TRUMP BAN BLOCKS MOST TRANSGENDER TROOPS
President Donald Trump released an order Friday night banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under “limited circumstances,” following his calls last year to ban transgender individuals from serving.
The White House said retaining troops with a history or diagnosis of “gender dysphoria” — those who may require substantial medical treatment — “presents considerable risk to military effectiveness and lethality.”
Trump’s push for the ban has been blocked by legal challenges, and three federal courts have ruled against it. Waterpark management indicted in decapitation. A Kansas waterslide hyped as the world’s highest was a “deadly weapon” that had already injured more than a dozen people before a 10-year-old boy was decapitated on it in 2016, according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Friday that charges the water park operator and an executive with involuntary manslaughter.
The charges come after a 19-month investigation into the death of Caleb Schwab, the son of Kansas Rep. Scott Schwab. Caleb’s raft went airborne, hitting a pole and netting designed to keep riders from being thrown from the attraction. Car bomb kills 13. KABUL» A car bombing outside a sports stadium in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province on Friday killed 13 people and wounded 40 others, an official said.
Aminullah Abed, the chief of the province’s public health department, said the casualties were received at a hospital in the province’s capital, Lashkar Gah, with six of the wounded in critical condition and many burnt beyond recognition.
The explosion occurred after Afghan new year celebrations were winding down and revelers were on their way home. Doctor says pledge may have lived if help called sooner. PA.»A BELLEFONTE, forensic pathologist testified Friday that injuries that killed a Penn State fraternity pledge last year might not have been fatal if fraternity members had summoned help more quickly.
Dr. Harry Kamerow took the stand in a preliminary hearing to determine if there is sufficient evidence to proceed with charges against 11 members of Beta Theta Pi in the death of Tim Piazza of Lebanon, N.J.
Piazza, 19, died of severe head and spleen and abdominal injuries from falling down basement stairs the night of a pledge bid acceptance ceremony, Kamerow said, adding that Piazza had also consumed a dangerous amount of alcohol, three or four times the legal limit for driving.
Protesters gather at California Capitol to condemn
shooting. Dozens of activists gathered Friday at the state Capitol in Sacramento to protest the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man.
About 100 protesters — some carrying signs that said “What Weapon?” and “No Justice, No Peace” — gathered outside the Capitol building early Friday afternoon.
The rally followed a day of protests in this city that saw the brief closure of Interstate 5 and the blocking of access to a Sacramento Kings basketball game at Golden 1 Center arena.
District arms teachers with
rocks. A rural school district in Pennsylvania is arming teachers and students with buckets of rocks as a last resort should an armed intruder burst in, the superintendent said Friday.
Every classroom in the district about 90 miles northwest of Philadelphia has a 5-gallon bucket of river stones, said Blue Mountain School District Superintendent David Helsel.