The winner of Arkansas’ race for state Supreme Court chief justice won’t change its conservative majority and it hasn’t drawn the heavy spending of Republican groups that have targeted past campaigns. But the outcome still will make history.

Justices Karen Baker and Rhonda Wood are running to replace outgoing Chief Justice Dan Kemp in this year’s nonpartisan runoff. Baker and Wood were the top two finishers in a four-person race for the court in March, but neither garnered the majority necessary to win the race outright.

Arkansas’ court is technically nonpartisan, but Republican-backed justices hold a 4-3 majority on the court. That majority is set to expand to 5-2, no matter who wins the race, with GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders slated to fill two vacancies on the court next year.

Baker or Wood will become the first woman elected chief justice in the state. Betty Dickey was appointed to serve as the court’s chief justice in 2003.

Wood, who was first elected to the court in 2014 and then reelected in 2022, has the backing of Republicans including Sanders and U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton. The Republican Party of Arkansas’ state committee also has endorsed her candidacy.

Wood, however, said she believes her experience on the court shows she is an independent voice and not ruling in line with either party.

“I think I have made decisions consistently with the law, but not necessarily maybe one party or another would agree with,” Wood told The Associated Press.

Baker, who has served on the court since 2011, did not respond to multiple messages from the AP requesting an interview. Baker won reelection in 2022, defeating a former Republican lawmaker who touted himself as a constitutional conservative.

In interviews, Baker has said she has proven herself to be nonpartisan.

“I think my opponent has demonstrated she is not,” she told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, when asked about Sanders’ political action committee supporting Wood’s campaign.

Arkansas’ court races have been targeted in past years by conservative groups that have spent heavily on efforts to push the court further to the right. Those groups, however, haven’t identified Arkansas as a target this year but are instead focusing on higher profile races in battleground states like Ohio and Michigan.

The two candidates split most recently on a lawsuit over an abortion rights measure that would have scaled back a state ban that took effect when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

Wood wrote the court’s 4-3 majority opinion that upheld the state’s decision to reject petitions submitted in favor of the proposal. The court ruled sponsors of the measure did not comply with paperwork requirements for paid signature gatherers.

Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo have lived in Colorado Springs for decades in the elephant exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Now an animal rights group is trying to release the elephants from what they say is essentially a prison for such highly intelligent and social animals known to roam for miles a day in the wild.

Colorado’s highest court will hear arguments Thursday on whether the older African female elephants should be legally able to challenge their captivity under a long-held process used by prisoners to dispute their detention. The animal rights group NonHuman Rights Project says the animals are languishing while “unlawfully confined” at the zoo, and wants them released to an unspecified elephant sanctuary.

“They are suffering immensely and unnecessarily. Without judicial intervention, they are doomed to suffer day after day, year after year, for the rest of their lives,” a lawyer for the group, Jake Davis, said in a May brief submitted to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The main legal issue is whether or not the elephants are considered persons under the law, and therefore able to pursue a petition of habeas corpus challenging their detention. The NonHuman Rights project argues that legal personhood is not limited to humans.

The lawsuit is similar to an unsuccessful one the group filed challenging the confinement of an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo in 2022. New York’s Court of Appeals ruled that Happy, while intelligent and deserving of compassion, cannot be considered a person illegally confined with the ability to pursue a petition seeking release.

The New York ruling said giving such rights to an elephant “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society” and change how humans interact with animals.

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo says moving the elephants and potentially placing them with new animals would be cruel at their age, potentially causing them unnecessary stress. It says they are not used to being in larger herds and, based on its experience, they do not have the skills or desire to join them.

In a statement ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the zoo claimed the NonHuman Rights Project isn’t concerned about the elephants but is just trying to create a judicial precedent that would allow the captivity of any animal to challenged.

Hamas confirmed Friday that its leader, Yahya Sinwar, was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and reiterated its stance that hostages the militant group took from Israel a year ago will not be released until there is a cease-fire in Gaza and a withdrawal of Israeli troops.

The group’s staunch position pushed back against a statement by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin a day earlier that his country’s military will keep fighting until the hostages are released and will remain in Gaza to prevent a severely weakened Hamas from rearming.

