DEAR ABBY: A young, attractive female co-worker of my husband’s addresses him by his first name ending with “ly” (example: “Georgely”). When I asked how the name was acquired, both of them claimed they didn’t remember.

They know I do not approve, particularly on social media for the world to see.

I consider pet names a term of endearment, to be reserved for one’s significant other. Am I out of line, or are they?

NAME-DROPPING IN WISCONSIN

Teens are dying by suicide at an alarming rate. Public health officials call it a crisis. Researchers have identified several clusters nationwide. The survivors in this Arizona community are fighting back

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 new report estimates that 29 million women and girls are victims of modern slavery, exploited by practices including forced labour, forced marriage, debt-bondage and domestic servitude.

Grace Forrest, co-founder of the Walk Free anti-slavery organisation, said Friday that means one in every 130 women and girls is living in modern slavery today, more than the population of Australia.

"The reality is that there are more people living in slavery today than any other time in human history," she told a U.N. news conference.

Walk Free defines modern slavery "as the systematic removal of a person’s freedom, where one person is exploited by another for personal or financial gain," she said.

According to the report, titled "Stacked Odds," women account for 99% of all victims of forced sexual exploitation, 84% of all victims of forced marriage, and 58% of all victims of forced labour.

Historic wildfires which ravaged California throughout August and September may cause 3,000 early deaths, according to research from academics at Stanford University.

This year there have been over 8,100 wildfires that have burned well over 3.7 million acres in California. Since August 15, when California's fire activity elevated, there have been 26 fatalities and over 7,000 structures destroyed.

On Sunday, 17,000 firefighters were still at work, battling 25 wildfires in the state.

Now academics have concluded that the wildfires, from August 1 to September 10, were responsible already for at least 1,200 deaths in California - and may, over the next month, cause a total of 3,000 deaths.

A pack of masked “bandits” is marauding in a San Francisco park.

The group of 14 raccoons emerged from the bushes at Golden Gate Park on Thursday, startling a father and son who snapped a picture of the bizarre scene, SFGate reports.

“It was so surreal…a posse of bandits…like out of a movie,” the dad, Marc Estoque told the outlet. “And then two minutes later there was a coyote. I was waiting for the unicorn to pop out.”

Do not waste your time and emotional energy planning around an imminent game-changing injection or pill in the coming months. A pandemic is not a problem that will be fixed in one move, by any single medication or a sudden vaccine. Instead, the way forward involves small, imperfect preventive measures that can accumulate into very effective interventions. Groups of practices that minimize the spread of disease are sometimes known as prevention bundles. Our COVID-19 bundle includes important drugs, such as dexamethasone and remdesivir, which seem to help certain patients in specific situations. It also involves behaviors, too, such as distancing and masking. “Any action you take has the potential for numerous secondary and tangential benefits,” Thomas said.

On april 13, Robert Redfield, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared on the Today show and assured viewers that the worst was nearly behind us.

By July, the number of daily cases had doubled. The death total had shot past 100,000. As Redfield looked ahead, his tone became more ominous. The fall and the winter, he said in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association, “are going to be probably one of the most difficult times that we’ve experienced in American public health.”

A vaccine will be part of our bundles, hopefully before too long. But it will not instantly eliminate the need for everything else. If we can accept that masks will be a part of our lives indefinitely, we can focus on improving their effectiveness and making them less annoying to wear, Yale’s Ko said. “And it’s not just the design of masks themselves; we can come up with more innovative ways to promote face-mask use.” For one thing, they could be made more ubiquitous by employers and state agencies. Governments could even, as Luxembourg’s did, send masks to everyone by mail.

In 2018, Burger King played an April Fools’ prank on its customers, claiming it was now selling a “chocolate Whopper.”

The joke sparked panic among fast food fans, with customers wondering whether the entrée was real. What would a sweet hamburger taste like, anyway?

The item was decidedly a prank, but now, some customers can try a chocolate Whopper for real — if they even want to, that is.

A Popeyes employee has been fired after a cop in Texas claimed his food had been tampered with.

According to the San Antonio Police Department Officer A. Martinez said he heard the fast food restaurant worker making derogatory remarks about members of law enforcement while getting his meal of chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy at the drive-thru.

