NAACP office vows vigilance after blast near Colo. office

NAACP office vows vigilance after blast near Colo. office

DENVER

Staff members at a Colorado NAACP office say they are waiting for more information before drawing conclusions about an explosion near their chapter, even as the FBI investigates whether the blast was domestic terrorism.

“We’re standing vigilant and are trying not to let this disrupt anything,” Colorado Springs NAACP volunteer Harry Leroy said Wednesday, a day after someone set off a homemade explosive device outside the group’s building, about an hour south of Denver.

The FBI said it had not determined whether the nation’s oldest civil-rights organization was targeted.

NYC will begin banning plastic foam containers

NEW YORK

New York City will move to the forefront of a growing environmental trend by banning food establishments from using plastic foam containers starting this summer, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration announced Thursday.

De Blasio’s mayoral ban will fulfill an initiative begun by his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, who first suggested banning the material in his final State of the City address in 2013. New York will now be the largest city in the country — following San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore. — to prohibit the foam containers, which environmental groups have long decried as a hazard that clogs the nation’s landfills.

Girl says stopping treatment should be her decision

HARTFORD, Conn.

A 17-year-old girl being forced by state officials to undergo chemotherapy for her cancer said Thursday she understands she’ll die if she stops treatment but it should be her decision.

The state Supreme Court ruled earlier in the day that state officials aren’t violating the rights of the girl, Cassandra C., who has Hodgkin lymphoma.

Cassandra told The Associated Press in an exclusive text interview from her hospital it disgusts her to have “such toxic harmful drugs” in her body and she’d like to explore alternative treatments. She said she understands “death is the outcome of refusing chemo” but believes in “the quality of my life, not the quantity.”

“Being forced into the surgery and chemo has traumatized me,” Cassandra wrote. “I do believe I am mature enough to make the decision to refuse the chemo, but it shouldn’t be about maturity, it should be a given human right to decide what you want and don’t want for your own body.”

Attorney seeks to use Boy Scout files in sex-abuse trial

LOS ANGELES

A lawsuit brought by a 20-year-old man who was molested by a Boy Scout leader in 2007 could force the organization to reveal 16 years’ worth of “perversion” files documenting sex-abuse allegations.

Files that were kept by the Boy Scouts of America between 1960 and 1991 already have been made public through other civil cases.

The release of the more-recent files — from 1991 to 2007 — could reveal how much the Boy Scouts have improved their efforts to protect children and report abuse after several high-profile cases.

Associated Press