Author: alaskaadmin

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After fleeing to another state with another set of legal considerations, surrogate McKenna West has given birth.

Hers is an odd story that seems pretty miserable for everyone involved.

Flouting her contract and fleeing to another state, West hoped that she’d be recognized as the birth mother.

The parents are suing her as they prepare to give their newborn son a series of major surgeries. And yes, they’re facing off in court in a fairly unique clash of inter-state law.

What is McKenna West’s story?

West was a surrogate — specifically, a gestational carrier — from Alaska.

(Gestational carriers are implanted with an embryo from another couple, but are colloquially referred to as “surrogates” by most folks.)

She had agreed to go through a pregnancy for a couple who live in California.

Part of the surrogacy agreement contained a clause allowing the couple — the parents-to-be — to terminate the pregnancy if prenatal testing uncovered any anomalies, just as they would have had one of them been pregnant.

This is all pretty standard fare for a surrogacy arrangement and contract. But, as you can imagine, this is where it all went awry.

At the 20 week scan, doctors discovered that the fetus had hypoplastic left heart syndrome.

HLHS is a rare birth defect. The left side of the heart is severely underdeveloped and incapable of aiding in a healthy circulatory system.

Treatments are drastic and involve three major heart surgeries.

The Norwood procedure takes place within days of birth. The Glenn procedure is performed upon the infant several months later. At around preschool age, patients must undergo the Fontan procedure.

Heart surgeries upon a baby or small child are traumatic and carry major risks. Even those who undergo all three treatments face major risks, with 30% not even surviving childhood to become adults.

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What will the courts decide? This case involves three states, two parents, and a surrogate (and some political theater for Ken Paxton)

When the parents-to-be learned of this diagnosis, they made the difficult decision to trigger the clause and terminate the pregnancy.

But that is not what happened.

Instead, West refused. She also fled to Texas, where she hopes that local laws would consider her to be the “birth mother” even though the child is not hers genetically.

Her due date was on September 2, but she gave birth on Wednesday, August 12, in the Dallas area.

West also took the audacious step of naming the child, selecting “Gabriel” for a child who is in a legal gray area.

As you can imagine, the baby’s parents are feeling several emotions after this roller coaster.

“Our clients’ only focus at this time is ensuring that their baby receives the medical care that he vitally needs and that they, as his parents, are able to spend every precious moment they can with him,” their attorney told The Dallas Morning News.

The parents are (obviously) suing West. They are due in court later this month. In the meantime, West is at least not allowed to see or care for their child.

Her attorney has expressed that she has considered taking the child if the court finds that she is allowed to.

It sounds like this is a classic case of breach of contract, but with a lot of personal pain and a very real chance that the parents will end up losing their child — whatever they may name him — in the coming decade or so.

We will hope for the best for a family that has already been through so much as they face both the medical and legal hurdles to come.

McKenna West Gives Birth in Texas; Rogue Surrogate Sued by The Parents was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.

​The Hollywood Gossip

The official WordPress Browser Extension is now available for Google Chrome and Chromium-based browsers in the Chrome Web Store and for Safari on macOS in the Mac App Store. This new open source extension lets logged-in site users easily hide the admin bar while keeping its most helpful shortcuts in the browser toolbar, provides quick access to all of your WordPress sites, and adds helpful tools for developers and content creators.

By default, the admin bar sits at the top of every page you view while signed in to WordPress, keeping the dashboard, the editor, and your profile within reach. That convenience carries a cost: the bar occupies the viewport, so the page on screen is never quite the page a visitor sees. On sites doing more interesting things with the viewport, such as sticky headers or scroll-driven effects, it can introduce artifacts that send you hunting for a bug that is not there. Further, the admin bar can sometimes grow unwieldy as plugins add their own features and shortcuts to it. Switching it off in your profile settings trades one problem for another, because the shortcuts leave with it.

That problem was the spark for the creation of the WordPress Browser Extension. The extension hides the admin bar on the sites you choose, or everywhere by default, and keeps the most commonly used shortcuts one click away. Bringing the full bar back takes two clicks and no trip to the dashboard. What began as a fix for that one tradeoff grew into something broader: a way to recognize WordPress wherever you find it on the web, to jump into your own sites from anywhere, and to carry a small set of tools for testing and review.

