Two female staff members were fatally shot Friday at a Maryland senior living facility and a suspect is in custody, police said.

School is only just starting and already kids are being quarantined in mind-boggling numbers: 20,000 across the state of Mississippi, 10,000 in a single district in Tampa, Florida. They’re getting sick too, with hospitalizations of kids under 17 across the country up at least 22 percent in the past month, by the CDC’s count, and each new week sets pediatric hospitalization records for the entire pandemic. The rapid increase of COVID-19 cases among kids has shattered last year’s oft-repeated falsehood that kids don’t get COVID-19, and if they do, it’s not that bad. It was a convenient lie that was easy to believe in part because we kept most of our kids home. With remote learning not an option now, this year we’ll find out how dangerous this virus is for children in the worst way possible.

It’s enough to bring a parent to tears, except that every parent I know ran out a long time ago—I know I did. Ran out of tears, ran out of energy, ran out of patience. Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own. It was unsustainable then, it’s unsustainable now, and no matter what fresh hell this school year brings, it’ll still be unsustainable.

'My mum has a new partner. They've been dating for a couple of months, and she's seemed very happy, and I was genuinely pleased for her, as I know she longs for companionship.

'However, I finally met him last week (staying with Mum for a couple of weeks as we hadn't seen her for almost a year), and I am really concerned. He's clearly love-bombing her, in my opinion.

Conducted by researchers with Tufts University, the study, which was published in the journal Scientific Reports, compared the compounds in dog foods the Food and Drug Administration has flagged as being linked to canine dilated cardiomyopathy with those from standard dog foods.

Canine dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a disease of the heart muscle that results in the heart muscle growing larger while its contractions, or heart beats, grow weaker, which can cause heart failure or even death.

Among the compounds examined by the researchers and identified as possible links causing the ailment are compounds found in peas and potatoes.

I need some help gaining perspective on my 15-year-old child’s whiplash approach to gender and sexuality. For the last three years, they have been on a journey with regard to their sexuality, declaring and changing identities one every few weeks or months, even when those identities have been both contradictory (how can one be both asexual and polyamorous?) and hypothetical (my kid isn’t dating and hasn’t dated). They are committed to being anything but cisgender and hetero, and that identity—whatever it turns out to be—appears from their actions and words to be the central part of their sense of self. They spent a lot of time on queer wikis, looking up new possible identities. They avidly “ship” fictional characters into same-sex couples, express anger/disappointment when shows/books have hetero couples, and talk constantly about LGBTQIA issues, representation, etc.

I have been, and want to be, supportive. My kid deserves to be loved and celebrated for who they are, and however their identity settles out is fine with me. But I am also struggling with these rapid changes. In the last two weeks, my kid has changed their name once and pronouns twice, colored their hair, worn exaggeratedly feminine eye makeup, pinned their hair up to look masculine, purchased a bikini and a dress and then asked me to buy them a binder (because they think it would be “fun” to look like a boy sometimes). At this point, it feels like they’re trying on identities like costumes, and that makes me very uncomfortable. None of it feels authentic—it seems more like a bid to stand out in a crowd or perhaps to find the limits of my acceptance.

I have worked so hard to make sure my kids know they are loved unconditionally, but if this kid is looking for a boundary, maybe I should set one? I literally squirmed when I wrote that sentence; setting a random limit on acceptance goes against everything I believe. But at the same time, I am so, so tired of hearing about their identity day after day after day and of trying to keep up with the changes. They’re a great, smart, interesting kid for a dozen different reasons; their gender/sexuality is just one aspect of their personality. Would it be wrong of me to say, in essence, “I love you, and will never not love you. When you figure out your identity let me know, and in the meantime can we maybe stop talking about it all the time?” Also, as the world opens up and my kid spends more time outside of our home, can I/should I ask them to be more thoughtful in how they present themselves? It seems to me that trans and nonbinary people cannot simply change their identities and expression for “fun,” so my kid’s behavior feels a little bit like cosplaying in a way that could be hurtful. Or do I just keep keeping my mouth shut, do my best to remember this week’s identity, and pray that this phase ends soon?

I have been married to my husband for about 10 years and together for 15. We sort of have a great marriage, but only “on paper” and “when things are working.” I am most likely the problem. My business was decimated during COVID, so I took a full-time job. But I still have my (entrepreneurial) business and it has also returned to full-time. My husband doesn’t want me to give up my full-time stable paycheck—I get that. He also makes at least quadruple what I do. Part of the issue is that he controls our finances. I do contribute, but the amount I pay monthly is referred to (by him) as “the tithe.” If I don’t pay “the tithe,” he speaks to me less. But none of this is the real issue! It’s that when I do something wrong, whether by accident or not, he stops speaking to me. If I do something he doesn’t like, he won’t speak to me for HOURS until he asks me if I am ready to apologize. I am not a pushover type of person. I am strong and smart and dynamic and a leader. But I am not passive-aggressive and don’t have the energy to battle this on a passive-aggressive level. I tend towards direct confrontation. It doesn’t work. Trying to discuss things calmly doesn’t work. I just don’t know what to do. I think my husband hates me but won’t say it. How can I deal with our different styles of conflict?— Hated By Husband

Flying isn’t fun for the flight attendants either.

