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Singer Jill Sobule, known for the 1995 song “I Kissed a Girl,” died in a Minnesota house fire Thursday morning, her representatives said. She was 66.

The fire occurred in Woodbury, a city around 16 miles east of Minneapolis, they said. Officials there said firefighters discovered a dead woman after a house fire that was reported around 5:30 a.m. Thursday.

“Jill Sobule was a force of nature and human rights advocate whose music is woven into our culture,” manager John Porter said in a statement.

“I Kissed a Girl” reached No. 20 on Billboard’s modern rock chart and was the first openly queer-themed record to reach Billboard’s Top 20.

Sobule’s song “Supermodel” from the “Clueless” soundtrack was also a pop success.

Sobule most recently created a coming-of-age musical, “F— 7th Grade,” an off-Broadway show that debuted in 2022. It was a Drama Desk nominee for “outstanding musical” the next year and was named a New York Times Critic Pick.

Sobule had been scheduled to perform Friday in Denver at Swallow Hill, where an informal gathering will now be held to remember her instead, her reps said.

In 2008, Katy Perry released “I Kissed a Girl,” which was not a cover of Sobule’s song. After Sobule made comments that she said were deliberately over-the top and ironic, she was targeted by Perry fans who took the comments seriously.

“I may be a touch cynical about the business, but I have never really been angry or had ill feelings towards Katy herself,” Sobule wrote on what was then known as The Huffington Post. “I was actually in a small way happy to not be the ‘Kissed a Girl’ girl anymore.”

She said she hoped Perry fans were “okay with the title of my brand new song, ‘I Kissed a Girl …First,’” she wrote, adding “Wink.”

Sobule is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, James and Mary Ellen Sobule, and her nephews, Ian Matthew and Robert and Robert’s wife Irina, her reps said.

The Department of Health and Human Services released a review on Thursday that found that the quality of evidence regarding the effects of transition-related care for minors “is very low,” and that, as a result, many U.S. doctors have managed to unintentionally “fail their patients” by providing them with such care.

“A central theme of this Review is that many U.S. medical professionals and associations have fallen short of their duty to prioritize the health interests of young patients,” the conclusion of the 409-page report states. 

The HHS review found that there is limited evidence regarding the effects of medical interventions for youth with gender dysphoria on “psychological outcomes, quality of life, regret, or long-term health.” At the same time, it found that “evidence for harms associated with pediatric medical transition in systematic reviews” is “sparse,” but said “this finding should be interpreted with caution” because there are no studies that track and report harms. 

It also sharply criticized the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an international nonprofit made up of medical professionals that develops guidance regarding trans health care, arguing that its guidelines are biased and politically motivated. The HHS report alleges that WPATH has influenced U.S. medical associations to create a false perception that there is consensus regarding transition care for minors despite concerns from whistleblowers and detransitioners, or the relatively small number of people who no longer identify as trans or regret transition care they received.

The review also casts doubt on the increasing number of studies in recent years that have found a significant independent association between gender dysphoria and suicide, and on studies that have linked access to transition care to improved mental health outcomes for youth. 

The HHS review ultimately calls for psychotherapy as “a noninvasive alternative to endocrine and surgical interventions for the treatment of pediatric gender dysphoria” and for more research regarding the effects of exploratory psychotherapy on minors with gender dysphoria.  

The report marks the most recent escalation of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back access to transition-related care and other rights for trans people. President Donald Trump issued several executive orders targeting trans people during his first weeks in office, including one declaring there are only two unchangeable sexes assigned at birth, another banning trans people from serving or enlisting in the military and one prohibiting federal funding for hospitals that provide transition care to minors. 

The order regarding trans care for minors, signed on Jan. 28, required HHS to publish a review of the existing literature on “best practices for promoting the health of children who assert gender dysphoria,” the medical term for the distress caused by the misalignment between someone’s birth sex and gender identity. The HHS review notes that it is “not a clinical practice guideline,” which is meant to help clinicians and patients make decisions about care, “and it does not issue legislative or policy recommendations.” However, the review could still affect access to transition care for minors nationwide by adding fuel to the political firestorm surrounding it.

