Reporting on the Supreme CourtThe court has sided with gay and transgender people in recent cases, but there have been dissents.Eric Lee/The New York TimesAt a pair of arguments in 2019 about employment discrimination against gay and transgender workers, the justices could not stop talking about bathrooms. In all, five justices explored questions related to who may use which facilities, though bathrooms did not figure in the cases before them.“Let’s not avoid the difficult issue,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a member of the court’s liberal wing, posing a hypothetical question: “You have a transgender person who rightly is identifying as a woman and wants to use the women’s bathroom.”She added: “There are other women who are made uncomfortable, and not merely uncomfortable, but who would feel intruded upon if someone who still had male characteristics walked into their bathroom. That’s why we have different bathrooms. So the hard question is: How do we deal with that?”David D. Cole, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union representing a transgender woman, seemed puzzled.“That is a question, Justice Sotomayor,” he said. “It is not the question in this case.”The argument also touched on sports, religion and dress codes, and it suggested that many justices found it hard to disentangle the legal question before them from related ones.Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, for instance, asked whether a ruling in favor of Mr. Cole’s client would do away with sex-specific dress codes. Mr. Cole said no.“There are transgender male lawyers in this courtroom following the male dress code and going to the men’s room,” he said, “and the court’s dress code and sex-segregated restrooms have not fallen.”When the court issued its decision, which sided with gay and transgender workers, Justice Gorsuch’s majority opinion said it was tightly focused on employment discrimination.“We do not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms or anything else of the kind,” he wrote, adding that those “are questions for future cases, not these.”In dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. chastised the majority for kicking the can down the road.“The court may wish to avoid this subject,” he wrote, “but it is a matter of concern to many people who are reticent about disrobing or using toilet facilities in the presence of individuals whom they regard as members of the opposite sex.”In cases that reached the court on what critics call its shadow docket, the justices have ruled for a transgender prisoner seeking surgery and a transgender girl who sought to compete on the girls’ cross-country and track teams at her middle school in West Virginia. Justice Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in both cases.Those two justices also dissented in 2021 when the court turned down an appeal from a ruling in favor of a transgender boy in Virginia who wanted to use the boys’ bathroom at his high school.

Labor and delivery units are losing money and struggling to find staff, in rural areas and large cities alike.Over 500 hospitals have closed their labor and delivery departments since 2010, according to a large new study, leaving most rural hospitals and more than a third of urban hospitals without obstetric care.Those closures, the study found, were slightly offset by the opening of new units in about 130 hospitals. Even so, the share of hospitals without maternity wards increased every year, according to the study, published on Wednesday in JAMA, a prominent medical journal. Maternal deaths remained persistently high over that period, spiking during the pandemic.Because its data runs only through 2022, the study does not account for the additional challenges that hospitals have faced since the Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade that year and led many states to restrict abortion. States with abortion bans have experienced a sharp decline in their obstetrician work force.“We’re more than a decade into a severe maternal mortality crisis in the United States, and access to hospital-based maternity care has continued to decline over that entire time period,” said Katy Kozhimannil, the study’s lead author and a professor of health policy at the University of Minnesota.Other research from Dr. Kozhimannil and her colleagues has found that the closures of rural maternity wards can lead to an increase in births in emergency rooms or outside of hospitals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Getty ImagesCertain types of porridge, crumpets and breakfast cereals are included in a list of products that fall under a new junk food advertising ban.

The executive, Brian Thompson, was shot in the chest in what people briefed on the investigations said appeared to be a targeted attack.The chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, was fatally shot in the chest in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning, according to a police report and two people familiar with the matter.The report said that the executive, Brian Thompson, 50, was shot just after 6:45 a.m. at 1335 Sixth Avenue, the address for the New York Hilton Midtown, according to the report. Mr. Thompson was taken to Mount Sinai West in critical condition.Police officers are still searching for the gunman, who fled east on foot along Sixth Avenue, the report said. He was wearing a cream-colored jacket, a black face mask and a gray backpack.The police believe Mr. Thompson was targeted in the attack, which happened during the company’s annual investor conference in New York City.Mr. Thompson had arrived early to prepare, according to the people familiar with the investigation. The gunman apparently knew which door Mr. Thompson was going to enter and shot him several times from mere feet away, then fled. The gunman, the people said, ran, jumped on a bicycle and pedaled away.Just after 9 a.m. on Wednesday, yellow caution tape closed off the section of West 54th Street just outside the hotel entrance. Inside, the morning continued as usual, with guests ordering coffee and arriving with luggage.The only sign of trouble was a small group of police officers huddled in front of a check-in sign for the conference.Mr. Thompson was promoted to chief executive of UnitedHealthcare in April 2021, heading one unit of the larger UnitedHealth Group. He lives in Minnesota.This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Cheshire ConstabularyLucy Letby has been interviewed by police in prison under caution as part of ongoing investigations into more baby deaths at two hospitals, Cheshire Constabulary has confirmed.

Anna HillA woman who suffered debilitating migraines for nine years says her symptoms have gone, after paying for “risky” surgery.

Getty ImagesAbout 300 hospice inpatient beds are currently closed or out of use in England, hospice leaders have warned.

BBCViolence and abuse against paramedics and emergency call handlers is on the rise, with reported cases up by more than a third since 2019, the BBC has found.

Federal health agencies closed their investigations into the bacterial outbreak that sickened 104 people and was linked to onions on the fast-food chain’s signature Quarter Pounders.Health officials have closed their investigations into an E. coli outbreak linked to raw onions on McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers that sickened more than a hundred people, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday.In total, 104 people from 14 states were sickened from the contaminated food and 34 were hospitalized. One older person in Colorado died.Officials said there did not appear to be a “continued food safety concern,” because McDonald’s had not served slivered onions — which investigators determined to be the “likely source of contamination”— on the Quarter Pounders for more than a month. The onions were recalled. And in many states, Quarter Pounders were removed from the menu altogether for several weeks.There have not been any new illnesses since McDonald’s decided to remove the onions from its menu on Oct. 22, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Evidence linking the onions to the food-borne illnesses was limited. According to the F.D.A., one sample from the recalled onions supplied by Taylor Farms, a large vegetable and fruit grower, and an environmental sample from an onion grower in Washington State tested positive for E. coli. But those samples did not match the bacterial strain found in those customers who became ill, the agency said.Still, the F.D.A. investigation determined that the yellow onions were the likely source of the outbreak based on interviews with those who were sickened and from information provided by the distributors of the product. Of the people who recalled what they ate, roughly 84 percent had a menu item with slivered onions.McDonald’s identified Taylor Farms as its onion supplier in the Mountain West, and added that it would indefinitely discontinue the use of Taylor Farms onions from its Colorado Springs facility.“The process to reach this point has at times felt long, challenging and uncertain,” Michael Gonda, McDonald’s North America chief impact officer, and Cesar Piña, the chief supply chain officer, said in a statement. “But it is critical that public officials examine every possible angle, and we are deeply grateful that they moved quickly to identify and, in partnership with McDonald’s, contain the issue.”Illnesses related to the outbreak were first reported in late October, prompting McDonald’s to recall its Quarter Pounder hamburgers in 10 states. Other fast-food chains including Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and Burger King also stopped offering onions in their menu items as a precautionary measure.McDonald’s is now facing lawsuits from several customers claiming to have fallen ill from the outbreak. Spokesmen said the company was “laser-focused” on regaining its customers’ trust.

The new Covid corruption commissioner has started an investigation into personal protective equipment (PPE) fraud.