JoJo Siwa “realised [she] was gay at Disney World”.

The 19-year-old star loves visiting the Florida resort, and she’s revealed that some of the most important moments in her life have taken place at Disney World.

JoJo told PEOPLE: “I have a lot of really fun memories here. I have a lot of really hard memories here, but I have grown a lot at Disney.

“I fell in love for the first time at Disney World. I realised I was gay at Disney World. I went through stages of heartbreak at Disney World. There’s been a lot in my personal life that Disney World has really attributed to.”

JoJo came out as gay in 2021, shortly before she went public with her romance with Kylie Prew.

The dancer – who split from Kylie in 2022 – recalled: “I was here for 14 days with a girl that was my really good friend and I realised that, ‘Oh, I like her.’ And having all those feelings while just being in the most magical place in the world and the happiest place on Earth was so cool. We’re not together anymore, but we did have some really fun, happy memories here.”

In 2022, meanwhile, JoJo explained that her “gay awakening” started with Demi Lovato’s 2015 hit ‘Cool for the Summer’ – when she was 12.

The former ‘Dance Moms’ star discovered she was a lesbian when she heard the song about same-sex experimentation.

She said on TikTok: “I really, really liked it and listened to it all the time.

“I did not know what it meant back then but now that I’m much older and I understand, I know what it means.”

Washington (AFP) – When President Joe Biden motorcades from the White House to an environmental protection event on Tuesday he will hear grumbling on the left and grumbling on the right. And the 80-year-old Washington veteran will be perfectly happy.

The country is still waiting for Biden to announce officially that he will seek a second term next year. But already the Democrat has made clear what path he intends to use to get there: down the center.

In an era of intense blacks and whites, Biden wants gray.

So when he addresses the environment forum at the Department of the Interior, he will highlight what his press office calls the administration’s “historic investments to advance conservation, restoration, and stewardship.”

He may mention that he oversaw Congress’ passing of the biggest green energy spending bill in history, the IRA. Or his raft of orders giving national monument protection to wild areas that Donald Trump — whom he beat in 2020 and could face again in 2024 — tried to open to development.

But Biden will also be speaking a week after approving a huge ConocoPhillips oil drilling project in the Alaskan wilderness that is projected to release the pollution equivalent of two million cars.

Biden has similarly baffled friends and wrong-footed enemies on his approach to the chaotic southern border with Mexico.

Last year, a constant flow of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers left his administration looking near helpless. This year, strict new measures discouraging them from even trying have resulted in dramatic reductions.

Biden is even reportedly considering authorizing a revival of one of the most fiercely criticized policies under Trump — detaining whole families if they cross the border illegally.

“The Biden administration has really turned a corner,” said Bilala Askaryar, an activist in the group Welcome With Dignity, demonstrating outside the White House.

‘Common sense’

Biden’s calculation seems to be that he can afford to annoy some of his most passionate supporters.

In a presidential election that could well see Trump or fellow right-wing populist Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the Republican candidate, the left will have nowhere else to go.

And in the meantime, Biden hopes to build a consensus that the country’s often ignored centrists can embrace.

To some extent, the shift has been forced on Biden.

In the first two years of his presidency Democrats held narrow majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives, and managed to pass a surprising amount of legislation — including big ticket items beloved on the left. But since last November’s midterms, Biden has faced the cold reality of a Republican-led House.

“Now that they’ve lost the House,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican, on NBC News, Biden is “just following common sense.”

Biden still takes stands — but he chooses his battles carefully.

While DeSantis and other Republicans get ever more upset about “woke” Democrats, drag show queens and transgender rights, Biden went on the late night Daily Show this month with an impassioned defense. Restrictions being enacted on transgender youths in DeSantis’ Florida, he said, are “close to sinful.”

He’s also building an economic platform emphasizing fierce pushback against Republican pressure to slash social spending.

As the country lurches towards 2024, it seems for now that Biden’s succeeding in walking that tightrope.

On the right, it’s harder and harder to paint Biden as an out-of-control socialist.

As the conservative National Review wrote, the current White House and Biden’s new chief of staff Jeff Zients are clearly “either less instinctively liberal or less interested in fulfilling the progressive wish list in Biden’s third or fourth year in office.”

And on the left, Biden simply has lots of political capital to burn.

“I still believe that in the vast majority of areas that he has been terrific,” Pramila Jayapal, chair of the leftist Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives, said on NBC.

