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Clothes for kids with disabilities get better, but teens see a lack of fashionable options

NEW YORK (AP) — Mindy Scheier was working in fashion before her son, Oliver, was born with muscular dystrophy. As he grew, and she watched him struggle to get dressed, her eyes were opened to her industry’s limitations for people with disabilities. At 8, Oliver wanted to ditch his daily sweatpants for jeans, favored by his peers. His mom couldn’t find any to accommodate his leg braces and difficulty working zippers and buttons, so she began making adaptations herself. She put strips of fabric fastener on the inseams of the jeans, and she replaced the button and zipper on the ...

Minnesota Supreme Court rules against disputed mine, says state pollution officials hid EPA warnings

UNDATED (AP) — The Minnesota Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that the state’s Pollution Control Agency improperly granted permits to a fiercely contested copper-nickel mine and concealed environmental concerns about the project, which critics say threatens to pollute Lake Superior and hurt tribal lands. The proposed mining project, a 50-50 joint venture with PolyMet Mining and Teck Resources, was renamed NewRange Copper Nickel in February but is still widely known as PolyMet. It seeks to be Minnesota’s first copper-nickel mine, but it has long been stalled by court and ...

UPS reaches tentative contract with unionized workers potentially dodging strike

NEW YORK (AP) — UPS has reached a tentative contract with its 340,000-person union, potentially averting a strike that threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of businesses and households nationwide. The agreement was announced Tuesday, the first day that UPS and the Teamsters returned to the table after contentious negotiations broke down earlier this month. Negotiators had already reached tentative agreements on several issues but continued to clash over pay for part-time workers, who make up more than half of the UPS employees represented by the union. The ...

Elon Musk reveals new ‘X’ logo to replace Twitter’s blue bird

Elon Musk has unveiled a new “X” logo to replace Twitter’s famous blue bird as he follows through with a major rebranding of the social media platform he bought for $44 billion last year. The X started appearing at the top of the desktop version of Twitter on Monday, but the bird was ...

3 tax prep firms shared data about taxpayers with Meta, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three large tax preparation firms sent “extraordinarily sensitive” information on tens of millions of taxpayers to Facebook parent company Meta over the course of at least two years, a group of congressional Democrats reported on Wednesday. They say some of that data was then used by Meta to create targeted advertising to its own users, other companies, and to train Meta’s algorithms. The Democrats’ report urges federal agencies to investigate and potentially go to court over the wealth of information that H&R Block, TaxAct and TaxSlayer shared with the ...