Victoria Fox's Blog, page 246
April 7, 2023
Bow Down to Zendaya and Tom Holland’s Intimate Palace Date
This outing takes the crown.
Zendaya and Tom Holland recently took a royally perfect stroll through King Henry VIII‘s Hampton Court Palace in London amid a globetrotting time together.
For the occasion, the Euphoria actress bundle up in a brown trench coat, gray shirt and cozy scarf, as seen in photos with historian Tracy Borman. Meanwhile, the Spider-Man: Homecoming actor donned denim pants, a white-shirt and a blue coat.
The historian shared photos of the couple—who first sparked romance rumors in 2021—on Twitter. See the snapshots here.
“I’ve had some special moments at the Hampton Court Palace,” Tracy tweeted on April 7, “but this has to count as one of the best ever: exploring Hampton Court after hours with @TomHolland1996 [and] @Zendaya.”
Another sweet image shows Tom and Zendaya’s silhouettes side-by-side on a rooftop, with their heads leaning against each other.
According to Historic Royal Palaces, Hampton Court was Henry VIII’s favorite of his 60 homes. The organization describes it as his “pleasure palace, which he turned into a fabulous centre of entertaining with feasting, jousting and hunting.”
Love Is Blind Star Bartise Bowden Welcomes First Baby
In Bartise Bowden‘s words, he went from “zaddy on screen to daddy in real life.”
The Love Is Blind alum announced on April 7 that he has welcomed a baby boy.
“Might’ve been the villain on tv, but I’m gonna be the hero for him,” Bartise wrote on social media. “Instagram, meet my little man #bigfella.”
Bartise, who split with fiancée Nancy Rodriguez on season three of the Netflix show, didn’t reveal the mother of his child.
The fitness expert did, however, share a gallery of photos with his newborn that gave a glimpse into how they’re bonding. The father-son duo watched the new season of Love Is Blind together, as well as watch Tiger Woods compete in the 2023 Masters tournament on television.
“Ready to see your first-ever Tiger Woods golf show? Look at that,” he said in an Instagram video. “Let’s see if he watches. I used to do this with my dad.”
Another photo showed Bartise wearing a shamrock necklace while holding his mini-me, who was dressed in a green onesie and matching beanie with a clover print, seemingly in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day on March 17.
Judges’ dueling decisions put access to a key abortion drug in jeopardy nationwide
Enlarge this image Mifepristone is part of a two-drug protocol that a recent study showed was used in 98% of medication abortions in 2020. Allen G. Breed/AP
Allen G. Breed/AP
Federal judges in two states issued contradictory decisions Friday evening that could drastically impact access to a drug used in nearly all medication abortions in the U.S.
In Texas, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved the abortion pill mifepristone more than 20 years ago. A coalition of anti-abortion rights groups called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA last year. The judge issued a nationwide injunction pausing the FDA’s approval, which is set to take effect in seven days.
Within hours of that decision, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice issued a ruling in a separate case in Washington state. That lawsuit filed by a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in 17 states and the District of Columbia sought to block the FDA from pulling the drug from the market.
Rice’s decision blocks the FDA from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Mifepristone.”
Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson told NPR on Friday that he believes the judge’s ruling could make it possible for patients in those states to continue using mifepristone for abortion in the short term — even after the Texas decision takes effect.
It’s not clear how each judge’s decision will impact the other, and both cases are likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Hours after the Texas ruling, the Justice Department appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has a reputation for being a conservative jurisdiction. The Justice Department says it is also reviewing the decision in Washington state.
President Biden said the ruling in Texas could have widespread consequences. “If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,” the president said in a statement.
“It is the next big step toward the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law in America,” Biden added.
He said that the administration would fight the ruling, noting, “The Department of Justice has already filed an appeal and will seek an immediate stay of the decision.”
Anti-abortion rights groups hailed the Texas decision. “By illegally approving dangerous chemical abortion drugs, the FDA put women and girls in harm’s way, and it’s high time the agency is held accountable for its reckless actions,” Erik Baptist, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement.
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA in 2000 for use in combination with a second drug, misoprostol. More than half of all abortions in the United States are done using medication, as opposed to a surgical procedure, and the two-drug combination was used for 98% of them in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
In its lawsuit, the coalition of abortion rights opponents said the protocol was improperly approved by the FDA. The group had asked Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by President Trump and has longstanding ties to conservative religious groups, to overturn the approval.
