Happy Hump Day! Some news items for your mid-week reading.
• New York Times: The House of Representatives voted 222-209 to end federal government shutdown with six Democrats voting to support it, and two Republicans voting against it.
• Daily Dance: Wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin and pro Witney Carson dance a lovely Foxtrot to “Footprints In The Sand” by Leona Lewis in honor of his father, Steve Irwin. It amazes me Robert had no prior dance experience. The icing on the cake is his sister, Bindi, at the end of the dance.
• LGBTQ Nation: Newly released emails from convicted and deceased child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein alleged that President Donald Trump knew about the girls he was trafficking and that Trump had spent “hours” with one of the trafficked girls in Epstein’s house.
• San Francisco Chronicle: A country hit made by artificial intelligence has climbed to the top of a Billboard chart — a first for the genre. The song, “Walk My Walk” by the artist known as Breaking Rust, is now No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart. The AI creation has millions of streams, tens of thousands of followers and no verifiable human footprint.
• Axios: The U.S. Mint is set to strike the last new penny today in Philadelphia, officially closing the book on the 1-cent coin. Each penny costs nearly 3.7 cents to make and ending penny production will save about $56 million annually.
• Gay Times: Nick Amato, a recent contestant on the dating reality show Love Is Blind, has addressed gay rumors saying he identifies as straight even though he admitted on the show he’s a self-professed “size queen.”
• The Advocate: Some good news – the 10 states that have passed pro-LGBTQ+ bills — or defeated the most anti-LGBTQ+ ones — in 2025.
Liberal states stand out for passage of supportive laws, while the sheer volume of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in some conservative ones means many bills died there. https://t.co/hJPjxoSa2a
— The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag) November 12, 2025
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