Unions for service workers at Walt Disney World have reached a tentative deal with the company that would raise the starting minimum wage from $15 to $18. Disney World service workers who are in the six unions that make up the Service Trades Council Union coalition planned to vote on the contract proposal next Wednesday. They rejected an earlier offer last month. The agreement reached Thursday covers around 45,000 service workers at the Disney theme park resort outside Orlando. Union leaders say workers could see their hourly wages rise between $5.50 and $8.60 an hour by the end of the five-year contract, if it’s approved.

The lawyer for a one-time Trump supporter caught up in a Jan. 6 conspiracy theory is demanding that Fox News and Tucker Carlson apologize for the many “falsehoods” he says they have spread about his client. The actions taken on behalf of Raymond Epps specifically reference the current $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox by a voting machine company that claims the network spread lies about it related to the 2020 presidential election. The demand indicates that people caught up in conspiracy theories are fighting back legally. The lawyer, Michael Teter, says he's putting Fox on notice for potential litigation. Fox had no immediate comment.

For the first time, autism is being diagnosed more frequently in Black and Hispanic children than in white kids in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday released the new estimates of how common autism is. It estimates that 1 in 36 children who were age 8 in 2020 had autism. That's up from 1 in 44 two years earlier. But the rate rose faster for children of color than for white kids. Experts attribute the change to improved screening and autism services for all kids, and to increased awareness and advocacy for Black and Hispanic families.

A new report from the American Library Association says attempted book bannings and restrictions at school and public libraries continue to surge, setting a record in 2022. The report released Thursday says more than 1,200 challenges were recorded by the association in 2022, nearly double the then-record total from 2021. Deborah Caldwell-Stone is the director of the ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom. She says she has “never seen anything like this,” and calls the past two years “exhausting, frightening, outrage inducing.” Librarians around the country have told of being harassed, and threatened with violence or legal action.

The Nebraska Legislature has advanced a contentious bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors, despite threats from several lawmakers that they would filibuster the rest of the session. Thursday’s vote came on the third day of debate, in which lawmakers angrily accused one another of hypocrisy and a lack of collegiality. With the bill’s advancement, some lawmakers have vowed to join Omaha Sens. Megan Hunt and Machaela Cavanaugh in a promise to filibuster every bill that comes before lawmakers for the rest of the 90-day session. The bill introduced by Sen. Kathleen Kauth would outlaw gender-affirming therapies such as hormone treatments and gender reassignment surgery for those 18 and younger.

Track and field leaders have signaled it will be nearly impossible for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in that sport at the Paris Olympics next year if the war in Ukraine continues. The World Athletics Council kept its ban on Russian athletes in international events in place “for the foreseeable future.” The move goes directly against the International Olympic Committee’s efforts to find a way for Russian athletes to compete as neutrals in Paris. World Athletics will form a working group to determine under what conditions Russians might return to international competition. The move came on the same day that World Athletics lifted a seven-year suspension of Russia’s track federation for a doping scandal that dates back a decade.