The review’s findings mark a significant break between the federal government and the stance of major U.S. medical associations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychological Association — which support access to transition-related care for minors and oppose restrictions on it. 

As a result, the review was met with immediate backlash from medical associations and trans activists, who criticized its methods and lack of transparency. Most notably, HHS did not list any of the review’s authors in what appears to be a break with protocol, as the names of authors are generally required to be included on any scientific publication.

“While this is a systematic review of the literature on this subject executed by experts in the field, the credibility of this report plummets in the mind of many folks in the scientific and medical communities because those experts are not named anywhere,” said Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Stanford University’s medical school. 

She added that a scientific report of this kind generally also lists the names of the experts who peer-reviewed it, and this review does not.

It’s unclear if the entire report was peer-reviewed or only a portion of it. A news release issued by HHS on Thursday states: “Chapters of this review were subject to peer review prior to this publication, and a post-publication peer review will begin in the coming days involving stakeholders with different perspectives.”

Ladinsky said that is highly out of the ordinary, and that post-publication peer review generally only happens when there has been “serious doubt cast” on the findings of a study or report.

HHS did not return a request for comment regarding the names of the authors being excluded from the report or the peer-review process. 

Susan J. Kressly, the president, American Academy of Pediatrics, said the organization is “deeply alarmed” by the report. 

“For such an analysis to carry credibility, it must consider the totality of available data and the full spectrum of clinical outcomes rather than relying on select perspectives and a narrow set of data,” Kressly said in a statement. “This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.” 

The review also promotes “exploratory psychotherapy,” which refers to talk therapy as an alternative treatment to puberty blockers or hormone therapy. In this kind of therapy, therapists try to help youth “come to terms with their bodies,” according to the review, or accept their birth sex.

Some of the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy organizations — including GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization — as well as medical experts who specialize in research regarding care for LGBTQ youth said “exploratory psychotherapy” is often another way of referring to “conversion therapy,” or a discredited practice that attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. 

“This is the argument they have been using for decades, and really it’s conversion therapy light,” said Doug Haldeman, a psychologist and professor of clinical psychology at John F. Kennedy University. “We are in an era where the administration has made it clear from the very first day that their wish is to erase trans identity altogether.” 

Haldeman, who is also the author of “The Case Against Conversion ‘Therapy’: Evidence, Ethics, and Alternatives,” said there is years of research showing that trying to get trans people to “accept” their birth sex has negative mental health outcomes.

The HHS review pushes back on equating “exploratory” therapy with so-called conversion therapy, arguing that all psychotherapy is “exploratory by definition.” 

The review also mentions multiple “whistleblowers,” or people who previously helped provide care to trans youth who have since denounced such care. It mentions Jamie Reed, a former case worker at the Transgender Center at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital, who alleged in a 23-page affidavit that children were being routinely prescribed puberty blockers or hormone therapy without “appropriate or accurate” mental health assessments. Her allegations were used by state lawmakers in support of legislation that eventually barred gender-affirming care for minors in the state of Missouri. 

The review says that the concerns of whistleblowers have been “discounted, dismissed, or ignored by prominent advocates and practitioners of pediatric medical transition.”

Reed said that, “as a named whistleblower in the report, and as a lesbian myself with insider knowledge of this field, I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusions” of the review.

“Gender medicine has been gay conversion therapy since the beginning,” Reed said in a statement to NBC News. “The HHS review shares that history and concludes the practice raises ‘serious justice-related concerns’ because of the overrepresentation of LGB youth among patients. As a lifelong Democrat, I believe it is high time for bipartisan support to acknowledge the findings of this report.”

Ladinsky previously practiced as a pediatrician in Birmingham, Alabama, for 10 years, where she treated hundreds of trans adolescents until the state passed a ban on transition care for minors in 2022. The state is one of 25 that have enacted such restrictions. 

“All of us on the front lines will tell you that in these 25 states where elements of the care is banned, we have yet to learn of one young person who is no longer transgender,” Ladinsky said.

