On Wednesday morning, a group of almost 200 journalists and writers released an open letter addressed to the New York Times, sharing their "serious concerns about editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people" and criticizing how the Times has "follow[ed] the lead of far-right hate groups in presenting gender diversity as a new controversy warranting new, punitive legislation." The open letter, whose signees include regular contributors to the Times and prominent writers and journalists like Ed Yong, Lucy Sante, Roxane Gay, and Rebecca Solnit, comes at a time when far-right extremist groups and their analogues in state legislatures are ramping up their attacks on trans young people; just yesterday, South Dakota became the sixth state to ban or restrict gender-affirming care for youth, efforts that one conservative activist recently acknowledged was merely the first step toward their goal of banning transition care altogether. In recent years and months, the Times has decided to play an outsized role in laundering anti-trans narratives and seeding the discourse with those narratives, publishing tens of thousands of handwringing words on trans youth—reporting that is now approvingly cited and lauded, as the letter writers note, by those who seek to ban and criminalize gender-affirming care.

Six months after the arrest of a college student caused an uproar in the Newton community and spurred furious online discussions, the police department is now being sued over the traffic stop for false arrest and civil rights violations, among other allegations; in turn, the officers are countersuing for defamation. Filings from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division on Feb. 2 show Tayvin Galanakis, 19, and his Des Moines-based attorneys Mathew Boles and Adam Witosky, are suing the City of Newton, police chief Rob Burdess, officer Nathan Winters and lieutenant Christopher Wing. Shortly after Galanakis filed his suit, the city filed counterclaims alleging he made defamatory statements, intentionally inflected emotional distress, invaded the privacy and filed false complaints against Winters and Wing, whose legal counsel is represented by the city’s law firm Brick Gentry, P.C.

Perhaps the greatest success of the American health care system these last few benighted years is this surprising fact: The uninsured rate has reached a historic low of about 8 percent. That’s thanks in part to the pandemic — or, more precisely, the slew of emergency provisions that the government enacted in response to the Covid crisis. One policy was likely the single largest factor. Over the past three years, under an emergency pandemic measure, states have stopped double-checking if people who are enrolled in Medicaid are still eligible for its coverage. If you were enrolled in Medicaid in March 2020, or if you became eligible at any point during the pandemic, you have remained eligible the entire time no matter what, even if your income later went up. But in April, that will end — states will be re-checking every Medicaid enrollee’s eligibility, an enormous administrative undertaking that will put health insurance coverage for millions of Americans at risk. The Biden administration estimates upward of 15 million people — one-sixth of the roughly 90 million Americans currently receiving Medicaid benefits — could lose coverage, a finding that independent analysts pretty much agree with. Those are coverage losses tantamount to a major economic downturn: By comparison, from 2007 to 2009, amid the worst economic downturn of most Americans’ lifetimes, an estimated 9 million Americans lost their insurance.

As the Elon Musk-owned social media service encounters interruptions and bugs, Chinese dissidents and activists said they feared they were being muzzled.

Late last year, the tech companies Stripe, Amazon, Facebook, Cisco, and Twitter laid off workers en masse. Come the new year, Google, Microsoft, Amazon (again), Salesforce, Dell, IBM, SAP, Zoom, and PayPal did the same. Sure, many of those firms have seen their revenues and profits decline in the past year; the tech sector as a whole has been hit hard by shifting consumer behavior, falling advertising spending, and rising interest rates. Yet each of them, except Twitter, is making money—some of them wildly so. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, made $23 billion last year. Microsoft made more than $70 billion, placing it second in profitability among Standard & Poor’s 500 companies, behind Apple. Those firms, in other words, did not need to let so many workers go; they chose to. And they did so because other tech firms were making the same choice. Laying off employees turns out to be infectious. And that makes it all the more insidious.

“They really wanted a Class A experience for their employees,” he said. “If you’re familiar with the building they've been officing in, in Near Southside, it’s an old building. They had a lot of folks at home, so they wanted to have the culture back in the office together.” ---- Everything is made in China, so why do you need employees in an office? Delusional

It hasn't been all roses in the Biden animal kingdom, but ultimately, Willow has muscled her way to the top.

