QUICK HITS

1 W.VA. transgender athletics ban passed: Transgender athletes in West Virginia middle and high schools would be banned from competing on teams that align with their gender identity under a bill passed Thursday by the House of Delegates. The bill passed on a 78-20 vote with two delegates absent. It now goes to the state Senate.

2 Arrested Development’ actor dies: Jessica Walter, who played the scheming matriarch Lucille Bluth in TV’S “Arrested Development” and a stalker in the 1971 film “Play Misty for Me,” has died at 80, her daughter confirmed Thursday.

3 Ford loses in court: The Supreme 3 Court ruled Thursday that Ford Motor Co. can be sued in the state courts in cases of people who were killed or seriously injured in accidents involving Ford vehicles. The justices unanimously rejected Ford’s argument that its ties to Minnesota and Montana were too tenuous to allow it to be sued in those states by accident victims.

4 Levine confirmed: Voting mostly along party lines, the U.S. Senate has confirmed former Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine to be the nation’s assistant secretary of health. She is the first openly transgender federal official to win Senate confirmation. The final vote Wednesday was 52-48. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine joined all Democrats in supporting Levine.

5 Belarus protest: Protesters calling for the resignation of Belarus’ authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, marched in small groups Thursday in the capital, Minsk. The tactic was aimed at avoiding wide-scale arrests like those during the massive protest gatherings of 2020, some of which approached 200,000 people.