As you browse, the toolbar icon shows whether the current site runs WordPress and whether you are signed in, without being obtrusive. On a site you manage, opening the extension reveals shortcuts to the dashboard or to the editor for the exact post, page, taxonomy, or template in view, including template-backed pages that open in the Site Editor on block themes. A locally stored launcher remembers the sites you sign in to, so they stay available even when you are somewhere else entirely.

A few tools also turn out to be a better fit for the browser than for a WordPress plugin. The extension can draw block boundaries over the rendered page, open a phone-sized preview window, reload with cache busting, or clear cookies and local storage for the site you are on. Some of that is hard to do from inside a site, and none of it requires a plugin or any other software installation, so the same tools are available on every WordPress site you visit.

All of this happens on your device. The extension reads the page in front of it to work out what it is looking at, and when it needs more than the page can tell it, it asks the site. Your preferences, and the list of sites you sign in to, stay in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere else, and there is no tracking or analytics of any kind.

The extension began as an independent project and became an official project with active support from Matt Mullenweg. Notable contributors include Fabian Kägy, a core contributor and colleague at Fueled (formerly 10up), who helped shape much of its early design and architecture, and Khokan Sardar who contributed multiple patches. Several other Fueled colleagues provided comprehensive testing and influenced its final shape.

You can follow along with its development on its GitHub repository, where bug reports and pull requests are welcome.

​WordPress Planet

The U.S. is notorious for its lackluster hospital food, but what does it look like in other countries? Here are some plates, from South Korea to New Zealand.

​Mashed – Fast Food, Celebrity Chefs, Grocery, Reviews

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Although Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban have finalized their divorce, both of them almost appear to still be single.

Almost.

A new report explains the reasoning for why both Kidman and Urban appear to be keeping any new dates out of the spotlight.

It sounds a little like a game of chicken.

Why are Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban keeping their private lives private?

Kidman and Urban split in 2025.

We reported in the very first week of this year that they finalized their divorce.

(Some celebrity divorces last longer than the marriages themselves. It’s usually a good thing when the divorce goes smoothly and quickly.)

Recently, folks spotted Kidman appearing to share drinks with Michael Bernstein.

The Oscar-winning actress and the private equity investor were poolside at an Italian hotel.

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Publicly, there’s nothing going on.

And most of us have shared drinks with a friend or a new acquaintance without any relationship whatsoever.

However, rumors are flying. And so, some reports suggest, are sparks.

Meanwhile, Urban has been publicly linked to a couple of ladies himself.

Nothing has seemed to come of any of these rumors. Not in public. What’s the deal?

‘He doesn’t want to be seen as this huge villain’

According to a report by RadarOnline, Kidman and Urban are both holding off on public dating until the other does the same.

“It’s become this cat-and-mouse game,” the alleged inside source characterized, “because Keith does not want to be the one who goes public with someone before Nicole does.”

The insider complained: “He took such a beating when people started linking him to other women after the split. It was horrible.” Yes, well, that’s what happens when you break up with one of the most beloved women on the planet.

“It’s no wonder he’s been afraid to let anything about his private life get out,” the overly sympathetic source expressed. “He doesn’t want to be seen as this huge villain.”

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“It’s pretty similar to what Nicole’s been doing herself,” the insider claimed, “keeping everyone guessing while she quietly gets on with her life.”

The source insisted: “Among their friends it’s common knowledge they’ve both been moving on in their own ways. They’ve just been very stealthy about it.”

According to the insider: “But the moment Nicole confirms a new romance, whether it’s with this guy [Reinstein] she’s now linked with or someone else, Keith will be more than happy to do the same.”

The source concluded: “He’ll actually be relieved because then he won’t have to keep looking over his shoulder or worrying about being painted as the bad guy all over again.”

They are both adults and can just move on when they like. One might suggest that Urban wasn’t condemned for moving on so much as questions about when he might have moved on, and questions about how young the rumored flings might be.

Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban Playing Dating ‘Games’ After Divorce [Report] was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip.

​The Hollywood Gossip