Elliot Page is on his “first dating app ever”.

The 35-year-old actor – who separated from Emma Portner in January 2021 after three years of marriage – revealed that he is looking for love online and thanked his ‘Umbrella Academy’ co-star Ritu Arya, 28, for “guiding me on my first dating app ever”.

Elliot made the announcement on Instagram.

Page publicly announced he was transgender in 2020 when he was still married to Portner and she responded with a supportive Instagram post.

She wrote: “I am so proud of @elliotpage. Trans, queer and non-binary people are a gift to this world. I also ask for patience privacy but that you join me in the fervent support of trans life every single day. Elliot’s existence is a gift in and of itself. Shine on sweet E. Love you so much.”

And Elliot explained he always knew he was a boy and couldn’t understand when people told him he wasn’t.

He said: “All trans people are so different, and my story’s absolutely just my story. But yes, when I was a little kid, absolutely, 100 percent, I was a boy. I knew I was a boy when I was a toddler. I was writing fake love letters and signing them ‘Jason.’ Every little aspect of my life, that is who I was, who I am, and who I knew myself to be.

“I just couldn’t understand when I’d be told, ‘No, you’re not. No, you can’t be that when you’re older’. You feel it. Now I’m finally getting myself back to feeling like who I am, and it’s so beautiful and extraordinary, and there’s a grief to it in a way.”

Washington (AFP) – Gymnastics star Simone Biles, actor Denzel Washington and the late tech visionary Steve Jobs have been named as recipients of America’s highest civilian honor, the White House said Friday.

President Joe Biden designated 17 Americans to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, three of them posthumous.

The White House said the medal recognizes “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

Among the recipients is Megan Rapinoe, the Olympic gold medalist soccer star, two-time Women’s World Cup champion and outspoken advocate on equality, race and LGBTQ issues.

Ahead of a ceremony on July 7, the White House said those honored had “overcome significant obstacles… and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities —  and across the world — while blazing trails for generations to come.”

One posthumous recipient this year is John McCain, a one-time Republican presidential nominee, long-time senator from Arizona, and Vietnam War veteran who won a Purple Heart.

Previous winners of the presidential medal include the basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Motown singer Diana Ross and the actor Robert De Niro.

Valkyrie’s sexuality was a “big topic of conversation” among the makers of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’.

Tessa Thompson has reprised the role of Valkyrie in the Taika Waititi-directed Marvel movie, and she’s revealed that her character’s sexuality was a major point of discussion before and during the shoot.

Tessa, 38 – who is attracted to both men and women, but chooses not to label herself bisexual – shared: “We talked about it a lot, it was big topic of conversation. Because I think rightfully there’s this real want in audiences to see characters be very clearly queer or LGBTQIA inside these spaces. And I think it’s hugely important to have representation.

“And also, as humans, I think that we are not defined by our sexuality, and by who we love. And so sometimes I think to hang a narrative completely on that is a way of actually diminishing the humanity of the character. Because you don’t allow them to be anything else.”

Tessa admits it’s difficult to explore the issue in real depth in a movie like ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’. However, she’s hopeful that it’ll happen one day.

She told Yahoo Entertainment: “It becomes the only storyline, particularly in a movie like this where you don’t, frankly, have a lot of room for storyline,.

“So there was a lot of conversation in terms of how to treat that with Valkyrie. And I feel really good, personally, about where we got to.

“I hope that she’s a character that fans continue to connect to, that we have a lot of time to explore her, in all of her humanity. But whether or not she finds love in this movie doesn’t mean she’s not still a fabulous queer character that is open to finding love when it makes sense.”

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown in its blockbuster abortion ruling and other high-profile decisions in recent days that it is fearless when it comes to overturning – and even ignoring – historic precedents.

And the conservative justices, with a 6-3 majority, may just be getting started, even as their current term came to a close on Thursday.

Among the cases the court already has taken up for its next term, starting in October, are two that give its conservative bloc an opportunity to end college and university policies considering race in admissions to achieve more student diversity – an approach the court upheld in a 2003 precedent and reaffirmed in 2016. Another case in the coming term involving federal protections for waterways will put a further precedent to the test.

The court in a flurry of recent rulings has overturned or undermined its own decades-old precedents.

“I think the most conservative justices dislike much of modern American law and are actively changing it. They aren’t going to let precedent get in their way,” University of Virginia Law School professor Douglas Laycock said.

The conservative justices have become increasingly assertive since the addition of former President Donald Trump’s third conservative appointee Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. Democratic President Joe Biden’s appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, sworn in to replace retiring fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer on Thursday, does not change the court’s ideological balance.