BLOCK ISLAND, R.I. — The Mystic Aquarium Animal Rescue Team has never been busier.

Looking through binoculars, program manager Sarah Callan scanned the shoreline for a growing problem on Block Island, Rhode Island — entangled seals.

When fishing gear, garbage or a balloon gets wrapped around a gray seal’s neck, it tightens as the marine mammal — which can exceed 800 pounds — grows and can lead to significant injury or death.

Twenty entangled gray seals have been reported to the Connecticut-based non-profit so far this year; that is more than what’s typically documented by Mystic annually.

Callan called the spike “alarming.”

NBC News was given rare access to follow Mystic, working in partnership with the Atlantic Marine Conservation Society and Block Island Maritime Institute, as they set out to disentangle seals born within the last several months.

Callan and her colleagues flanked a group of seal pups sunbathing on the water’s edge. They army-crawled in an attempt not to spook the herd, before sprinting in with bright red boards to separate the entangled pup and scoop him up with a net in a feat of speed and impeccable timing.

Once the pup was contained, the team drew blood, attached a tracker for research and cut him free of the fishing net constricting his neck.

“We’re going to be able to just release the seal today and avoid having to bring it into our clinic for rehab,” Callan said, as the team worked. “The quicker we can get out here to disentangle them, the better.”

This is the same team that took in a wayward seal stranded in downtown New Haven, Connecticut, in February. The seal pup won over the internet with his big eyes and sweet cry, and the public even voted on his name, “Chappy.”

Sadly, he didn’t make it, succumbing to gastrointestinal issues that were too severe to treat. In a statement posted online, Mystic also said they found pieces of plastic in his stomach, “highlighting the threat that marine debris, especially plastics, poses to marine animals.” 

Some estimates suggest plastic pollution kills more than 100,000 marine mammals every year.

“The amount of animals that are interacting with human-made products and debris within the first couple months of their life is a bit alarming,” Callan said, “and it directly relates to the state of the ocean. … We feel that it’s our job to help share that message and educate people on the threats they face.”

 It’s a mounting fight that Mystic isn’t giving up on.

The team cheered, as the seal they just cut free from netting galumphed (the undulating motion seals use to move on land) back into the ocean.

“You get to give an animal a second chance at life that they normally wouldn’t have without our intervention,” Callan said. “It’s such a special moment to see.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs confirmed at a hearing Thursday that he had rejected a plea deal from federal prosecutors in his sex trafficking case, paving the way for his trial to begin next week.  

“Have you rejected the government’s offer?” U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing his trial in New York, asked him.  

“Yes, your honor,” Combs replied.  

Combs, wearing olive-colored clothing over a white thermal shirt, carried a black binder with notebooks in it as he entered the courtroom and waved to supporters in the gallery before he hugged and shook hands with his attorneys.  

He has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. 

Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said that Combs’ legal team discussed the offer with him and that together they decided to reject it. Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey said the proposal would have given Combs a lighter sentence than he would receive if he is found guilty at trial on all charges.

The hearing was the last before the trial begins with jury selection Monday. Subramanian said voir dire, or the questioning of potential jurors, would be conducted in a way to protect jurors’ privacy, including possible disclosures about experiences with sexual or domestic abuse. 

Subramanian said he wanted to seat a jury of 12 and six alternates in three days.  

The court will call 50 jurors each day to the 26th-floor courtroom in Manhattan. Each juror will either be excused for cause or asked to return to the main courtroom for further questioning. 

The goal is to narrow the group to 45 people, who will each be interviewed separately with two attorneys from each side present. The court had requested 600 potential jurors. 

If prospective jurors want to speak privately, they will go into Subramanian’s chambers, where the media will be excluded, he said. The transcript for those parts would be sealed. 

Agnifilo had expressed concern that the media’s presence would prevent prospective jurors from speaking candidly.  

Given the amount of attention the case has received, particularly in recent days, Agnifilo asked the court to add a question to the juror survey, regarding a questionnaire already sent to prospective jurors: “Have you read anything since completing the questionnaire?” Subramanian agreed to do so. 