Or as a longtime leftist Democratic pillar, Senator Elizabeth Warren, put it: “We don’t agree on everything, but, boy, I’m glad he’s president.”

Rosie O’Donnell feels as if she is in the “third chapter” of her life.

The stand-up comedienne – who was previously married to Kelli Carpenter and the late Michelle Rounds – turned 61 on Tuesday (21.03.23) and decided upon celebrating her milestone birthday last year that her life was in three sets of 30 years so has decided to put the “past in the past” with the launch of her new politically-charged podcast ‘Onward.’

She told PEOPLE: “When I turned 60, I felt as though life is like a three chapter book, zero to 30, 30 to 60, 60 onward. I’m in the third chapter of the book. So let’s put all the past in the past, and let’s just focus on being where we are right now, and onward to another day. And that’s kind of the place that I’m at in my life and careers. And that’s the place that we arrive at the podcast.”

According to reports, the former talk show host has lined up a host of guests for the podcast including the likes of Sharon Gless, Jenifer Lewis, Natasha Lyonne, Margaret Cho, Lisa Ann Walter, Camryn Manheim, Ricki Lake, Kathy Griffin, Rory Kennedy and transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney about various rights.

She added: “We’re going to be talking about that, about trans rights, about non-binary, about how to understand it and how to have conversations about it. We’re going to be talking about the horrors of women’s rights and the anti-abortion folk, and what that’s doing to our country and national standing in the world, and what it does to women’s lives, and how horrible this swing to the right really is. There’s a wide variety of topics that interest me — and guests.

It won’t be a purely celebrity-driven podcast. The celebrity part was almost the least interesting part of it to me. Getting to talk to people that are my friends and have a conversation without necessarily promoting something that they’re doing, just to have a real honest conversation with people that I have been lucky enough to get to know, and love, and admire.”

‘Onward’ is available to stream on Spotify now.

By Jennifer Rigby

LONDON (Reuters) – Some of the world’s leading makers of flu vaccines say they could make hundreds of millions of bird flu shots for humans within months if a new strain of avian influenza ever jumps across the species divide.

One current outbreak of avian flu known as H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4b has killed record numbers of birds and infected mammals. Human cases, however, remain very rare, and global health officials have said the risk of transmission between humans is still low.

Executives at three vaccine manufacturers – GSK Plc Moderna Inc and CSL Seqirus, owned by CSL Ltd – told Reuters they are already developing or about to test sample human vaccines that better match the circulating subtype, as a precautionary measure against a future pandemic.

Others, like Sanofi, said they “stand ready” to begin production if needed, with existing H5N1 vaccine strains in stock.

There has also been a push among companies to develop a bird flu vaccine for poultry, a market potentially far larger than that for humans.

Less reassuring, however, is that most of the potential human doses are earmarked for wealthy countries in long-standing preparedness contracts, global health experts and the companies said.

Many countries’ pandemic plans say flu shots should go first to the most vulnerable while supply is limited. But during COVID-19, many vaccine-rich countries inoculated large proportions of their populations before considering sharing doses.

“We could potentially have a much worse problem with vaccine hoarding and vaccine nationalism in a flu outbreak than we saw with COVID,” said Dr Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which helps fund vaccine research.

An international framework for pandemic flu allocates 10% of global supply for the World Health Organization to share with low- and middle-income countries. By contrast, the WHO is seeking guarantees of 20% global supply for other types of pandemic in the wake of COVID.

The U.N. agency said it has signed legally binding agreements with 14 manufacturers for 10% of their pandemic flu vaccine “as it comes off the production line”, in a mix of donated doses and doses to be bought by the agency at an affordable price. The agreements include six of the largest seasonal flu manufacturers, such as GSK, Sanofi and CSL Seqirus, the WHO said.

WHO did not comment on the potential for vaccine hoarding in a flu pandemic but said mechanisms were being developed “so that countries can work together – not in competition with each other” to respond to such a crisis. It said it was “fully confident” manufacturers and member states would meet their obligations.

NEW APPROACHES

In a pandemic, vaccine manufacturers would shift production of seasonal flu vaccines and instead make shots tailored to the new outbreak when needed. They already have the capacity to make hundreds of millions of doses.