A flight attendant on a Charlotte-bound American Airlines flight was caught in a TikTok video scolding passengers who mocked the crew during the flight that diverted to Raleigh due to weather.

In the video, a 22-year-old male passenger calls one flight attendant “a fat gorilla” and slings obscenities at her as well.

A white mother is accused of faking her six-year-old black daughter's illness and forcing the child to undergo more than 500 appointments and unnecessary surgery.

Sophie Hartman, 31, claimed that the little girl suffered from a rare neurological disease, Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood, but doctors now say the child is perfectly healthy.

According to court documents, Hartman has taken her adopted daughter to appointments since she was around two years old, and subjected her to what doctors called an 'unnecessary medical procedure' with a surgically implanted feeding tube.

Two Florida women dressed as elderly individuals in an effort to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine on Wednesday, the local sheriff's office confirmed to The Hill.

The support for nurses demonstrating outside South Coast Global Medical Center is clear. It was one of four protests at Orange County hospitals.
Nurses say that their safety and patient lives are at risk after the state allowed their hospital, part of KPC Health, to increase the patient to nurse ratio in the middle of a pandemic.

"So instead of giving us more nurses we got more work. Patients are going to die, nurses are gonna break, nurses are exhausted," says Karen Rodriguez, a registered nurse.

Nurses say that they are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients, shifts go as long as 16 hours, four to five days a week, code after code, leaving them exhausted, waking up anxious in the middle of the night.

"It might be surge after surge and who knows, and they're not preparing for the worst," says Irene Brown, South Coast Global Medical Center ICU nurse

"I don't have any more to give when I get home, and that's really unfair to my family and myself because I just want to rest," says Vanessa Aguilar

She says it's also unfair to patients. Aguilar had this heartbreaking admission: Some may have made it if we had more resources.

A Utah teacher has admitted having an inappropriate relationship with a 14-year-old pupil — even sneaking her into their school in a large storage bin, according to an affidavit.

Father of four Lucas Sloan Talley, 38, had “personal contact via text message and email with multiple young girls” during his 12 years at South Hills Middle School in Riverton, according to the affidavit obtained by Deseret News.

That increased when the school shut down because of the pandemic and he “struggled” with no longer getting the girls’ “validation” that he “thrives on,” he told investigators, according to the affidavit.

Cash-strapped renters nationwide say their landlords tried to skirt COVID-19 eviction moratoriums by changing locks, removing trash containers so waste piled up and – in one case – attempting to unbolt the front door right off an apartment.

They told state attorneys general that they were kicked out of their homes after landlords accused them of violating tenant rules, like smoking cigarettes inside their units or failing to take the hitches off of their mobile homes.

Like Heidi Stach, who lost her job due to the pandemic and fell behind on rent, they assumed they were protected. But Stach says her landlord found an end-run to Wisconsin’s eviction ban: Instead of starting a court process, he sent her a notice to vacate this summer because he was not renewing her lease.

In a matter of months, the foster care system found itself drowning in hundreds of new cases. By 2017, the state needed space for 6,000 additional foster children – an influx equivalent to the size of the entire foster population of the state of New Jersey.

But lawmakers, child welfare leaders and Scott did not hire more caseworkers or increase the money paid to foster families to make more homes available. And they failed to tackle the root problems driving most of the removals: lack of access to drug treatment, mental health care and domestic violence services for parents.

Instead, they stood by as foster care agencies packed children into overcrowded homes and sent nearly 200 boys and girls to foster parents previously accused of abusing or neglecting the children in their care, a USA TODAY investigation found.

A serial sexual predator who carried out a “horror” attack on a stranger had been set free from prison despite posing a known risk to women and girls, a court heard.

William Gordon, 34, was released just weeks before he stalked a series of women in south London late at night while “scouting” for a victim.

When he struck, Gordon pinned a woman against an alleyway wall as he sexually assaulted her and, after she broke free, chased her down to continue the attack.

A Lakewood, New Jersey homeowner was arrested Friday by police for allegedly violating the state’s recently enacted ban on gatherings of 50 or more people.

Eliyohu Zaks, 49, reportedly hosted a pop-up wedding at his home that included more than 50 attendees, a violation of the ban enacted by Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy in an effort to curtail the spread of the novel coronavirus.