TV News LIES

A florist who was sued for refusing to provide services for a same sex-wedding says she was exercising her First Amendment rights, but Washington Supreme Court justices questioned whether ruling in her favor would mean other businesses could turn away customers based on racial or other grounds.

The court heard arguments Tuesday in the case against Barronelle Stutzman, who was fined for denying service to a gay couple in 2013.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson says the state and federal constitutions confer no right to discriminate against people.

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Gwen Ifill, one of the nation's most prominent African-American journalists, has died after several months of cancer treatment, PBS confirmed Monday.

Ifill, 61, was moderator and managing editor of "Washington Week" and co-anchor and managing editor of the "PBS NewsHour."  In 2009, she also wrote a political book President Obama, The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.

"It is with extreme sadness that we share the news that Gwen Ifill passed away earlier today surrounded by family and friends," according to a statement from Paula Kerger, PBS' CEO. "Gwen was one of America’s leading lights in journalism and a fundamental reason public media is considered a trusted window on the world by audiences across the nation."

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Phoenix voted on Wednesday to officially declare the second Monday in October -- the same day as Columbus Day -- Indigenous Peoples' Day.

The Phoenix City Council unanimously approved the request which aims to celebrate Phoenix's indigenous community.

Phoenix is the largest city in the country to formally recognize the alternative celebration, joining 25 other cities including Seattle, Minneapolis and Denver. South Dakota and Vermont also honor Indigenous Peoples' Day statewide.

Two police officers were shot and killed on Saturday in the Southern California desert town of Palm Springs after they were called to an apparent domestic dispute and came under fire as they arrived on the scene, according to police and eyewitness accounts.

A third officer was wounded in the shooting around 1 p.m. local time, Palm Springs police said in online bulletins.

Yahoo Inc last year secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers' incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company complied with a classified U.S. government directive, scanning hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts at the behest of the National Security Agency or FBI, said two former employees and a third person apprised of the events.

California’s new bathroom bill is finally making broad steps toward more inclusive legislature.

According to Mashable, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill last week that will make all public, single-user bathrooms “universally acceptable to all genders.”

The law will go into effect on March 1, 2017, and is a huge step forward in making bathrooms safe for transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary individuals.

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