The cop claims that he had already begun to eat the meal then saw 'ACAB' – an abbreviation for 'all cop are b*****ds' - written inside in black marker and noticed what looked like saliva on his food.

Much of Orange County is transporting homeless people into Santa Ana, placing an unfair burden on that city to address the county’s homelessness crisis, city officials allege in court documents filed Monday.

The filing marks the city’s latest effort seeking legal relief over this issue. And this time, officials have some numbers and additional data that they hope will prove their point that many other cities in the county are “dumping” their homeless in Santa Ana.

“We now have better evidence that the county did not stop this practice. It’s just being done in other ways,” Santa Ana City Manager Kristine Ridge said.

Santa Ana officials and residents have long complained that they’ve become a dumping ground for the homeless.

Santa Ana officials said transfers from other communities have led to to a disproportionate number of homeless people in their city. From 2017 to 2019, homelessness in Orange County increased by 43 %; but in Santa Ana, homelessness increased by 77 %, according to the lawsuit. As of April 2019, more than 25 % of the county’s homeless lived in Santa Ana.

DEAR ABBY: Although he has never hit me, my husband has been emotionally and verbally abusive ever since our wedding five years ago. One of his favorite names for me when he’s angry is “Fuckin’ Bitch.” I know this is my fault because I have tolerated it.

Today, my 2½-year-old daughter (who is usually a good girl) threw a tantrum and called me the same name twice. I try to discipline her, but she doesn’t understand that she’s saying something bad if Daddy can call me that. How can she?

He blames me for her talking that way, saying he hasn’t called me that in a month. (He called me that last week. I don’t use that language.)

I have suggested marriage counseling in the past, but he refused. I can’t leave him because I am seven months pregnant with our second child. How do I get both of them to respect me?

DISRESPECTED IN THE EAST

A rare “singing” dog native to New Guinea was rediscovered in the wild after scientists had believed the breed had gone extinct for over 50 years.

The breed—known for its unique vocalizations similar to the song of the humpback whale—was first studied in 1897.

Researchers say that due to inbreeding in captivity and because both breeds were separated for several decades, the “singing” dog and the highland wild dog have no identical genomes. But this does not mean that they are different breeds.

"The New Guinea ‘singing’ dog that we know of today is a breed that was basically created by people," Dr. Elaine Ostrander, a distinguished investigator for the National Institutes of Health and senior author of the study, wrote.

Rich Manhattanites are fleeing the city so fast because of the pandemic and deteriorating quality of life in the Big Apple that moving companies can barely keep up with them.

“It’s nuts!’’ Perry Chance of Show Up movers told The Post on Sunday. “We have four of our own trucks — but we have so many books that we had to start using U-Haul trucks!”

“The volume has increased by at least 70 percent” in the past few months, he said.

“[Clients] are mostly moving out of luxury buildings. [People] say the rich are leaving New York. Well, they are!”

“When you have an office on Park Ave, and you don’t see anyone but the less fortunate, the homeless, no more day-to-day workers, the high rent makes no sense,” explained a small-business owner at the U-Haul truck rental center on West 23rd Street in Chelsea, as he prepared for a move to Long Island.

The number of coronavirus cases linked to an indoor wedding in Maine earlier this month has risen to 123, state health officials confirmed to CBS News.

The Maine Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said early this month that a total of 24 people had contracted COVID-19 linked to the wedding. That number progressively increased to 53, then 87, and now 123 linked infections.

The wedding has also been linked to one death last week from the virus so far.

The Aug. 7 reception was attended by about 65 people, surpassing the state’s 50-person limit. Officials are also investigating if the venue, Millinocket’s Big Moose Inn Cabins and Campground, was in compliance with state health guidelines.

A civil rights complaint in Michigan has accused a math teacher of creating a racially hostile environment by displaying black students' poor grades to the class and calling them criminals.

Mother Charmelle Kelsey filed the complaint on Monday with the Michigan Department of Civil Rights on behalf of her daughter Makayla, a rising junior at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor.

The complaint was filed in conjunction with a 14-page letter composed by the Civil Rights Litigation Initiative at the University of Michigan Law School, which details the allegations of Makayla and several other named and unnamed students.