Many of the potential pandemic shots are pre-approved by regulators, based on data from human trials showing the vaccines are safe and prompt an immune response, a process already used with seasonal flu vaccines. This means they might not require further human trials, even if they have to be tweaked to better match whichever strain does jump to humans. Data on how well the vaccines actually protect against infection would be gathered in real-time.

In all, the WHO said there are close to 20 licensed vaccines against the broader H5 strain of flu. Existing antiviral treatments for people already infected will also help mitigate the impact.

At the same time, moving to large-scale production of a more targeted shot could take months, the manufacturers said. Some potential shots use a traditional method, growing the virus used in the vaccines in chicken eggs over four to six months.

“Creating the first dose is the easiest,” said Raja Rajaram, head of global medical strategy at CSL Seqirus. “The hardest is manufacturing in large quantities.”

Experts have long advocated for new approaches in developing vaccines, both for seasonal and pandemic flu. COVID proved the potential of mRNA technology to adapt more quickly to changing viruses because the vaccines use genetic information from the pathogen, rather than having to grow the virus itself.

Moderna’s mRNA vaccine research actually began with pandemic flu, and was modified for COVID, said Raffael Nachbagauer, executive director of infectious diseases at Moderna.

The company plans to launch a small human trial of an mRNA pandemic flu vaccine tailored to the new avian influenza subtype in the first half of 2023, he said, adding Moderna could respond “very quickly” in an outbreak scenario. The results will be closely watched, as the data on Moderna’s seasonal flu candidate was mixed.

Nachbagauer said the company was mindful of the equity issue needing to be addressed but has no contracts yet.

“It would be premature to sign anything or commit to anything that we can’t actually deliver on as of today,” he said.

(Reporting by Jennifer Rigby; Additional reporting by Sybille de la Hamaide; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Michele Gershberg)

Toni Collette has sent away intimacy coordinators because she doesn’t find them helpful.

The 50-year-old actress insisted the experts – who are brought in to help choreograph sex scenes and to make sure the cast involved feel comfortable – only serve to make her feel “more anxious” so she’d rather not have them on set.

She told The Times magazine: “I think it’s only been a couple of times where they’ve been brought in, and I have very much trusted and felt at ease with the people I was working with. It just felt like those people who were brought in to make me feel more at ease were actually making me feel more anxious. They weren’t helping, so I asked them to leave.”

The ‘Power’ star ackowledged she’s been “very fortunate” to have worked with just “a few a********” during her long career.

Asked if she’d have welcomed the intimacy experts earlier in her career, she said: ““It depends. Look, every job is different. Every single job is different. Because it’s a bunch of new people it’s a new energy; everyone brings their whole life with them, and it’s all thrown in the pot.

“You never know what you’re going to get and it’s a miracle that a film ever comes together, let alone thrives.

“I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve only worked with a few a******** over the several decades that I’ve managed to keep this boat afloat.”

Toni also hit out at the trend for cancel culture and how it has led to people feeling “stifled”.

She said: “God, when [cancel culture] was first mentioned to me, a while back now, I didn’t quite understand what people meant…

“I mean, we don’t want people who are offensive swinging their stuff around with freedom. But people who are authentic and have something within them to share in life, feeling stifled? Doesn’t feel so good, does it?”

Paris Hilton has credited Demi Lovato with inspiring her to write her tell-all book.

The hotel heiress has lifted the lid on her life in ‘Paris: The Memoir’ which gives a brutally honest account of her early years and her career in the spotlight, and she’s now insisted Demi inspired her to put pen to paper after the pop star shared her own story in 2017 documentary ‘Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated’.

In her book, Paris writes: “I was as stunned as the rest of the world by how real, vulnerable, and courageous she [Demi] was. In the doc, Demi shared a painful reckoning with a difficult past; in person, I saw her in the midst of an intense journey of self-acceptance and discovery. I envied that acceptance. I wanted that discovery for myself.”

In Demi’s documentary, she opened up about her struggles with an eating disorder as well as her bipolar disorder diagnosis and her battle with addiction issues. She followed it up with another film in 2021 called ‘Dancing With The Devil’ in which she spoke about the 2018 overdose which almost claimed her life.

Paris relived her own traumatic past in her book, detailing the alleged abuse she suffered at a boarding school for troubled teens, being raped as a teenager and the sex tape scandal which marred the early days of her career.

During a recent appearance on ‘Good Morning America’, Paris explained writing the book felt like therapy for her past trauma.