The conflicting stands signal continued deep resistance on both sides to ending the war, even as President Joe Biden and other world leaders press the case that Sinwar’s death is a turning point that should be used to unlock stalled cease-fire negotiations.

The standoff comes as Israel’s war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah — a Hamas ally backed by Iran — has intensified in recent weeks. Hezbollah said Friday it planned to launch a new phase of fighting by sending more guided missiles and exploding drones into Israel. The militant group’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike late last month, and Israel sent ground troops into Lebanon earlier this month.

Sinwar, the former lead of Hamas, died “confronting the occupation army until the last moment of his life,” said his Qatar-based deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, who represented Hamas during several rounds of cease-fire negotiations. Hamas will not return any of the hostages, al-Hayya said, “before the end of the aggression on Gaza and the withdrawal from Gaza.”

Hamas heralded Sinwar in a statement, calling him a hero for “not retreating, brandishing his weapon, engaging and confronting the occupation army at the forefront of the ranks.”

The statement appeared to refer to a video the Israeli military circulated of Sinwar’s apparent last moments in which a man sits on a chair in severely damaged building, badly wounded and covered in dust. In the video, the man raises his hand and flings a stick at an approaching Israeli drone.

Sinwar was the chief architect of the Hamas raid on Israel last year that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped another 250. Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not distinguish combatants from civilians but say more than half the dead are women and children.

The war has destroyed vast swaths of Gaza, displaced about 90% of its population of 2.3 million people and has left them struggling to find food, water, medicine and fuel.

Sinwar’s killing appeared to be a chance front-line encounter with Israeli troops on Wednesday, and it could shift the dynamics of the Gaza war even as Israel presses its offensive against Hezbollah with ground troops in southern Lebanon and airstrikes in other areas of the country.

Hezbollah has fired rockets into Israel nearly every day since the Israel-Hamas war began, displacing tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the country’s north. More than 1 million people in Lebanon have been displaced by Israel’s aerial bombardment and ground offensive.

Sean “Diddy” Combs is staying locked up after a judge Wednesday rejected the hip-hop mogul’s proposal that he await his sex trafficking trial in the luxury of his Florida mansion instead of a grim Brooklyn federal jail.

U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter ruled that Combs’ plan — which included a $50 million bail offer, GPS monitoring and strict limitations on visitors — was “insufficient” to ensure the safety of the community and the integrity of his case.

Carter, agreeing with prosecutors who fought to keep Combs in jail, found that “no condition or set of conditions” governing his release could guard against the risk of him threatening or harming witnesses — a central charge in his case.

Combs’ lawyers were making their second attempt in as many days to spring him from the Metropolitan Detention Center, where he has been held since pleading not guilty Tuesday to charges he physically and sexually abused women for years.

Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest Monday night at a Manhattan hotel. A federal magistrate on Tuesday rejected Combs’ initial bail request. On Wednesday, he and his lawyers struck out with Carter, the judge who will preside over his trial.

Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo says he will now ask the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn Carter’s ruling and release Combs. In the meantime, he wants Combs moved from the Brooklyn lockup, which has been plagued by rampant violence and horrific conditions, to a jail in New Jersey. Carter said decisions on placement are entirely up to the federal Bureau of Prisons.

“I’m not going to let him sit in that jail a day longer than he has to,” Agnifilo said to reporters outside the courtroom.

Combs looked at family members and tapped his heart several times as Wednesday’s hearing began, then sat stoically as he listened to arguments. Afterward, as federal agents led him away, his relatives somberly embraced and exchanged hand slaps.

Combs, 54, is accused in an indictment of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded on video. The events would sometimes last days and Combs and victims would often receive IV fluids to recover, the indictment said.

The indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.

Arguing to keep Combs in jail, prosecutor Emily Johnson told Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “Freak Offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.

Johnson said Combs’ defense team was “minimizing and horrifically understating” Combs’ propensity for violence, taking issue with his lawyer’s portrayal of a 2016 assault at a Los Angeles hotel as a lovers’ quarrel. Security video of the event, which only came to light in May, showed Combs hitting and kicking his then-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway.