In the abortion ruling, called Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure nationwide, as well as one from 1992 that reaffirmed it. The conservative majority also consigned to oblivion rulings from 2016 and 2020 that struck down Republican-backed state abortion restrictions.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has been forthright about his willingness to ditch Supreme Court precedent.

“When faced with a demonstrably erroneous precedent, my rule is simple: We should not follow it,” Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion in a 2019 case.

That Thomas opinion focused on “stare decisis,” a Latin term referring to the legal principle that courts should not overturn precedents without a special reason. Conservative Justice Samuel Alito seemed to take the same view in the June 24 abortion ruling https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf, writing that the Roe landmark was “egregiously wrong.”

Thomas in the abortion case caused considerable alarm on the left by writing in his concurring opinion that the court should consider overturning other precedents protecting individual freedoms including the 2015 ruling that legalized gay marriage, the 2003 ruling that ended state bans on same-sex intimacy and the 1965 decision that protected access to birth control.

RELIGIOUS RIGHTS

In a June 27 religious rights ruling, the court took a slightly different approach to precedent when it further narrowed the separation of church and state in a decision in favor of a public high school football coach who was suspended by the local school district for leading prayers on the field with players after games.

The court effectively overruled a 1971 precedent that had outlined how to determine if a government has violated what is called the “establishment clause” of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which prohibits governmental endorsement of religion, although it did not explicitly say so.

Instead, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court “long ago abandoned” the prior ruling and subsequent decisions that had built upon it. Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that nothing in the court’s previous cases “support this court’s decision to dismiss that precedent entirely.”

David Gans, a lawyer at the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, said the court did not appear to want to acknowledge a “sea change” in the law.

“It’s very flippant,” Gans added.

Conservatives have long complained about affirmative action policies used by many colleges and universities to increase their numbers of Black and Hispanic students. The cases the court will hear involve Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The court also will consider limiting the scope of a landmark federal environmental law that regulates waterways in a case in which the challengers have asked the court to reconsider a 2006 precedent.

Among other major cases next term, the court will hear an appeal by North Carolina Republicans that could give state legislatures far more power over federal elections by limiting the ability of state courts to review their actions.

Another case could further weaken the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act enacted to protect Black and other minority voters in a dispute over Republican-drawn U.S. House of Representatives districts in Alabama.

The court throughout its history has occasionally explicitly overturned its precedents, starting in 1810 when it threw out a ruling from just two years earlier, according to a federal government database that lists 234 such cases.

In recent years, the court was most willing to overturn precedent in 2019, when it did so four times.

The court has found over time “lots of ways to evade, distinguish or overrule precedent,” Laycock said, adding that a liberal majority likely would do the same thing.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham and Scott Malone)

By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) – Just days after the U.S. Supreme Court abolished women’s constitutional right to abortion, Alabama has cited that ruling in a bid to outlaw parents from obtaining puberty blockers and certain other medical treatment for their transgender children.

The citation came in an appeal by Alabama’s attorney general seeking to lift a federal court injunction that partially blocked enforcement of a newly enacted state ban on medical interventions for youth whose gender identity is at odds with their birth sex.

The appeal is believed to mark the first time a state has expressly invoked the recent Supreme Court opinion overturning its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and applied the same reasoning to a separate issue bearing on other rights.

Echoing the high court’s language in striking down Roe, the Alabama appeal filed on Monday argued that the state has the authority to outlaw puberty-blocking hormones and other therapies for transgender minors in part because they are not “deeply rooted in our history or traditions.”

The appeal also asserted that such treatments are dangerous and experimental, contrary to broad agreement among mainstream medical and mental health professionals that such gender-affirming care saves lives by reducing the risk of depression and suicide.

Last Friday’s 5-4 decision from the Supreme Court’s conservative majority immediately paved the way for numerous states to enact measures erasing or restricting a woman’s ability to terminate her own pregnancy.

But civil liberties advocates have also worried that the latest abortion ruling, in a Mississippi case titled Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, would invite attempts by Republican-controlled legislatures to take aim at other rights that conservatives oppose.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, said nothing in the Dobbs decision should “cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

However, Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, urged the court to reconsider past rulings protecting the right to contraception, legalizing gay marriage nationwide and invalidating state laws banning gay sex.

CONSTITUTIONAL FOUNDATION

The Alabama appeal seeking to restore its law barring parents for providing gender-transitioning medical care to their children appeared intended to draw just such a review, according to LGBTQ rights proponents.

“This is the first case, to our knowledge, in which a state has invoked Dobbs to attack another fundamental right,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in an email to Reuters on Thursday.

Still, Minter said Alabama’s strategy was “unlikely to gain much traction because the majority opinion was so clear that its holding was restricted to the right to abortion.”

