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Most states in South have banned gender-affirming care for trans youth

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

(The Hill) -- Gender-affirming treatments, including puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries, are now inaccessible for transgender minors in much of the South because of new laws that heavily restrict or ban such care for youths younger than 18.Since 2021, lawmakers in 12 of the 16 states considered regionally South by the U.S. Census Bureau have passed legislation that prevents medical professionals from administering gender-affirming health care to transgender youths, accounting for more than half of bans enacted nationwide. Laws passed in states including Florida and Missouri also restrict access to care for some transgender adults.Four Southern states — Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and Virginia — plus Washington, D.C., have not enacted a law or policy banning gender-affirming health care. That isn’t for a lack of trying, however. Bills that were introduced this year in Virginia and South Carolina failed to advance through the respective state...

Snow day, meet heat day: Summer weather takes bites from school calendars

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

(The Hill) - The ritual of snow days is a beloved part of American childhood. Kids wake up on winter mornings with frost in the air and ice on the roads and anxiously check to see if school was canceled or delayed. But now, summer is chipping away at the academic calendar too: Heat days are taking their toll. Hundreds of schools across the country have started out their school year by promptly shutting down due to extreme August weather fueled by climate change.“Milwaukee Public Schools will be closed tomorrow, Wednesday, August 23, 2023, due to an excessive heat warning for Milwaukee County,” the school district said Tuesday as temperatures reached the upper 90s in the area. In the past few years, heat days have become more common near the end and beginning of academic year as temperatures climb and schools lack the proper infrastructure to handle the change. “The heat wave season is getting longer. The average length of the annual heat wave season in the 1960s was maybe ...

Idalia to become major hurricane before hitting Florida's coast

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — Tropical Storm Idalia intensified early Monday and was expected to become a major hurricane before it reaches Florida's Gulf coast, the National Hurricane Center said Monday, warning of an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and dangerous hurricane-force winds in Florida as soon as late Tuesday.Heavy rainfall in western Cuba could produce flooding and landslides, forecasters said, and hurricane-force winds were expected later Monday.At 8 a.m. EDT Monday, the storm was about 90 miles off the western tip of Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. The storm was moving north at 8 mph at the time, the hurricane center said. Why do so many ‘infamous’ hurricanes have ‘I’ names? The center's update also included a hurricane advisory for the Cuban province of Pinar Del Rio.Forecasters said they expected Idalia to become a hurricane later Monday and a dangerous major hurricane by early Wednesday over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico.Idalia was expected to move n...

Central Texas leaders mark 60th anniversary of March on Washington, launch equity initiative

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Monday marks the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech that was delivered during the  March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. In Austin, a community event will take place on the South Steps of the Texas State Capitol at 9 a.m. to celebrate the progress made since MLK’s speech while launching a new equity initiative.The group is calling it Dream Together 2030, a goal to begin building a better future for Central Texas.Several churches, nonprofits and local leaders are involved in the effort.Greater Calvary Bible Church archbishop Sterling Lands is one of the organizers of this initiative.“This movement is to go to 2030, where we want Austin to be the model for the rest of the nation as the beloved community,” he said.Bianca Neal is the executive director of the SaulPaul Foundation. She says the group will work towards achieving a seven-year goal of positively changing the lives of everyone in the Austin area.“It's a ...

This high-alpine lake is one of Colorado’s most spectacular hikes

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).Longs Peak has held a special place in my heart since the first time I climbed it 30 years ago. I love the way its sheer east face turns bright orange when it catches the rays of a rising sun. I love that it is visible from cities along the Front Range so I can see it often and, whenever I do, it awakens wonderful memories of the times I’ve been up there.Nearly 2,500 feet below its 14,259-foot summit, at the foot of the east face, lies a beautiful alpine tarn called Chasm Lake. The summit of Longs towers over its western edge, and steep rock walls to the right and left soar 1,200 feet, making it one of the most spectacular alpine cirques in Colorado. It’s also one of the best hikes in Rocky Mountain National Park. No doubt for...

