#public-policy

#public-policy

The U.S. soon could witness "the most substantial Pride celebrations in recent memory," one bill tracker said.People chant during a protest at the Texas State Capitol on April 20, 202,3 in Austin, Texas.Community members and activists rallied together in protest against numerous anti-LGBTQIA+ and drag bills being proposed in the legislature.Brandon Bell / Getty Images Several different legislative trackers have noted that, in the first five months of this year leading up to Pride Month, which began on June 1, hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills have been proposed in statehouses across the country, with dozens of them passing.

Meta has begun to block some Canadian users of Facebook and Instagram from accessing or posting news content until the end of the month.The move, which the social media giant announced in a blog post on Thursday, comes in reaction to the looming passage into law of Bill C-18, the Online News Act.Facebook has said it will be forced to block news content from its platforms in Canada if the bill becomes law, something that could happen as soon as this month as the bill is currently being considered in the Senate.

Riding the so-called parental rights movement, more Republican-led states are changing the way they fund K-12 education, making it easier for families to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private schools.All families in Iowa, Utah, Arkansas and Florida regardless of their income will soon be eligible for thousands of state dollars each year to send their children to private K-12 schools after new legislation was passed during the first three months of this year.

Rishi Sunak is at risk of missing his flagship target to halve inflation this year, one of Britain's leading economic forecasters has warned, as households are left thousands of pounds worse off amid the cost of living crisis.Sounding the alarm over the hit to living standards, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said the soaring price of food and other basic essentials meant inflation was on track to remain persistently high for the rest of this year.

The last time people were this worked up about chatbots, it was because Microsoft released one that became infamous for turning racist.Back in 2016, Tay seemed to validate skeptics of A.I.-fueled internet buddies-but now, the runaway success of ChatGPT has given A.I. optimists a future to cheer for.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles school board President Jackie Goldberg pulled out an oversized children's book titled "The Great Big Book of Families" and turned a public meeting into story time, her own not-so-subtle statement to critics of LGBTQ+ education."In real life, families come in all sorts of shapes and sizes," she read, as the text by British author Mary Hoffman explained.

The bill would bar unions for teachers and nurses from automatically collecting dues.Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gives remarks at the Heritage Foundation's 50th Anniversary Leadership Summit at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center on April 21, 2023, in National Harbor, Maryland.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images The Republican-dominated Florida legislature passed an extreme anti-labor bill on Wednesday that would severely weaken unions for public employees and expand the state's ability to abolish those unions, while carving out an exemption for a notable group: police.

Hodding Carter III, then-president, CEO and trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, answers a question during a news conference in Washington, on Nov. 24, 2003.Carter has died at age 88.Susan Walsh/AP CHAPEL HILL, N.C.Hodding Carter III, a Mississippi journalist and civil rights activist who as U.S. State Department spokesman informed Americans about the Iran hostage crisis and later won awards for his televised documentaries, has died.

When I was a boy, my father was my hero.He could do nothing wrong.What he said was always right, and what he did had no fault.At night, when my father would make his nightly rounds, saying good night to each of his children, I, the only boy of three, was the last to be visited by him and received the most time and attention.

The killing this month of young Chicago police Officer Aréanah Preston left many of us feeling numb and quite angry.As we as a nation and a metropolitan area go through the stages of grief to begin to understand why young people would allegedly take the life of a police officer, it's essential that we realize the shooting was a blatant attack on our civility as a city and a nation in some sense.

A long-delayed bill introduced to Parliament on Wednesday promises to oversee a once-in-a-generation overhaul of housing laws, according to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which pledges safer, fairer and higher quality homes for 11 million British renters.The government says the Renters' (Reform) Bill is designed to ensure the systems works for landlords and tenants.

The HousingWire award spotlight series highlights the individuals who have been previously recognized by the HW Editors' Choice Awards.Nominations for HousingWire's Women of Influence award are open now through Friday, May 19, 2023.Click here to nominate a female leader in the industry a client, colleague, boss or friend it can even be you!

The HousingWire award spotlight series highlights the individuals who have been previously recognized by the HW Editors' Choice Awards.ominations for HousingWire's Women of Influence award are now open through Friday, May 19, 2023.to nominate a female leader in the industry - a client, colleague, boss or friend - it can even be you!

Produced by The Ezra Klein Show' The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows including this one which we're making available to readers for a limited time.Download the audio app here.Today's future-positive writers critique our economies while largely seeming to ignore that anything might be amiss in our private lives, writes Kristen Ghodsee.