Comey said she understood the defense team had added two new attorneys and said prosecutors would like to know who they are. Agnifilo said that the new attorneys were in the courtroom, and that they would file their appearances by the end of the day. One of them is Xavier Donaldson, who has been present for several previous hearings.  

A prosecutor said at a hearing last week that Combs had been offered a plea deal, the details of which have not been made public. 

Subramanian asked all parties to be in his courtroom at 8 a.m. Monday and reminded them to avoid making public statements that could prejudice the trial’s outcome. 

The reminder came in response to a court filing this week, in which Combs’ attorneys asked Subramanian to bar lawyers for witnesses, including Douglas Wigdor and Lisa Bloom, who represent people who have filed separate civil suits against Combs, from speaking publicly about the trial until its conclusion.  

Combs attorney Teny Geragos said at Thursday’s hearing that Bloom had appeared on the BBC to try to bolster her client’s credibility. Bloom told the BBC that Richard was “absolutely terrified” of Combs. 

“It is deeply disturbing to us and could violate the rules of judicial conduct,” Geragos said.  

Bloom represents a John Doe and Dawn Richard, who was a member of two now-defunct groups formed by Combs, Danity Kane and a second one called Diddy — Dirty Money. 

“How hypocritical that Mr. Combs and his attorneys, having made public statements many times, now want to silence me,” Bloom said Thursday. “Accusers and their attorneys have every right to speak out. I am very proud to represent my brave clients, Dawn Richard and John Doe, in litigation against Mr. Combs.

“I look forward to attending Mr. Combs’ upcoming criminal trial in New York and continuing to advocate for my clients consistent with the law and the ethical rules.” 

Richard alleged in a suit filed last year, a week before Combs was arrested, that he had groped and threatened her and that she had witnessed him assaulting his former longtime girlfriend Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura. Richards’ suit is pending, along with dozens of others filed by men and women accusing Combs of sexual misconduct, which Combs has vehemently denied. 

Wigdor represents Ventura, whose bombshell lawsuit filed in November 2023 preceded the federal raids of his home in March 2024 and criminal charges. Ventura accused Combs of years of physical and emotional abuse and and alleged that he forced her to have sex with male sex workers — encounters she said he called “freak offs” that were fueled by drugs and alcohol — while he masturbated and recorded them. Freak offs are at the center of the government’s case.

Ventura and Combs settled the lawsuit within a day without disclosing the terms and with Combs denying any wrongdoing.

Wigdor pledged to fight Combs’ efforts to prevent him from speaking publicly about the case.  

“We will vigorously oppose the motion seeking an extraordinary sweeping gag order as it is an obvious attempt at controlling and silencing victims and their counsel in contravention of well-established legal and ethical precedent,” he said in a statement. “Given this, it should come as no surprise that Combs fails to cite even one case to support his request.” 

Combs is alleged in his the five-count indictment to have coerced and threatened women to participate in sexual acts and silenced them through blackmail and violence. Prosecutors allege he had help from a network of associates and employees. 

The anticipated rollout of updated Covid vaccines this fall might be at risk after a change by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in how vaccines are tested, experts say.

Under the change by Kennedy, according to an HHS spokesperson, all new vaccines will need to go through placebo-controlled clinical trials — where some people get the actual shot and others get something inactive, like a saline shot — to compare the results.

Running trials that include a placebo group is already routine for most new vaccines.

The original Covid vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, approved in late 2020, went through placebo-controlled trials. But as the virus continued to mutate and the vaccines needed to be updated to match the circulating strain, drugmakers moved to a flu vaccine-like model — using smaller studies to test how well the updated shots triggered an immune response against the variant in question.

Like the annual flu shot, the updated Covid vaccines weren’t treated as entirely new products, since they still used the same formula, with just a tweak to what strain the vaccine would be targeting. The mRNA Covid vaccines were designed so that this change would be particularly easy to make, in the event the shots needed to be quickly updated.

Quickly, in this case, turns out to be several months. In order to have enough Covid doses ready to go for the fall, vaccine-makers are told what strain to target in the spring.