Alito sought to distinguish abortion from other established rights because of its implication for terminating what the Roe ruling termed “potential life.” But many legal scholars have noted that Dobbs calls into question the constitutional foundation for other rights later recognized by the court.

The Alabama law, passed by a Republican-dominated legislature, was blocked from enforcement in May, less than a week after it went into effect, in a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump.

Burke held that higher court rulings made clear that parents have a right to direct the medical care of their children if it meets acceptable standards and that transgender people are protected against discrimination under federal law.

Burke left in place the part of the law banning sex-altering surgeries, which experts say are extremely rare for minors, and other provisions prohibiting school officials from keeping certain gender-identity information secret from parents.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Dover (United States) (AFP) – On a bright moonlit night, a team of scientists and volunteers head out to a protected beach along the Delaware Bay to survey horseshoe crabs that spawn in their millions along the US East Coast from late spring to early summer.

The group make their way up the shoreline laying a measuring frame on the sand, counting the individuals inside it to help generate a population estimate, and setting right those unfortunate enough to have been flipped onto their backs by the high tide.

With their helmet-like shells, tails that resemble spikes and five pairs of legs connected to their mouths, horseshoe crabs, or Limulidae, aren’t immediately endearing.

But if you’ve ever had a vaccine in your life, you have these weird sea animals to thank: their bright blue blood, which clots in the presence of harmful bacterial components called endotoxins, has been essential for testing the safety of biomedical products since the 1970s, when it replaced rabbit testing.

“They’re really easy to love, once you understand them,” Laurel Sullivan, who works for the state government to educate members of the public about the invertebrates, tells AFP.

“They’re not threatening at all. They’re just going about their day, trying to make more horseshoe crabs.”

For 450 million years, these otherworldly creatures have patrolled the planet’s oceans, while dinosaurs arose and went extinct, and early fish transitioned to the land animals that would eventually give rise to humans.

Now, though, the “living fossils” are listed as vulnerable in America and endangered in Asia, as a result of habitat loss and overharvesting for use in food, bait, and the pharmaceutical industry, which is on a major growth path, especially in the wake of the Covid pandemic.

Recruiting citizen scientists helps engage the public while also scaling up the government’s data collection efforts, explains the survey project’s environment scientist Taylor Beck.

“Crabs” are something of a misnomer for the animals, which are in fact more closely related to spiders and scorpions, and are made up of four subspecies: one that inhabits the Eastern and Gulf coasts of North America, and the other three in Southeast Asia.

Atlantic horseshoe crabs have 10 eyes and feed by crushing up food, such as worms and clams, between their legs then passing the food to their mouths.

Males are noticeably smaller than females, whom they swarm in groups of up to 15 when breeding. Males grasp females as they head to shore, where the females deposit golf ball-size clusters of 5,000 eggs for the males to spray their sperm on.

Millions of these eggs, tiny green balls, are inadvertently churned up onto the beach surface, where they are a vital food source for migrating shorebirds, including the near-threatened Red Knot.

Nivette Perez-Perez, manager of community science at the Delaware Center for the Inland Bays, points out a vast band of eggs that stretch nearly the whole beach at the James Farm Ecological Preserve.

As she gestures, aptly-named laughing gulls with bright orange beaks swoop down to feast. 

Like others in the area, Perez-Perez long ago succumbed to the crabs’ charms. 

“You’re so cute,” she tells a female she has picked up to point out its anatomical features.

Just flip ’em

Breeding is a dangerous business for horseshoe crabs as it’s on the beach that they are at their most vulnerable: as the tide washes in, some end up on their backs, and while their long hard tails can help some right themselves, not all are so lucky. 

Around 10 percent of the population is lost each year  as their exposed undersides bake in the Sun.

In 1998, Glenn Gauvry, founder of the Ecological Research & Development Group, helped start the “Just flip ’em” campaign, encouraging members of the public to do their part by gently picking up upturned crabs that are still alive.

“Where it matters most of all, is changing the heart,” he tells AFP on Delaware Bay’s Pickering Beach, proudly sporting a “Just flip ’em” baseball cap festooned with horseshoe crab pins.

“If we can’t get people to care and to connect to these animals, then they’re less likely to want legislation to protect them.”

Every year around 500,000 horseshoe crabs are harvested and bled for a chemical called Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, vital for testing against a type of bacteria that can contaminate medications, needles and devices like hip replacements.

Estimates place the mortality rate of the process at 15 percent, with survivors released back to sea.

A new synthetic alternative called recombinant factor C appears promising, but faces regulatory challenges. 

Horseshoe crabs are a “finite source with a potentially infinite demand, and those two things are mutually exclusive,” Allen Burgenson, of Swiss biotech Lonza, which makes the new test, told AFP.  

By Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department has opened a probe into a division of the New York City Police Department looking at whether it engages in gender-biased policing, including how it handles investigations of sexual assault and treatment of survivors, the department said on Thursday.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it received information alleging deficiencies at the NYPD’s Special Victims Division (SVD) that have “persisted for more than a decade.”

The alleged deficiencies include failing to conduct basic investigative steps and instead shaming and abusing survivors and re-traumatizing them during investigations, the Justice Department said.

The probe will include a comprehensive review of the policies, procedures and training for SVD investigations of sexual assault crimes, the department said.

“Based on information provided to the Justice Department, we find significant justification to investigate whether the NYPD’s Special Victims Division engages in a pattern or practice of gender-biased policing,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

“Victims of sex crimes deserve the same rigorous and unbiased investigations of their cases that the NYPD affords to other categories of crime,” the Justice Department said.

The NYPD said it welcomed the review.

“I believe any constructive review of our practices in the Special Victims Division will show that the NYPD has been evolving and improving in this area but we will be transparent and open to criticism as well as ideas in the process,” Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said in a statement.

The probe will include a review of how SVD interacts with survivors and witnesses, how it collects evidence and completes investigations, and any steps the NYPD has taken to address deficiencies in its handling of sexual assault crimes, the Justice Department said.

The Justice Department said it will also reach out to the public to learn about their experiences with the SVD.

The department said it that in addition to notifying the police commissioner, it has notified New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYC Corporation Counsel Sylvia Hinds-Radix, who have agreed to cooperate with the investigation.

The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Leslie Adler)

London Pride will feature a Snapchat-powered AR art exhibition to celebrate queer artists.

The annual event – which is set to take place in the capital on Saturday 2 July – is designed to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and and this year will project work from “underrepresented” artists onto iconic London landmarks with an exhibition titled ‘Pride Augmented: A Celebration of Queer Art’, which attendees can experience with Snapchat.

Nnamdi Obiekwe, Co-Founder, V.O Curations said: “The opportunity to tell the stories of underrepresented and emerging LGBTQ+ artists through Snap’s AR technology is truly powerful and exciting. Pride Augmented: A Celebration of Queer Art is an exhibition geared towards creating a more inclusive LGBTQ+ community, a celebratory space for unique identities, and a restorative one for those who have faced barriers in their day-to-day lives. The exhibition is a reminder to all of the importance of representing and amplifying queer voices.”

Curated by V.O Curations, the exhibition includes the artworks of Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Flo Brooks, Emanuel de Carvalho, Guendalina Cerruti, Bernice Mulenga and Ebun Sodipo and pride goers can discover the exhibition, by opening their Snapchat camera to scan a rainbow-splashed Snapcode and enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibition from ‘The Orb.’

Paul Sabas, Co-Lead, Snap Pride said: “It’s our privilege to partner with VO Curations to showcase and celebrate the beautiful artwork of underrepresented, emerging artists from the LGBTQ+ community ahead of London Pride. This is an exhibition that truly celebrates and empowers diverse voices from the queer community. AR is a powerful tool for storytelling and for inclusivity. We are excited to bring the stories of these artists to life for Snapchatters and make these artworks accessible to our Gen Z community – we hope this exhibit will spark important conversations and help marginalised individuals in the LGBTQ+ community feel seen.”

Kit Connor says attending his first fashion show was “surreal”.

The ‘Heartstopper’ star called attending the Loewe catwalk at Paris Fashion Week “crazy” and lived up the hype after being invited by creative director Jonathan Anderson – who has dressed stars such as Josh O’Connor and Sir Anthony Hopkins – after he finished his final school exams.

The 18-year-old actor told GQ: “It was probably one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had, I did not see that coming. It’s one of those things that you always hear about as being one of the crazy experiences, and it lives up to it.”

Kit loved the outfit that Jonathan dressed him, saying “It was a look that fed into my own classic taste, but had a subtle edge,” and admitted that supporting LGBT designer was “a message that he wants to continue with” and vowed to “support the community as best he can.”

The Netflix star found his “outfit felt like a suit of armour” against the prongs of fans in the French capital.

Kit said: “The crowds of Heartstopper fans in Paris were quite mad and myself and the other cast members were quite swamped when we left the hotel. In a weird way my outfit felt like a suit of armour, which I think is something that’s really great about fashion – it gives you a shield of confidence.”

He also knows “there’s a lot” sartorially for him to try out before he finds his true style.

Kit said: “I’m still only 18 years old and so I think there’s lot for me to try out. I love photo shoots and I love getting to wear things I’d never usually wear.”