The decision in that lawsuit comes three weeks after Kacsmaryk held a hearing in Amarillo in a courtroom that had room for only a few dozen members of the public and the press. No recording or public livestreaming was permitted.
Nationwide implications
Abortion providers nationwide say they’ve been preparing to rely on another medication abortion regimen using misoprostol alone. Misoprostol is prescribed primarily for ulcers, and is already widely used off-label for other gynecological purposes in the United States.
Research suggests the single-drug regimen is somewhat less effective and often causes additional side effects. But the World Health Organization says the method, which has been used internationally for decades, can be safe and effective at the appropriate dosage.
The decision likely will mean uncertainty and confusion for doctors and patients, says Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel with the reproductive rights legal advocacy group If/When/How.
“People who are seeking an abortion with pills … are going to find it much more difficult to do so, especially in the time period as providers figure out what they’re going to be able to do,” she says. “So I think we’re going to see an immediate exacerbation of the crisis of access that already started in June of 2022” with the U.S. Supreme Court decision last year in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned decades of abortion-rights precedent.
Diaz-Tello predicts more people will look to induce their own abortions without medical supervision, using medications obtained online or in other countries. She also worries about the risk of increased scrutiny of patients seeking medical care for emergency complications from either self-managed abortions or miscarriages.
She says there are no state laws to her knowledge that require healthcare providers to turn in patients suspected of inducing an abortion, but she worries the ruling will fuel confusion and misinformation.
“I am worried that … that is going to translate into a misunderstanding that is going to lead to the criminalization of people who end their pregnancies,” Diaz-Tello says.
Dueling decisions
The implications of the Texas ruling is complicated by the outcome of the Washington state lawsuit.
Amanda Allen, senior counsel and director for the The Lawyering Project, which supports abortion rights, says the two courts “could come out with two very conflicting orders, and they could impose very different obligations on the FDA that would be very untenable for the FDA to try to reconcile.”
Allen says the FDA could decide to issue guidance for prescribers about how to interpret the rulings. But she says such a conflict between the federal courts might well end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Texas judge suspends FDA approval of abortion pill
The J. Marvin Jones Federal Building and the Mary Lou Robinson U.S. Courthouse where U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will decide on a lawsuit to ban the abortifacient drug mifepristone Saturday, Feb. 11, 2023 in Amarillo, Texas. (AP Photo/Justin Rex) | Justin Rex/AP Photo
A Texas federal judge ruled on Friday to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone – one of two drugs used together to induce an abortion – virtually banning the sale of the pills across the country.
The decision, however, gives the Biden administration a week to appeal, meaning the hundreds of thousands of patients who use the drug for both abortions and the treatment of miscarriages will not be immediately affected.
The pills, which the FDA approved for use in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy more than two decades ago, have recently become the most common method of abortion in the United States, and many people have circumvented the state bans since the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade last June.
POLITICO
Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.
April 6, 2023
California chinook salmon season canceled until spring 2024
SAN FRANCISCO — Salmon stocks in California are so low that fishery managers have canceled not only this year’s season, but also next year’s.
Salmon once filled the rivers and streams of the West Coast, so local Native American tribes said their ancestors could cross salmon-filled streams without sinking into the water.
Dam building, overfishing, habitat destruction and climate change mean that what’s left of these once-magnificent ranges are nothing more than remnants.
Today, fewer than 167,767 adult fall chinook salmon are expected to attempt to return to the Sacramento River – the lowest since 2008. In the northern part of the state, just over 103,000 salmon are expected to return to the river Klamath. This is the second lowest forecast since current assessment methods began in 1997.
PREVIOUSLY: Feds shut down California chinook salmon season due to effects of drought
On Thursday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council, the semi-federal body that oversees West Coast fisheries, recommended closing the state’s salmon season until spring 2024, the first time in 14 years that a such a decision has been made.
In March, the state’s chinook salmon season, which would have occurred along the California coast and north to Cape Falcon, Oregon, until May 15, was canceled to protect chinook from fall in the Sacramento River, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Corps. Fisheries Service.
Chinook salmon along the California coast and southern Oregon coast continue to experience the lingering effects of the region’s mega-drought.