She said: “‘This book was like a diary. I put everything in there, so many really traumatic experiences that I endured, especially as a teenager, and so many just memories I didn’t want to remember – but also a lot of the good, exciting times. I’ve lived such an amazing life.

“It was so cathartic and therapeutic letting go of so much because carried so much on me for so long and I’ve been through so many hard times. But just to put it all out there felt good.”

By Alvise Armellini

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s courts should stick to tradition and avoid the novelty of gender-neutral symbols in official documents, according to the institution that acts as the guardian of the Italian language.

The Accademia della Crusca was asked to weigh in on the matter by the equal opportunities committee of the Corte di Cassazione, Italy’s top appeals body, illustrating the national debate over gender issues and political correctness.

In Italian, as in other Latin-based tongues, nouns can take a feminine or masculine form, but the plural masculine form tends to take precedence. For example, the masculine form “tutti” is routinely used for “everyone”, rather than the feminine “tutte”.

Some see this as an expression of male dominance and support the introduction of gender-neutral noun endings, such as asterisks or the so-called “schwa”, a symbol that looks like an inverted “e”.

For example, an email or a letter to a man or a woman would no longer start with “caro” or “cara” (dear), but with the gender neutral “car*”, which would also replace the plural “cari”.

But the Accademia della Crusca, in its response to the Cassazione, rejected these changes for legal documents, saying they would be artificial and supported only by minority groups, “however well-intentioned.”

“Legal language is not the right place for minoritarian innovative experimentations,” the Accademia said in a six-page opinion that Reuters reviewed on Monday, after the Corriere della Sera newspaper first reported on it.

The Accademia said the Italian masculine plural form remains “the best instrument” to collectively represent “all genders and orientations”, but also backed the wider use of the feminine form of professional titles.

In October, Italy’s first woman prime minister, right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni, sparked controversy after saying the preferred her title of “Presidente del Consiglio” to be preceded by the masculine article “il”, rather than the feminine “la”.

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Keith Weir)

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a traveling Christian evangelist’s free-speech challenge to a University of Alabama requirement that he obtain a permit before handing out religious pamphlets and preaching from a sidewalk adjacent to its campus.

The justices turned away an appeal by preacher Rodney Keister of a lower court’s ruling rejecting his claim that the university’s permit requirement violated free speech rights under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

Keister, founder of a Pennsylvania-based group called Evangelism Mission, regularly visits U.S. university campuses in hopes of spreading his Christian message to students, according to court filings.

In 2016, Keister, along with a companion, preached using an amplifier and distributed Christian literature from a sidewalk adjacent to the University of Alabama campus in Tuscaloosa, trying to engage passersby. School officials told Keister he needed a permit for a public-speaking event, prompting him and his companion to leave.

The university’s policy at issue governed when, where and how a person unaffiliated with the school may engage in public speaking on campus including on sidewalks, other than “casual recreational or social activities.” It required a permit application 10 business days in advance – which has since been reduced to five business days – and sponsorship by a student organization or university academic department.

Keister in 2017 filed a civil rights suit against University of Alabama officials, arguing that the sidewalk’s status under the First Amendment is that of a “traditional public forum,” affording speakers the most robust protections available under the Constitution. Following losses in lower courts, Keister’s appeal in 2018 was turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court, prompting him to file an amended civil rights suit against school officials the next year.

A federal judge in 2020 ruled in favor of the school officials, finding that the sidewalk was a “limited public forum” – a status giving public universities and other government entities more leeway to regulate particular classes of speakers or kinds of speech. The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed last year.

The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in recent years has taken an expansive view of religious rights, though this case came to the justices as a free speech dispute.

The high court is due to rule by the end of June in another free speech case involving religion. The court’s conservative justices during arguments in December appeared ready to rule that a Christian web design business owner named Lorie Smith has a right to refuse to provide services for same-sex marriages. Smith has said that under her Christian beliefs marriage should be limited to opposite-sex couples.

(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)

Former German top diver Jan Hempel has announced he will sue the German Swimming Federation (DSV) for compensation and damages after being sexually abused by his coach during his career.

Hempel’s lawyer, Thomas Summerer, told broadcasters ARD in an interview Sunday that they were seeking more than €1 million ($1.07 million) from the DSV.