The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee is expected to meet in May or June to make a recommendation on which strains should be included in the next round of shots. A person familiar with the matter, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said the FDA had planned to schedule a meeting for May 22. An HHS spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting date.

If the FDA deems Pfizer’s and Moderna’s updated vaccines “new” products, requiring fresh trials, it’s extremely unlikely the doses would be ready for the fall, experts said.

Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA’s vaccine advisory committee, said the change would almost certainly delay the rollout of the updated shots from Pfizer and Moderna by “months,” as it would take time for the drugmakers to design the new trials and enroll participants.

That would only be the start — the drugmakers would then have to run the actual trial, which would take several months on its own, at minimum, and analyze the results.

Even the Covid vaccines — which were hailed as “the most successful government science program” because of how quickly they were developed, according to Dr. Alex Greninger, a professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at UW Medicine in Seattle — still took at least about six months to run their Phase 3 trials.

The HHS spokesperson didn’t directly respond to a question about whether the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines would require new clinical trials.

However, the spokesperson said in a statement that “FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary has indicated that significant updates to existing vaccines — such as those addressing seasonal strain changes or antigenic drift — may be considered ‘new products’ requiring additional clinical evaluation.”

“As we’ve said before, trials from four years ago conducted in people without natural immunity no longer suffice,” the spokesperson said. “A four-year-old trial is also not a blank check for new vaccines each year without clinical trial data,” they said, adding that the flu shot would be exempt from the new rule, because it “has been tried and tested for more than 80 years.”

The FDA has already delayed the approval of Novavax’s updated Covid vaccine, requiring the company to carry out a new clinical trial because the strain included in the shot differs from what was originally authorized.

Vaccine experts panned the new requirements.

It’s “unethical,” Offit said, noting that it’s generally frowned upon in the scientific community to give someone a placebo when an approved product already exists that can protect them.

Dr. Stanley Plotkin, a pediatrician who played a key role in developing the rubella vaccine, said the move would make “no sense.”

“What would be reasonable is to compare the old vaccine with the new vaccine to see whether the new vaccine gives better immunologic responses,” Plotkin said. “We have vaccines against Covid, where we have pretty concrete ideas as to what works and what doesn’t work. We know they’re not perfect, but we have vaccines we know work.”

Spokespeople for Pfizer and Moderna did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Former government officials have said HHS, under Kennedy, was moving to slow-walk vaccine approvals, including by imposing new regulatory hurdles on drugmakers, such as changing the requirements for approval or seeking additional clinical trial data. 

Vaccine experts also fear the rule change is part of a broader effort by Kennedy to sow distrust in vaccines and limit public access to them.

“The goal is to make vaccines more onerous to make, more onerous to test by bringing up these sort of false safety concerns or false efficacy concerns,” Offit said.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, said the change is unlikely to affect brand-new vaccines. But it could have major implications for vaccines that may require updates besides Covid — like those for RSV — since placebo trials are costly and take significantly more time to conduct.

“It’s really not feasible, and would lead to lots of hospitalizations and deaths,” O’Leary said.

Plotkin added that vaccines being developed for infections that are incurable, like HIV, may also be at risk.

“Suppose you wanted to develop a new HIV vaccine?” he asked. “Would you do a placebo-controlled trial in that situation? I mean exposing children to a disease which is very serious without offering them anything.”

Police urgently scoured a South Carolina beach town on Thursday searching for a hit-and-run suspect who struck at least three pedestrians before fleeing on foot with a knife, police said.

Two children and an adult were injured a little before 1 p.m. on Sullivan’s Island, which is just outside of Charleston, Isle of Palms Police Department spokesperson Matthew Storen said.

“The driver of that vehicle fled the scene on foot and was last seen armed with a knife,” Storen said.

While police urged residents to keep their eyes peeled for the man, authorities said not to approach him.

“He’s considered armed and dangerous,” Storen said. “Do not try to apprehend the subject or engage with the suspect. Give us a call at 911 immediately.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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