“What’s love got to do with that?” an incredulous Carter asked. Johnson also seized on a text message from a woman who said Combs dragged her down a hallway by her hair. According to Johnson, the woman told the rapper: “I’m not a rag doll, I’m someone’s child.”

“There is a longstanding pattern of abuse here,” Johnson said.

Combs’ Florida house is on Star Island, a man-made dollop of land in Biscayne Bay near Miami Beach, reachable only by a causeway or boat. It is among the most expensive places to live in the United States. Combs’ request echoed that of a long line of wealthy defendants who have offered to post multimillion-dollar bails in exchange for home detention in luxurious surroundings.

If he had been granted bail, Combs would have been confined to his home, with visits restricted to family, property caretakers and friends who are not considered co-conspirators, his lawyers said. After prosecutors said they served a search warrant Tuesday on Combs’ private security chief, his lawyers offered to hire a new firm to monitor him and ensure he abided by the proposed agreement.

Pride Month, the worldwide celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights, kicks off Saturday with events around the globe.

But this year’s festivities in the U.S. will unfold against a backdrop of dozens of new state laws targeting LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender young people.

The monthlong global celebration began with Gay Pride Week in late June 1970, a public celebration that marked the first anniversary of the violent police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn, a gay bar.

At a time when LGBTQ+ people largely kept their identity or orientation quiet, the June 28, 1969, raid sparked a series of protests and catalyzed the movement for rights. The first pride week featured marches in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, and it has grown ever since. Some events fall outside of June: Tokyo’s Rainbow Pride was in April and Rio de Janeiro has a major event in November.

Pride’s hallmark rainbow-laden parades and festivals celebrate the progress the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement has made.

In the U.S. in April, a federal appeals court ruled North Carolina and West Virginia’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored insurance is discriminatory.

In one compromise in March, a settlement of legal challenges to a Florida law critics called “Don’t Say Gay” clarifies that teachers can have pictures on their desks of their same-sex partners and books with LGBTQ+ themes. It also says books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes can remain in campus libraries and gay-straight alliance chapters at schools need not be forced underground.

Greece this year legalized same-sex marriage, one of three dozen nations around the world to do so, and a similar law approved in Estonia in June 2023 took effect this year. Tightening of those laws has contributed to the flow of people from Africa and the Middle East seeking asylum in Europe.

In recent years, Republican-controlled U.S. states have been adopting policies that target LGBTQ+ people, and particularly transgender people, in various ways.

Twenty-five states now have laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. Some states have taken other actions, with laws or policies primarily keeping transgender girls and women out of bathrooms and sports competitions that align with their gender.

GOP state attorneys general have challenged a federal regulation, set to take effect in August, that would ban the bathroom bans at schools. There also have been efforts to ban or regulate drag performances.

Daily and near-daily marijuana use is now more common than similar levels of drinking in the U.S., according to an analysis of national survey data over four decades.

Alcohol is still more widely used, but 2022 was the first time this intensive level of marijuana use overtook high-frequency drinking, said the study’s author, Jonathan Caulkins, a cannabis policy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University.

“A good 40% of current cannabis users are using it daily or near daily, a pattern that is more associated with tobacco use than typical alcohol use,” Caulkins said.

The research, based on data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, was published Wednesday in the journal Addiction. The survey is a highly regarded source of estimates of tobacco, alcohol and drug use in the United States.

In 2022, an estimated 17.7 million people used marijuana daily or near-daily compared to 14.7 million daily or near-daily drinkers, according to the study. From 1992 to 2022, the per capita rate of reporting daily or near-daily marijuana use increased 15-fold.

The trend reflects changes in public policy. Most states now allow medical or recreational marijuana, though it remains illegal at the federal level. In November, Florida voters will decide on a constitutional amendment allowing recreational cannabis, and the federal government is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug.

Research shows that high-frequency users are more likely to become addicted to marijuana, said Dr. David A. Gorelick, a psychiatry professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.

The number of daily users suggests that more people are at risk for developing problematic cannabis use or addiction, Gorelick said.

“High frequency use also increases the risk of developing cannabis-associated psychosis,” a severe condition where a person loses touch with reality, he said.

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