LA Mayor Eric Garcetti tests positive for COVID-19
LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has tested positive for COVID-19, his office announced Wednesday morning.
Garcetti, who is fully vaccinated, “is feeling good and isolating in his hotel room,” according to a statement posted on Twitter.
The Democratic mayor is attending a United Nations conference on climate change in Glasgow, Scotland. He was originally set to moderate a panel Wednesday “on international finance to support city climate action” before participating in another discussion regarding solutions and challenges to tackling climate change, according to a schedule released by his office.
Garcetti, 50, got his first vaccine dose in January. At the time, he wasn’t in line to receive the vaccine, but medical personnel recommended he get the shot because he was working at Dodger Stadium as part of the city’s vaccination effort.
It’s unclear at this point what specific vaccine Garcetti received, or whether he’s gotten a booster shot.
Garcetti’s young daughter also tested positive for COVID-19 in December.
—Los Angeles Times
Florida principal's firing over Holocaust statements upheld
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A principal fired after refusing to say the Holocaust was a historical fact has lost an appeal to win back his job.
A state appeals court Wednesday rejected former Spanish River High School Principal William Latson's challenge to the Palm Beach County School Board's decision last year to terminate him over his explosive remarks.
The decision brings the two-year legal battle over Latson's employment closer to an end, though the former principal can still appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.
The administrator was first ousted in October 2019 after telling a parent via email he "can't say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee."
The comment, revealed more than a year after the fact in a July 2019 Palm Beach Post article, led to calls for his removal from the school. When Latson blamed the outcry on the parent who received the email, local lawmakers and the Anti-Defamation League called for his termination.
Under increasing political pressure, then-Superintendent Donald Fennoy moved to fire him.
Latson appealed, and an administrative law judge sided with him, concluding in August 2020 that Latson's actions did not merit termination.
—The Palm Beach Post
San Diego is 5th US city to ban 'he,' 'she' in policies, laws
SAN DIEGO — San Diego became the fifth city in the nation Tuesday to prohibit future use of "he" and "she" in city laws and policies so that transgender people feel more welcome in the city's government.
"Using gender-neutral language in the development of our policies is the right and just path forward," City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera said after a unanimous council vote. "Actions like this are about honoring the humanity of all people."
Oakland, Berkeley, Boston and Portland have already adopted similar "inclusive language" policies regarding gender and sexual orientation. And 11 states have approved "third gender" identification cards for people who don't identify as either male or female.
The goal is making governments more welcoming and accommodating for the roughly 1% of people who don't identify as either male or female, but instead prefer to use pronouns like "they" and "their."
Critics of such efforts say government leaders should focus their time and resources on projects and policies that affect a greater number of people in more significant ways.
National surveys have shown that just under 1% of U.S. residents identify as non-binary, roughly a quarter of the 4% to 5% of residents who identify as either lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
Voters in 2 Va. counties keep Confederate monuments
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Middle Peninsula voters overwhelmingly want to keep their Confederate monuments, according to results of advisory referendums in Mathews and Middlesex counties.
Mathews voters rejected a proposal to relocate the county’s Soldier’s & Sailor’s Monument on its court green at the corner of Court and Church streets by 3,778, or 80% of ballots cast, to 939, or 20%.
In Middlesex, the vote against moving its Civil War Monument from the courthouse grounds in Saluda was 3,229, or 75% of ballots cast, to 1,076.
The Mathews total exceeded by roughly 300 votes the ballots cast for Republican statewide candidates, but the Middlesex total lagged its GOP statewide tally by about 500 votes.
Mathews’ monument was erected in 1912, after a six-year fundraising effort by the Lane-Diggs Camp of Confederate veterans, the Mathews Monument Association and the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Middlesex erected its Daughters of the Confederacy monument in 1910.
—Daily Press