Hempel went public with the case last year, and the legal complaint says the two-time Olympic medallist was abused more than 1,200 times during his career by the late coach Werner Langer over 14 years in the 1980s and 1990s.

“It is the most blatant case of abuse that German sport has ever experienced,” Summerer said.

The lawyer spoke of a precedent which could open the door for other athletes to take similar action, and that they were ready to fight in court for many years, if necessary.

“The German Swimming Federation organisation has completely failed in monitoring and controlling its coaches. There was only cover-up. This organisational culpability leads to a federation being liable,” Summerer said.

Hempel had accused the DSV of cover-up last year. The federation then suspended national team coach Lutz Buschkow who was said to have known of the abuse but had done nothing. Buschkow said he only became aware of it when Hempel went public.

Summerer said they had talked with the DSV about compensation and that there had been a verbal agreement in principle but that they were now going to court because nothing has happened since then.

“Nothing has happened that would keep our confidence in the German swimming federation high,” he said.

President Sauli Niinistö has defended Finland’s decision to proceed with accession to NATO without its neighbour Sweden on the grounds that rejecting Turkey’s pending ratification of its candidacy would have been problematic.

“Should we have rejected ratification by Turkey? That sounds a bit crazy,” Niinistö said in an interview with Sweden’s SVT national public service that was broadcast in full on Saturday evening.

“It would have been a very problematic situation, if we had said no to Ankara,” he added.

Niinistö’s comments came after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced on Friday that his government would begin the ratification process for Finland.

While he had always emphasized that Finland would go “hand-in-hand” with Sweden to the extent that the decision was theirs to make, ratification ultimately lay with Turkey and Hungary, the two NATO member still to ratify the applications, Niinistö said.

After decades of neutrality, the two Nordic countries applied to join the trans-Atlantic defence alliance last May following Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine. They made clear that they wished to join together.

Turkey continues to block Swedish accession on the grounds that Sweden refuses to extradite 120 people seen by Turkey as terrorists.

Hungary too has yet to ratify the Finnish application, with a decision expected on March 27.

Martina Navratilova and her wife Julia Lemigova have put their plans to adopt a child on hold as the sports star battles cancer.

The 66-year-old tennis legend and her partner had been hoping to expand their family this year, but Julia has now revealed they halted the process after Martina was diagnosed with stage one throat cancer and breast cancer in January as they want to wait until she has recovered before bringing a child into their home.

Speaking on ‘The Real Housewives of Miami’ reunion show, Julia explained: “When you’re adopting a child, it has to be about the child. And right now it’s everything about Martina and for her getting health. We’re putting it on hold.

“We were thinking any moment the agency would call and give us the happy news that we were going to have a baby.”

Host Andy Cohen asked if they were far along in the adoption process, and Julia replied: “Instead, we are fighting two cancers. Like one is not enough. I’m just waiting for Martina to get better.”

Julia went on to thank fans for all their messages of support, saying: “I want to thank all of you here for reaching out and for showing your support. Thank you so much, she’s going through a very hard time right now.”

The couple married in 2014 and Julia is mum to two daughters Emma, 17, and Victoria, 21, from a previous relationship. She also had a son who died when he was an infant.

Martina – who won 59 Grand Slam singles and doubles titles in her four-decade career – went public with her cancer diagnosis in January after discovering an enlarged lymph node in her neck in November. Tests later confirmed she had stage one throat cancer and another “suspicious form” was then found in her breast which was unrelated.

Martina said: “This double whammy is serious but still fixable. I’m hoping for a favourable outcome. It’s going to stink for a while but I’ll fight with all I have got.” It comes 13 years after the tennis icon underwent radiation therapy for breast cancer and was given the all-clear after undergoing six weeks of chemotherapy.

A spokeswoman for Martina added both her cancers “are in early stage with great outcomes”, saying in a statement: “Martina Navratilova has been diagnosed with stage one throat cancer. The prognosis is good and Martina will start her treatment this month. “The cancer type is HPV and this particular type responds really well to treatment. Martina noticed an enlarged lymph node in her neck during the WTA finals in Fort Worth. When it didn’t go down, a biopsy was performed, the results came back as stage one throat cancer. “At the same time as Martina was undergoing the tests for the throat, a suspicious form was found in her breast, which was subsequently diagnosed as cancer, completely unrelated to the throat cancer. “Both these cancers are in their early stages with great outcomes.”