, loan applications, education, public accommodations and other areas. Called the Equality Act, the...
Prosecutor: Mom and daughter strangled pregnant Chicago teen
CHICAGO — A pregnant Chicago teen who was killed and whose baby was cut from her womb was strangled while being shown a photo album of the late son and brother of her attackers, a prosecutor said Friday in urging a judge to keep the defendants locked up. Assistant State’s...
Florida governor warns his state can’t handle an influx of immigrants
MIAMI — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Friday the state isn’t prepared to handle vague Trump administration plans to send some 1,000 undocumented immigrants a month from the southern border to South Florida. “We cannot accommodate in Florida the dumping of unlawful migrants into our state,” DeSantis said during a...
Feds want stolen Alexander Hamilton letter returned
BOSTON — A 1780 letter from Alexander Hamilton to the Marquis de Lafayette stolen from the Massachusetts Archives decades ago has been found and now an effort is underway to get it back. The U.S. attorney’s office in Boston this week filed a forfeiture complaint in federal court asking a...
United Airlines to lay off 100 in Houston, outsource jobs
HOUSTON — United Airlines says it will cut about 100 accounting jobs in Houston in July and shift the work to a contractor. The airline reported the layoffs in a letter this week to the Texas Workforce Commission. It did not identify the contractor that will handle accounting of revenue...
House passes bill to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity
WASHINGTON — The House passed legislation Friday to amend the decades-old Civil Rights Act to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Despite a sea change in the past decade in public opinion regarding gay rights and the legalization of same-sex marriage nationally, 30 states have no laws...
Massachusetts set to test ‘cannabis cafes’
BOSTON — Massachusetts marijuana regulators have approved of a plan to slowly roll out “cannabis cafes” where adults could use pot in a social setting. The 3-2 vote by the Cannabis Control Commission on Thursday calls for an initial test program in as many as a dozen communities where licenses...
Report: Ex-Ohio State team doctor sexually abused 177 students over decades
A former Ohio State team doctor sexually abused at least 177 male students from 1979-96, according to an investigative report released Friday. The abuse included athletes from at least 16 school sports teams and also encompassed other students who saw Dr. Richard Strauss at the school’s student health center and...
Texas man suspected of cutting off mom’s head with hacksaw
DENTON, Texas — A Texas man used a hacksaw to cut off his mother’s head before fleeing and leading police on a chase into Oklahoma last week before they arrested him, authorities said. Isaac Israel Warriner, 22, was being held Friday in a Denton County, Texas, jail on charges including...
Penn State fencing assistant fired over groping allegation
STATE COLLEGE — A woman says she told Penn State University’s head fencing coach that one of his assistants had groped her on a plane, but the coach failed to report her accusation to the school as required. Jennifer Oldham, a North Carolina fencing coach, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that...
California kids having slumber party fight off nude intruder
CLOVIS, Calif. — Police say two girls having a slumber party fought off a naked man who broke into the home through a window and sexually assaulted them last weekend. Police Chief Matt Basgall in the Fresno suburb of Clovis said the 10-year-old girl who lives in the home and...
Federal appeals court rules against Trump on ending DACA
RICHMOND, Va. — The federal appeals court has ruled the Trump administration acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner when it sought to end an Obama-era program that shields young immigrants from deportation. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2 to 1 Friday that...
Minneapolis considering ban on new drive-thru windows
Can you imagine life without the convenience of drive-thru windows? Well, leaders in one midwest city are trying to do just that. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports the city’s planning commission is supporting a zoning code amendment that would ban any new drive-thru window within city limits. Current drive-thru windows...
Body of missing W.Va. teen found, mother’s boyfriend charged
BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. — Authorities say they’ve found the body of a missing West Virginia girl, and her mother’s boyfriend has been arrested. News outlets report Morgan County Sheriff K.C. Bohrer said during a news conference Thursday that 15-year-old Riley Crossman’s decomposed body was found on an embankment near a...
Pennsylvania Waste Industries offering cash for cleanup
Cleaning up your community could prove to be lucrative. In conjunction with the Great American Cleanup of PA initiative, Pennsylvania Waste Industries is offering cash prizes. The group is holding a video contest for those registered. The video must creatively document their cleanup efforts. Cash prizes are $200 for the...
Trump warns of ‘long jail sentences’ for those ‘spying’ on his 2016 campaign
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump warned Friday of the possibility of “long jail sentences” for law-enforcement and intelligence officials involved in the early stages of the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and members of his 2016 campaign. “My Campaign for President was conclusively spied on,” Trump claimed in a...
1 dead, 1 missing, 1 hurt after explosion levels Eastern Pa. home
MOUNTAIN TOP — Authorities say one person has been killed and another is missing after an explosion destroyed a home in northeastern Pennsylvania. Officials say emergency responders found 20-year-old Nathan Hedgepeth injured but alive just before 2 a.m. Friday on the lawn outside the home in Dorrance, about 115 miles...
Boeing says 737 Max update is being held up by FAA questions
Boeing’s path to returning its 737 Max jet to service is being held up by questions from the Federal Aviation Administration. The U.S. regulator has asked Boeing to provide more details about “how pilots interact with the airplane controls and displays in different flight scenarios,” the company said in a...
For trans people, gender-swap photo filters are no mere game
Snapchat’s new photo filter that allows users to change into a man or woman with the tap of a finger isn’t necessarily fun and games for transgender people. Some say it reduces their very real and often painful experiences to folly. Thirty-one-year-old Bailey Coffman is a transgender woman from New...
Tomi Lahren shunts conservative views, attacks Alabama abortion law
Conservative commentator Tomi Lahren backed away from mainstream Republican views Thursday. One day after Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) signed the nation’s most-restrictive abortion bill into law, Lahren spoke out. In an afternoon tweet, Lahren asserted that banning abortion in nearly every case is “too restrictive.” “It doesn’t save life,...
MGM might pay $800 million in Las Vegas shooting settlement
LAS VEGAS — Casino giant MGM Resorts told federal regulators Thursday it might pay up to $800 million to settle liability lawsuits stemming from the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas — the deadliest in modern U.S. history. “The company believes it is reasonably possible that a settlement will be...
Colorado officer quits after confronting black man picking up trashVideo
DENVER — A white Colorado police officer who pulled out his gun during a confrontation with a black man picking up trash around his dormitory resigned this week under an agreement that lets him collect $69,000 in salary despite violating department policies. Police body camera footage released Thursday provided a...
Democrats push bill on health care, drug prices through House
WASHINGTON — Democrats pushed legislation buttressing the 2010 health care law and curbing prescription drug prices through the House on Thursday, advancing a bill that has no chance of surviving in the Senate or getting President Trump’s signature and seemed engineered with next year’s elections in mind. The measure forced...
Spray foam-encased kitten rescued by Oregon garbage workerVideo
HILLSBORO, Ore. — A kitten that was found encased in hardened spray foam is expected to make a full recovery after being rescued from a garbage can by an Oregon sanitation worker, authorities said Thursday. The sanitation worker was using a hydraulic arm to empty a trash can near Hillsboro,...
Chelsea Manning sent back to jail for refusing to testify
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — Former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was ordered back to jail Thursday for refusing to testify to a grand jury, even after telling a judge she’d rather “starve to death” than cooperate with prosecutors. U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ordered her to remain incarcerated at the Alexandria...
