List of All Articles with Tag 'ca'

Over 150 books have been removed from a large, Orlando-area Florida school district, including classics like The Scarlet Letter, Paradise Lost, and The Invisible Man, as school officials review materials for sexual content under the state’s restrictive book ban laws. According to a teacher keeping track of books that have been temporarily pulled for review by the Orange County government, titles by Shakespeare have been restricted to only 10th through 12 graders, while other popular works like The Fault in Our Stars, Into the Wild, and Catch-22 have been put on the restricted list because of sexual material. One teacher told The Orlando Sentinel she was “gobsmacked” when she saw Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was among the restricted works. She said she chooses works to study in class “to engage my students, to offer them literature that makes them think,” and that an accurate version of “the adolescent experience” in literature may contain some sexual themes, but still be valid for the classroom. “It’s just so frustrating and disheartening,” she said. The state’s book ban laws, passed under Republican governor Ron DeSantis, have caused empty shelves across Florida. “The books are sitting out on tables, they’re being boxed up and discarded,” Florida school librarian Keri Clark told The Independent earlier this year. “It’s just it’s a really sad sight. A lot of the kids keep looking through the window and it’s just it’s awful that I can’t let them come in and get books.” The Florida policyies are part of a nationwide surge of book bans. During the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, school officials tried to restrict at least 874 individual book titles, according to PEN America, a nearly 30 per cent spike from book challenges over the previous year. Overwhelmingly, the book ban attempts singled out works by and about people of colour and LGBT+ people, PEN found. At least 30 per cent of the impacted titles are books about race, racism, or feature characters of colour, and more than a quarter of all titles include LGBT+ characters or themes. Read More Biden condemns ‘hysterical’ threats to LGBT+ Americans as White House pushes back on book bans As conservatives target schools, LGBTQ+ kids and students of color feel less safe Florida mom who tried to ban Amanda Gorman’s book has ties to far-right groups

NEW YORK Bank of America (BofA) said on Wednesday it planned to increase its quarterly common stock dividend

Former President Donald Trump launched an unhinged rant after cocaine was found at the White House. “Does anybody really believe that the COCAINE found in the West Wing of the White House, very close to the Oval Office, is for the use of anyone other than Hunter & Joe Biden,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “But watch, the Fake News Media will soon start saying that the amount found was ‘very small,’ & it wasn’t really COCAINE, but rather common ground up Aspirin, & the story will vanish. Has Deranged Jack Smith, the crazy, Trump hating Special Prosecutor, been seen in the area of the COCAINE? He looks like a crackhead to me!” he added. The Independent previously reported that prosecutors under the leadership of the special counsel could bring 30 to 45 additional criminal charges against the former president in the coming weeks after the 37 counts that Mr Trump is already facing following his alleged mishandling of national security information after leaving office. “Whatever happened to the 1,850 BOXES of Documents that Biden won’t show to anybody? What about the Docs found in Chinatown, D.C., and those in his unsecured garage, where Hunter stayed as China was sending Biden millions and millions of dollars for doing absolutely ‘nothing?’ Maybe the nothing was ‘for doing plenty!’” Mr Trump added in a subsequent post on Wednesday without providing evidence for his claims. “Where are the White House SECURITY TAPES, like the ones I openly and happily gave to Deranged Jack Smith, which will quickly show where the Cocaine in the White House came from??? They already know the answer, but probably don’t like it!” he added. There were classified documents found in President Joe Biden’s home and an office he occupied before becoming president, but his attorneys alerted the government about the files and cooperated in efforts to hand them back. The white, powdery substance that prompted the brief evacuation of the White House over the weekend was confirmed to be cocaine by laboratory testing. A spokesperson for the US Secret Service, which by law is responsible for security in and around the 18-acre White House campus, confirmed the laboratory result in an email on Wednesday. The spokesperson, Anthony Gugliemi, previously said the agency was standing up “an investigation into the cause and manner” of how the cocaine came to be in a public waiting area in the West Wing, where it was discovered late Sunday by officers with the Secret Service Uniformed Division. According to DC Fire and EMS Department radio transmissions archived by OpenMHZ, firefighters with the department’s hazardous materials unit who were called to investigate the then-unidentified powder used a field test to analyse a small sample, which returned a presumptive result for cocaine hydrochloride. Neither President Joe Biden nor any other members of his family were present at the White House during the incident, as the Biden family spent the holiday weekend at Camp David, the US Navy-operated presidential retreat in Thurmont, Maryland. Mr Biden and several family members departed the White House on Friday and returned late on Monday to participate in several Independence Day events. Read More Tests show white powder found at White House is cocaine Judge's order limits government contact with social media operators, raises disinformation questions Trump news - live: Trump calls special prosecutor a ‘crackhead’ in response to White House cocaine discovery Judge's order limits government contact with social media operators, raises disinformation questions Trump will report raising more than $35 million in second quarter, campaign says Watch as Karine Jean-Pierre holds briefing

By Jason Lange WASHINGTON Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's main fundraising committee raised more than $35 million during

By Rajesh Kumar Singh CHICAGO JetBlue Airways Corp said on Wednesday it will not appeal a U.S. judge's

Residents of the city's refugee camp say homes were destroyed in the Israeli military operation.

By Jeff Mason and Steve Holland WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Cocaine discovered in the White House on Sunday was found in a

By David Lawder WASHINGTON U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai's meetings with North American trade partners Canada and Mexico

By Ismail Shakil OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Canadian government will stop buying ads on Facebook and Instagram amid a dispute over

Not even Caitlin Clark can avoid a rogue iron shot here and there.

The Canadian government is suspending its advertisements on Facebook and Instagram in response to Meta Platforms Inc.’s plan

Federal Reserve officials were less united at their June meeting than their unanimous decision suggested, as some favored