Drought hits salmon hardSalmon, including chinook, California’s predominant species, depend on abundant waters to hatch and travel from their spawning grounds to the ocean, then to migrate again and lay the eggs that produce the next generation of fish.
Despite massive rains this winter, water in California and much of the west has been anything but plentiful for years.
The number of salmon that travel up rivers to spawn depends on their three-year life cycle, from hatching from eggs in the streams to returning as adults from the ocean.
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Particularly wet years mean more salmon hatching. Dry means minus three years later. Three years ago — in 2020 — California waters were experiencing a particularly severe drought.
“This is a trend that has been going on for decades, and the past few years of record drought have only further stressed our salmon populations,” said Charlton H. Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. .
Low river flows and high river water temperatures have affected the survival of salmon, especially when they emerge as eggs and have to descend to the ocean, said Robin Ehlke, salmon manager for the management board. “There are just fewer and fewer fish.”
Over the past two years, models used to estimate fish populations have performed poorly, due to the impacts of climate change and drought, said sport fisherman Jim Yarnall, a member of the advisory subgroup on the council salmon made up of fishery and tribal representatives.
“The people running these models, they’re tearing their hair out. This is an unfortunate place we are in and it will impact many livelihoods,” he said.
How are salmon fishing seasons established?The seasons are fixed one year in advance, with the possibility of modification.
NOAA Fisheries advises the management board and its advisory committee on the numbers they expect to see.
State fisheries managers publish abundance figures.The council knows it needs to take a set amount of salmon out of the ocean and up rivers to their spawning grounds to maintain a healthy stock of salmon, Ehlke said.The board and its advisory committees develop proposed seasons that meet minimum goalsA public hearing and comment period takes placeA final proposal is forwarded to NOAA Fisheries for review and approval. Hope for the futureYarnall remains optimistic about the chinook in California.
“If there’s a silver lining to any of this, California has been wet here since December,” he said. “The snow cover is high. The reservoirs are filling up and the salmon are an incredibly resilient species.
“If we get out of the way and give them half a chance,” he said, “you can see them bounce back in three years to a bountiful fish stock.”
Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.
Sara Foster slams San Fran’s ‘liberal’ leadership after Bob Lee’s death
Actress Sara Foster, daughter of legendary musician and producer David Foster, has blasted San Francisco’s “liberal” leadership following the violent death of tech mogul Bob Lee in the city earlier this week.
Lee, a 43-year-old father of two who co-founded Cash App, was stabbed to death in San Francisco’s affluent Rincon Hill neighborhood around 2:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, devastating the tech community and sounding the alarm over the rise of crime in the city. .
Foster, 42, shared a screenshot of The Post’s article about Lee’s final moments before his death to his Instagram Story on Thursday. In the attached photos, a smiling Lee appears with his two daughters.
“I have no words,” she wrote. “SF is a complete asshole. I’m a registered Democrat and I’m confident in saying that liberal politicians are ruining cities. »
“Disgusting. My heart breaks for this family,” she added.
The fashion designer and actor is the second daughter of 16-time Grammy Award-winning Foster, who has spent more than 50 years in the music industry working with iconic artists such as Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton, Paul McCartney, Chicago, Kenny Loggins and Celine Dion. .
“SF is a complete asshole. I’m a registered Democrat and I’m safe in saying liberal politicians are ruining cities,” said Sara Foster.FoxNews
Last year, Foster voiced his support for billionaire developer Rick Caruso in his failed bid to become mayor of Los Angeles during an “ask me anything” Q&A session on Instagram, according to Fox News.
Lee, a longtime Bay Area resident, had just moved to Miami because he felt San Francisco was “deteriorating”, said his friend Jake Shields.
Moments after being stabbed, surveillance footage captured Lee showing a stranger his injuries and pleading for help – only for the viewer to ignore him and drive off.
Bob Lee was stabbed multiple times on the streets of San Francisco on Tuesday morning.@boblee/TwitterLee called 911 at 2:34 a.m. and asked for help, shouting to dispatchers that he had been stabbed and needed to go to the hospital.
Police arrived less than six minutes later and found Lee unconscious with two stab wounds to the chest. He was rushed to hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Police have not released a suspect description and no arrests have been made.
Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.
