Judge Amy Holmes, who approved the petition, also last year approved a “non-binary” gender designation for another Portland resident. The 27-year-old formerly known as Patrick Abbatiello, now legally designated agender, also got legal approval to change names, now going only by “Patch,” no surname. That name also serves as a pronoun, Patch explained to the local NBC affiliate this week.

“Even gender-neutral pronouns don’t feel as if they fit me,” Patch said. “I feel no identity or closeness with any pronouns I’ve come across. What describes me is my name.”

By deadline, Patch did not respond to requests for interview sent by phone and Facebook through Portland Community College’s Queer Resource Center. Patch works there as a co-coordinator, and a Facebook post for the center lauded the student for “blazing the way.”

While the comic book industry has been making great strides in its efforts to reflect the real world in its characters, the same has not always been true of their creators, who have typically been straight, white and male. But the ratio of representation continues to change. 

David F Walker, who is black, is writing a new Luke Cage series for Marvel that begins in May; that same month introduces a superhero universe from Lion Forge, with a diverse team of creators and characters, including Noble, the flagship hero who is black; and this summer will see the return of Kim & Kim, from Black Mask Studios, about two bounty hunters, one a trans woman, the other bisexual, written by Magdalene Visaggio, who is transgender.

They join the growing list of comic book series with diverse characters at the forefront. For a long time, “the American comic book industry has marginalized and excluded the voices of writers of color,” said Joseph Phillip Illidge, a senior editor at Lion Forge Comics. That has caused some fans to ask that characters of color have their stories done by creators of color.

When characters and creators share a special bond, there is an increased chance of authenticity. That seems to be the case in Ms Rivera’s work on America, judging by the early reviews. “One big part of this book’s personality is that it allows America to be totally, unapologetically queer,” wrote Kat Overland on the website Women Write About Comics. “It’s the same with her brownness. She’s Latina, style-wise, speech-wise, everything, and it feels natural. Ultimately, the more diverse voices you have in the room, the greater the worldview you’ll get in your fiction.”

The news agency reported on Thursday: “The campaign against Soros in countries formerly dominated by Moscow appears to follow a template set by Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose own crackdown on foreign-funded charities drove Soros’s foundation out of Russia two years ago.

And now, with President Donald Trump in the White House, anti-Soros campaigners in Eastern Europe say they have also drawn inspiration from the United States, particularly from rightwing US media like the website Breitbart, which has long vilified Soros as a liberal hate figure. Breitbart’s former chairman Steve Bannon now serves as a senior White House adviser to Trump.

“Our inspiration comes from the United States, from the American conservative organizations, media and congressmen with the same views, especially the new administration of President Trump,” said Cvetlin Cilimanov, the editor of the main state news agency in Macedonia, who co-founded a group called Operation Stop Soros in January.

Reuters quoted anti-Soros campaigners in Macedonia, Romania, and Hungary accusing Soros of using his Open Society Foundations to create a vast web of front groups that push a globalist agenda.

At that time, the embryonic six-states Europe was called the ‘Carolingian Europe,’ not only because it had pretty much the same shape as Charlemagne’s empire, but it seemed to recall the unity between the Holy Roman Empire and the Church of Rome.”

“On Saturday March 25, Europe’s top brass will meet in the same room to celebrate … with a ‘Rome declaration’ that will set out how to challenge the turbulence ahead,” wrote Chiara Bussi in Il Sole 24 Ore. She adds that Europe is threatened not by war, but by the rise of “Euroskepticism which already has moved London toward Brexit, beginning the divorce process” as soon as the celebrations in Rome end.

He said: “When a body loses its sense of direction and is no longer able to look ahead, it experiences a regression and, in the long run, risks dying.” The Pope went on to condemn anti-immigrant populism and extremism, which he said posed a “mortal threat” to the union.

Prime ministers and presidents from 27 EU members states have gathered in Italy to mark the 1957 founding of the Treaty of Rome, receiving a Papal blessing on the eve of the anniversary. Celebrations around the milestone have been muted by unease within the bloc, mainly due to a number of prolonged economic crises and an unresolved migrant situation. Prime Minister Theresa May did not attend the meeting of leaders at the Vatican.

The addition of Brexit has caused extra strain on relations, with Britain due to trigger Article 50 within days, marking the beginning of divorce proceedings with the EU. The Argentinian-born pontiff told the leaders they needed to promote Europe's "patrimony of ideals and spiritual values" with greater passion and vigour.

"For it is the best antidote against the vacuum of values of our time, which provides a fertile terrain for every form of extremism," he said, mentioning the attack in London this week by a British-born convert to Islam, who killed four people. The pope has repeatedly criticised Europe over the past five years for its perceived lack of vision, drawing the ire of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2014 when he described the EU as an elderly woman who was "no longer fertile and vibrant".

"For someone like myself, it was in 1933, the year of my birth, that Hitler was democratically elected in Germany. He unleashed the most horrendous war. This country played a unique role in securing his defeat. So Germany lost the war. We have just handed them the opportunity to win the peace."

Responding to Lord Heseltine's comments, a UKIP spokesman said: "What an extraordinary thing to say. Has he lost his marbles? I never realised the purpose of Britain's membership of the EU was to stop German domination of Europe. For someone who is deeply pro-European to basically say he doesn't trust the German people not to misbehave shows how utterly out of touch he is with the modern world and the modern, democratic and free Germany."

"If we leave them alone — Bosnia Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, Macedonia, Albania, all those countries — we will have war again. "The president of the European Commission launched the attack on the US president by criticising him for encouraging other countries to copy Brexit.

He then branded Trump's enthusiasm for seeing Britain leave the EU “annoying”, in the interview with the Financial Times. He added it showed the real estate tycoon was unaware of the complicated history of Europe. Mr Juncker also said the US president is scaring Europeans with his rhetoric.

He added: ”For the first time in postwar history we have an American president giving the impression he is not interested in European affairs." At the end of the Cold War in 1991, the break-up of former Yugoslavia led to a brutal ethnic war between Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. It only ended after a NATO-led military intervention.

In other words, is there continuity between the new fact being reported and old facts that have been proven to be accurate by the passage of time. For example, if a political figure has devoted his life to supporting the fiat-money system and fractional-reserve banking, we are likely to question a report that this person now is promoting banking reform.

It is not uncommon to receive accurate information from unreliable sources. When that happens, and there is no better source for the information, we will use the story regardless of the source. Russia Today is an example of a source that cannot be trusted to report accurately on deeds of the Russian government or of other Leninist countries such as China, Cuba, and Venezuela but, unfortunately, their reports on what is happening inside the US often are more accurate than those from our mainstream media. That is why we sometimes use RT as a source.

Regarding Infowars. I have worked with Alex Jones since about 2005 and have found his information to be amazingly accurate, especially on what is happening inside the US. I see things a bit differently than he does on matters of US foreign policy, but lack of agreement on these issues is no reason to reject everything else he puts into the news stream.

Because of Alex, there now are millions of people who are aware of the forces of global tyranny at work within our own borders. I am grateful that he and his staff continue to deliver accurate news stories on this. Those are the stories we pass along. Those that we question, we skip over.

That’s our policy. If we relied only on sources with which we agree 100% of the time, we would have a very skinny news report. Heck, we even source articles from the New York Times and the Washington Post.