Taylor Schabusiness, facing a first-degree homicide charge, attacks attorney Quinn Jolly as lawyers, judge were scheduling a postponement of the case

The mother of Anthony “Tony” Mitchell, a Walker County man who died in police custody in January, has filed a federal lawsuit against multiple jail officials, including Sheriff Nick Smith, alleging that authorities deprived the man of his constitutional rights by leaving him in the jail’s walk-in freezer “or similar frigid environment” for hours. Only with the release of an internal surveillance video recorded by a correctional officer did what happened to Mitchell begin to come to light, according to Jon Goldfarb, a lawyer representing Mitchell’s family. That correctional officer was later fired by the sheriff’s department, according to the lawyer. A surveillance video obtained and first reported by CBS 42 shows what the family says appears to be their loved one being carried into the loading area of the Walker County Jail. In it, Mitchell is limp, his head and feet dangling as uniformed personnel — “Sheriff” emblazoned on one of their vests — lay his body just outside a marked police SUV. In total, four uniformed officials then work to put him into the police vehicle. The video contradicts an earlier statement from the Walker County Sheriff’s Office claiming Mitchell was “alert and conscious” when he left the jail for transport to a local hospital.

The raids took place in New Delhi less than a month after Narendra Modi's government censored a BBC documentary deemed critical of the prime minister.

The bait of school vouchers—and the switch to strangling public education.

The agency sparked controversy over its decision to deploy facial recognition technology from the company to vet taxpayers' identity.

As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struggles to defend his response to last Monday's devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake, videos from a few years back have emerged showing him hailing some of the housing projects that crumbled, killing thousands of people. Critics say contractors were allowed to skip crucial safety regulations, increasing their profits but putting residents at risk. The videos have fueled public outrage over slow efforts to help residents in the aftermath of the massive earthquake — the world's deadliest in over a decade — that killed more than 35,000 people in Turkey and neighboring Syria, and left many injured and without a home, food or heating in the middle of winter. In one video, taken during a campaign stop ahead of Turkey's March 2019 local elections, Erdogan listed some of his government's top achievements — including new housing for the city of Kahramanmaras, also known as Maras, near the epicenter of last week's quake. "We solved the problem of 144,156 citizens of Maras with zoning amnesty," Erdogan said, using his term for the construction amnesties handed out to allow contractors to ignore the safety codes that had been put on the books specifically to make apartment blocks, houses and office buildings more resistant to earthquakes. Engineers and architects say the lack of safety features designed to absorb the shock of earthquakes likely contributed to the soaring death toll.

"I'm Nordic and pale to the point where people sometimes ask if I'm sick or something," one poster said "A bit disappointed that I can't recreate that."

Almost 15 percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, a 27 percent increase over two years. Thirteen percent attempted suicide, compared with 7 percent of boys.

The ex-superintendent had suggested in interviews with news outlets, including the Daily Mail, that the teenager used drugs and that her father refused the district's offers to help.

The managerial class holding a flashlight under their chin and telling the spooky tale of the latest sequel to quiet quitting and rage applying.

The real reason Twitter lies in ruins is because it was an abomination before God. (No, no, no, no, that sounds like a great place not twitter)

The Mars Wrigley factory in the city of Elizabethtown was fined more than $14,500 (£12,000) by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The workers were contractors who did not work full-time for the factory. The incident happened in June 2022. A hole had to be cut into the bottom of the partly-full tank to get them out. More than two dozen rescuers responded, and one worker was transported to hospital by helicopter, according to local reports. The regulator's report labelled the incident "serious". It says the workers were hired to clean tanks, and were not provided with proper safety training. It noted that the workers fell into a batching tank - a tank used to mix ingredients - for Dove chocolate, a brand sold in the US. In the UK and elsewhere, Dove is sold as Galaxy.

David “Trugoy the Dove” Jolicoeur, one-third of the iconic rap triumvirate De La Soul, has died, Rolling Stone has confirmed. The news was first reported by AllHipHop. He was 54. The cause of death has not been disclosed. Trugoy, who had recently been going by the name Dave, and was also known as Plug Two, had been open about his bout with congestive heart failure in recent years. In De La Soul’s 208 “Royalty Capes” video, Trugoy candidly spoke about how his ailing health kept him from performing.