The Good Friday Agreement 25 years later – POLITICO
In a special anniversary episode 25 years after the deal that brought peace to Northern Ireland, host Ailbhe Rea returns home to Belfast to tell the gripping story of how a historic compromise was reached.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern explain why – and how – they decided to strike a peace deal when they both came to power in 1997, and recall key moments drama from inside the negotiating room.
David Kerr, right-hand man of the late David Trimble – the UUP leader who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the talks – describes the splits and crises within trade unionism at the time, while the SDLP chief negotiator Mark Durkan, later to become Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland, explains how the thinking of his boss John Hume permeated the entire peace process.
Mitchel McLaughlin, spokesman for Sinn Féin during the negotiations, describes the challenge his party’s leaders faced in trying to take the whole republican movement with them. Jonathan Powell, Blair’s chief of staff, explains what it was like to take on Sinn Fein at the negotiating table. And Monica McWilliams, co-founder of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition, shares her memories of those tense past days and hours inside Castle Buildings.
Ailbhe also meets Cathy McCann and Betty Speers, two victims of an IRA bomb in 1990 – Cathy was seriously injured and Betty’s brother was killed – as they reflect on what the Accord means to them. of Good Friday. And Ailbhe ends the episode with Sara Canning, the girlfriend of the late journalist Lyra McKee, who was killed by dissident Republicans on the 21st anniversary of the deal four years ago.
POLITICO
Not all news on the site expresses the point of view of the site, but we transmit this news automatically and translate it through programmatic technology on the site and not from a human editor.
MrBeast YouTuber Chris Tyson Is Undergoing Hormone Replacement Therapy
Chris Tyson is embarking on a new chapter.
The YouTuber, whose Twitter profile notes that they use “any pronouns,” shared on April 5 that they have been undergoing hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for two months.
“Informed consent HRT saved my and many others’ lives,” the 26-year-old tweeted from their personal account. “The hurdles [gender non-conforming] people have to jump through to get life-saving gender-affirming healthcare in a 1st world country is wild to me. Just let people make informed decisions about their own bodies.”
Masculinizing or feminizing hormone therapy can help gender non-conforming or transgender people achieve a more “traditional” masculine or feminine appearance, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
On April 6, Chris wrote that their physical appearance “has already started to change” since beginning HRT, explaining, “The amount of body positivity I’ve gotten in just 2 months is insane.”
The content creator went on say they struggled with gender identity in the past, tweeting that the last “21 years was for learning about gender dysphoria.”
Karol G Accuses Magazine of Photoshopping Her Face and Body
Karol G is embracing her natural beauty.
The “Provenza” singer recently accused GQ Mexico of photoshopping her cover image, saying that the changes were made despite her disapproval.
“I don’t even know where to start this message…Today, my GQ magazine cover was made public, a cover with an image that DOES NOT represent me,” Karol wrote in Spanish along with a side-by-side image of her bare face and the magazine’s cover. “My face does not look like this, my body does not look like that and I feel very happy and comfortable with how I look naturally.”
At first, Karol recalled feeling “very happy” with the opportunity to be GQ Mexico‘s cover star for their April/May 2023 issue. However, she alleged the publication did not take into consideration her wishes when it came to the image’s retouches.
“Despite making clear my disagreement with the number of editions they did with the photo, they didn’t do anything about it,” she said, “as if to look good I needed all those changes.”
Elon Musk says NPR’s ‘state-affiliated media’ label might not have been accurate
Enlarge this image Twitter CEO Elon Musk, pictured here in August 2022, placed a “state-affiliated media” label on NPR’s Twitter account, leading to widespread criticism. CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images
CARINA JOHANSEN/NTB/AFP via Getty Images
Twitter CEO Elon Musk said the platform’s recent labeling of NPR as “state-affiliated media” might not have been accurate during a series of email exchanges that provided a glimpse into the billionaire’s thought process on decisions that reverberate far beyond the social network.
Regardless, as of late Thursday, the designation remained.
On Wednesday, press freedom advocates and the network itself were taken aback to see that Twitter had placed NPR in the same category as government-aligned propaganda outlets in China and Russia — despite the network’s federal support, in the form of competitive grants, accounting for about 1% of its annual operating budget.
In one email exchange, Musk appeared to be unclear about the difference between public media and state-controlled media when he decided to affix a state-affiliated media label on NPR’s account.
