Friday News Bites: Progressive Canada, E. Coli at Chipotle + More

Happy Friday, unicorns. Hope you’re not eating a Chipotle burrito while reading this.

Yes, there’s an E. coli outbreak at some Chipotles in Washington and Oregon. 19 cases have been reported so far.

Hormel Foods have recalled 153 cases of Skippy Reduced Fat peanut butter because of potential metal shards contained within.

And in my last bit of food-related news, something better: Kraft, Panera Bread, Nestlé, and General Mills have all pledged to stop using artificial dyes in their products by the end of next year. (My red dye-allergic son is quite pleased to hear this.)

Political News:

Parliament in the United Kingdom is considering decriminalizing prostitution. Here, Margaret Corvid makes the case for why that’s a good idea.

On a related note: Here’s Margaret Cho talking about her time as a sex worker and the need for better laws here in the U.S.

And Ireland is decriminalizing small amounts of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin. The country will instead focus on treating addiction like a disease.

New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has named his new cabinet, and it’s 50% women. Asked why, he said, “Because it’s 2015.”

Montana has finally expanded Medicaid, allowing many more people to have access to health insurance. They’re the 30th state to do so.

Lawrence Lessig — a guy I didn’t even know was running, since he wasn’t in the debate — has ended his Democratic Presidential campaign. However, someone knew he was running, clearly, because he had already raised $1 million before Labor Day.

During this year’s election, the city of Houston voted against an equal rights ordinance after some conservative groups used a transphobic, scare tactic-based campaign.

In Other News:

Facebook intends to do away with their “real name” policy and will instead have an “authentic names” rule.

Hacker group Anonymous published a list of supposed KKK Members this week, but several people have pointed out that a few of those names probably aren’t members for really obvious reasons. Like being Latina or gay.

And then there’s this Oklahoma mayor, who says his cross-burning KKK costume on Halloween was just “a prank.” Uh huh.

The only black engineer working at Twitter, Leslie Miley, recently quit the company because of the company’s attitudes about diversity. He declined the company’s severance package so that he could speak openly about it to the press.

Seattle’s gum wall is getting cleaned off, even though the city says they know it probably won’t stay that way for long. (I find the wall really, really gross. Sorry, Seattle.)

A new study says that death rates are rising for white, middle-aged Americans. Every other age/ethnic group’s death rates are falling.

The NIH is allotting more money for research into chronic fatigue syndrome — an illness I have, so I hope this is beneficial.

A woman who was caring for the late Bobbi Kristina Brown has been arrested on charges relating to her not actually being a nurse. Wow.

R.I.P.

Happy Days star Al Molinaro has died. He was 96.

Law & Order actor and former Presidential candidate Fred Thompson has died from lymphoma. He was 73.

In Entertainment:

Singer Kesha has asked the court to allow her to make new music without having to work with producer Dr. Luke, whom she has said raped and abused her during their time together. This whole story is awful.

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series, making it the first time they have done so in 30 years.

CBS will be airing a new Star Trek series in 2017, but unfortunately, it won’t be on Hulu.

And finally, the BBC is going to be adapting Philip Pullman’s book series His Dark Materials. It has some of the same producers that worked on the relaunch of Doctor Who.

Until next time friends!