Interactive, kid-friendly exhibit will take you back to the feel-good future

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

The Denver Art Museum’s Precourt Gallery is always one of the institution’s best surprises. It’s a family-friendly space, located halfway up the Hamilton Building’s quirky central staircase, and it is programmed with the work of local artists, who don’t otherwise get a lot of real estate at this internationally-minded art haven.A detail from one of the digital elements of Chris Bagely’s “Space Command.” Provided by Chris BagleyRight now, the gallery is featuring Denver artist Chris Bagley’s “Space Command,” an interactive installation with a nostalgic, sci-fi edge. Bagley is something of a mad inventor who creates, in his own words, “visual scapes.” For this piece, he combined found objects — astronaut helmets, kitchen utensils, out-dated electronics, digital projections, recycled mylar and other unexpected raw materials — to create a stage set that feels like an other-worldly way station in some far-off galaxy.Museums visitors are invited to marvel at “Space Command’s” clever...

Indigenous people in Colorado say they should be leading plant-based psychedelics movement

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

For 10 years, Kuthoomi Castro trained under Indigenous elders in Ecuador before he began the practice known within Native communities as serving medicine.The journey that led him to lead traditional ceremonies and give ayahuasca — a plant-based psychedelic brew — to others was long but sacred.“This is my tradition and my path,” Castro said.That’s why the Boulder resident and clinical counselor doesn’t take the use or distribution of psychedelics lightly. It’s what drove him and other Indigenous people — as part of a group called the Native Coalition of Colorado — to protest at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference this summer in Denver.The members argue that Natives who have been using plant-based psychedelics for generations should not only be more involved in the discussions but leading them. They worry that the measure decriminalizing psychedelics will allow the wealthy and the powerful to profit as psychedelics are misused and abused. And they are concerned that co...

Denver Book Club: “The Vaster Wilds,” Tom Hanks’ novel and more short reviews from readers

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. Sure, you could read advertising blurbs on Amazon, but wouldn’t you be more likely to believe a neighbor with no skin in the game over a corporation being fed words by publishers? So in this series, we are sharing these mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email [email protected].“The Vaster Wilds,” by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, September 2023)“The Vaster Wilds,” by Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books, September 2023)Related ArticlesBooks | “The Bitter Past” and two other mystery novels to read right now Books | Short book reviews: “People of the Book,” “Liar’s Dictionary” and more Books | “Trust,” “The Deep Sky” and more short book reviews from Denver readers Books | “Le...

AI brings the robot wingman to aerial combat

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

By Eric Lipton, The New York TimesEGLIN AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — It is powered into flight by a rocket engine. It can fly a distance equal to the width of China. It has a stealthy design and is capable of carrying missiles that can hit enemy targets far beyond its visual range.But what really distinguishes the Air Force’s pilotless XQ-58A Valkyrie experimental aircraft is that it is run by artificial intelligence, putting it at the forefront of efforts by the U.S. military to harness the capacities of an emerging technology whose vast potential benefits are tempered by deep concerns about how much autonomy to grant to a lethal weapon.Essentially a next-generation drone, the Valkyrie is a prototype for what the Air Force hopes can become a potent supplement to its fleet of traditional fighter jets, giving human pilots a swarm of highly capable robot wingmen to deploy in battle. Its mission is to marry artificial intelligence and its sensors to identify and evaluate enemy threats ...

A new lease on life: Denver unveils 16 office towers best suited for conversion to residential

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:28:50 GMT

The city of Denver now has a clearer picture of what distressed downtown office buildings would make the best candidates to switch over to residences, part of a larger effort to make it easier for investors and developers to take on the task.Denver has designated 16 buildings as prime candidates for conversion and behind them another 13 that score highly in terms of their convertibility, according to a study that Denver commissioned the global architectural firm Gensler to conduct.“Downtown towers are a different animal to demolish. It would be a shame to waste them,” said Jennifer Ramsey, adaptive reuse administrator at Denver’s Department of Community Planning and Development.Fewer employees are going to the office after the big shift to remote work during the pandemic and in Denver employee counts downtown in June were only at 60% of the levels seen in 2019, according to the High Frequency Economic Update from the Downtown Denver Partnership.While that rebound b...