“Well, then we should fix it,” Musk wrote in an email on Wednesday to this reporter, when told that government support represents about 1% of NPR’s finances.
Musk added: “What’s the breakdown of NPR annual funding?”
In response, NPR provided Musk publicly available documentation of the network’s finances showing that nearly 40% of its funding comes from corporate sponsorships and 31% from fees for programming paid by local public radio stations.
NPR also covers the news free of any government influence — something that should mean it does not receive state-affiliated labeling, according to Twitter’s own rules.
Musk, in another email, compared NPR to media outlets controlled by governments of other countries, while also admitting “it sounds like” that might not be the case.
“The operating principle at new Twitter is simply fair and equal treatment, so if we label non-US accounts as govt, then we should do the same for US, but it sounds like that might not be accurate here,” he wrote.
It was a turnaround from a tweet he sent hours earlier that the state-affiliated label for NPR “seems accurate.”
Amid the conflicting remarks, in a Thursday email, Musk restated his interest in applying “any given rule fairly to all,” and he said the label for NPR’s account is still being evaluated.
Musk’s comments to NPR over the past two days only further clouded what was already a confusing situation.
But it’s not the first time chaos was the norm on the social media site.
Since Musk took over the platform in October, Twitter has at times taken a hostile stance toward the national press. Musk’s row with NPR is just the latest instance of the Twitter CEO’s increasingly confrontational stance toward the mainstream media, which often covers Musk and his companies critically.
Twitter stripped the New York Times of its verified blue check. And in December, Musk suspended the accounts of several high-profile journalists who shared tweets or reported on an account that tracked the comings and going of his private jet.
When reporters reach out for official comment from the company on news stories, Twitter’s communications department replies with a poop emoji.
But the label given to NPR was no laughing matter to free press watchers who viewed it as “a dangerous move that could further undermine public confidence in reliable news sources,” the literary organization PEN America said in a statement.
John Lansing, NPR’s president and chief executive, said in a statement that he was “disturbed” that Twitter has flagged the network as a state-affiliated news organization. “It is unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way,” Lansing said in a statement.
Label was intended to help users understand what they’re seeingDespite professing an interest in fairness, Musk appears to have run afoul of Twitter’s own guidelines in giving NPR a label that can harm its credibility.
“State-affiliated media” are outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content directly through funding, or indirectly through political pressure, according to the guidelines.
A former Twitter executive who helped develop the platform’s state-affiliation labels said that editorial independence had long been the deciding factor in whether to issue the designation,
The People’s Daily in China, and Sputnik and RT in Russia, for instance, received the labels, but outlets with editorial autonomy that received some government funding did not.
“In the end, [we] felt that the most fair and balanced way to implement labels was to call out state connections that had a demonstrated track record of influencing content of news reporting,” the former Twitter executive said.
That meant that NPR, the government-funded outlet Voice of America, “and even Al Jazeera didn’t quality under our designation,” the former employee said.
The point of the labels, the former executive said, was to help users understand what they’re seeing on the platform.
“That matters a lot when you see an outlet like Xinhua, have never heard of it, and it looks like a totally legit news source,” the former executive said about the state news agency that routinely pushes the official line of China’s President Xi Jinping.
Besides potentially besmirching the reputation of NPR, the label influences the reach of the network’s tweets.
Under Twitter’s rules, and according to the former executive, accounts that have been given the state-affiliated mark are not recommended or amplified on the platform — a process known as “downranking” among social media insiders.
For example, if someone who did not already follow Russian publications like RT or Sputnik searched for the government-backed publications on Twitter, the publications were not suggested, according to a second former Twitter employee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Accounts deemed affiliated with government, the employee said, were not allowed to advertise on Twitter. A list of what accounts received the label was never publicly revealed.
The policies were in place as a way of ensuring government propaganda did not run amuck on the platform. Now that Musk owns Twitter, it is unclear if the same platform and advertising restrictions on state-affiliated media are still in place.
NPR has not sent a tweet from its official account since Twitter affixed the label.
NPR spokeswoman Isabel Lara said since all of the news organization’s tweets now carry a “false disclaimer,” it has decided to halt tweets until the label is removed.
Asked if Twitter not removing the label meant that the company was standing by the decision, Musk punted.
“We’re digging into it,” he wrote.
NPR’s Dara Kerr contributed to this report.
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