On Wednesday, Chris Licht's turbulent tenure at CNN was abruptly cut short, just over a year after he stepped into the top job.The network will be managed on an interim basis by a group of three editorial executives Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley and Eric Sherling until a permanent replacement for Mr. Licht is found.

People are having to pay more for baby formula in Canada and that's putting pressure on families who can't afford to shoulder those cost increases.A prominent infant food insecurity expert says it's a long-term problem that's getting worse."If you're a very low-resource family, where you're relying often on food-charity responses, then those babies, I would say, are some of the most food-insecure Canadian citizens," said Lesley Frank, a Canada research chair in food, health and social justice at Nova Scotia's Acadia University.

Canadian domestic politics have helped magnify the most recent dispute between Beijing and Ottawa into a full blown tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats.While some experts who track relations between China and Canada play the spat down one called it "pretty trivial" it's one more crack contributing to a far more dangerous long-term rupture.

It's only Wednesday, but for my money, the most important international article The New York Times will publish this week is this one about women in South Korea forced or tricked into violent sexual servitude as comfort women for foreign soldiers.The story of Korean women enslaved by the Japanese during World War II is now well known.

New Jersey's top election-enforcement official sued Gov. Philip D. Murphy and three of Mr. Murphy's top aides on Thursday for what the official said was their attempt to oust him in retaliation for comments he made ridiculing the state's rules governing political fund-raising.The election official, Jeffrey M. Brindle, claims in his lawsuit that Mr. Murphy, a Democrat, and the governor's chief of staff, George Helmy, targeted him in a concerted and joint action and conspiracy to extort and coerce him.

The value of the Turkish lira as measured in dollars plunged Wednesday by more than 7 percent to a record low, signaling a potential shift in the government's economic policy.Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's government has been at pains to prop up the value of the lira, creating incentives to prevent people from exchanging the currency and pushing the central bank to sell off foreign exchange reserves.

Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday filed the paperwork for his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, setting up a clash with his running mate of elections past, former President Donald Trump.Pence is set to formally announce his candidacy on Wednesday ahead of a CNN presidential town hall that evening.

(Editor's note: (This post is part of a series by the Diversity Pilots Initiative, which advances inclusive innovation through rigorous research.The first blog in the series is here, and resources from the first conference of the initiative are available here.-Jason) By: Jillian Grennan, Associate Professor of Finance and Principal, Diversity Pilots Initiative Recently, I had the privilege of being part of the Junior Innovation Economics Conference at Harvard Business School.

The Mercury provides news and fun every single day-but your help is essential.If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us.Thanks for your support!GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND!Hopefully you were able to enjoy a long Memorial Day weekend.

The Mercury provides news and fun every single daybut your help is essential.If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution, because without you, there is no us.Thanks for your support!Good morning, Portland!If last week's weather had you breaking out the jorts, you might want to opt for rain boots instead.

Efforts to craft a Canadian grocery code of conduct have reached a major milestone with a proposed final version that includes a process to resolve disputes and impose sanctions on systemic violators of the code.However, the language in a copy of the proposed code obtained by The Canadian Press appears to stop short of imposing fines on companies that fail to adhere to its principles.

Meta has accused the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) of pursuing an anti-Big Tech political agenda, after the agency proposed a blanket prohibition on Wednesday seeking to ban the company from profiting off of children's data.In its press release, the government's top data-privacy regulator alleges that the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp repeatedly violated its privacy promises in a way that has put young users at risk.

After processing what he heard on cable television, former President Donald Trump publicly announced two weeks ago that on Tuesday, March 21, he would be arrested by the New York Police Department.That day came and went with no arrest.Mr. Trump is the subject of four criminal investigations: one by the Manhattan district attorney for campaign finance fraud; one by the Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney for conspiracy to subvert an election; and two by the feds, one for conspiracy to subvert a congressional function on Jan. 6, 2021, and the other for retention of national defense secrets at his Florida home and obstruction of justice by hiding the secrets.

From grocery rebates to expanded dental care, the federal government's 2023 budget offers billions in spending on new initiatives for residents across Canada, but contained nothing specific to offset a pandemic-induced budget hole plaguing Toronto.For months, the city has been appealing to the both the federal and provincial governments to step up and help fill a $933-million budget deficit created by the COVID-19 pandemic, or risk stifling the economy of Canada's largest city.

A federal judge in Texas holds a hearing Wednesday morning in a lawsuit seeking to block access to mifepristone nationwide, the first drug in the medication abortion process.Data analyzed by CNN shows mifepristone is even safer than some common, low-risk prescription drugs, including penicillin and Viagra.