SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - Layan, a 9-year-old snow leopard at the Santa Barbara Zoo, is quickly winning over young visitors.

He arrived from the Idaho Falls Zoo as part of a conservation breeding program.

Layan replaces the zoo’s late snow leopard, Kisa, giving families a rare chance to see this vulnerable species up close.

The Latest Breaking News, Weather Alerts, Sports and More Anytime On Our Mobile Apps. Keep Up With the Latest Articles by Signing Up for the News Channel 3-12 Newsletter.

The post Snow Leopard Layan Becomes Kid Favorite at Santa Barbara Zoo appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — YouTube will now let parents limit the amount of time their teens can spend scrolling through its short-form video feature, Shorts, or block them all together.

The option is part of a group of new parental controls the popular video platform announced on Wednesday. YouTube, like many tech platforms, has ramped up efforts to protect young users in recent months, in response to growing scrutiny from families, advocates and lawmakers.

The option to endlessly scroll through short videos can make social media platforms addictive, especially for young people, parents have argued.

Parents supervising their teen’s account will now be able to set a time limit on Shorts, ranging from two hours to zero minutes. For example, parents “can set the Shorts feed limit to zero when they want their teen to use YouTube to focus on homework, and change it to 60 minutes during a long car trip to be entertained,” YouTube said.

Parents will also be able to set custom bedtime and “take a break” reminders for their kids — automated versions of which YouTube already applies by default for users under the age of 18.

YouTube is adding a new sign-up process to make it easier for parents to create supervised accounts for their kids. It will also simplify the process of switching between minor and adult accounts on shared devices.

And the platform is updating its guidelines for the types of content that will be recommended and accessible to teen users. It will prioritize videos centered around “curiosity and inspiration,” “building life skills and experiences” and “credible information that supports wellbeing,” and other positive categories, YouTube said. Teens are already blocked from repeatedly viewing videos that could send them down dangerous content rabbit holes, such as those idealizing certain body types.

The updates come after YouTube said last year it would use artificial intelligence to guess users’ ages, and would place suspected teen users into its more protective under-18 settings regardless of what birthdate they provided at sign up. Other major online platforms, including Instagram, ChatGPT and Character.AI, have also recently rolled out additional parental controls and content restrictions for young users.

YouTube parent company Google has also been in the spotlight this week following a viral LinkedIn post. Online child safety advocate Melissa McKay posted screenshots that showed Google alerting her almost-13-year-old son that he’d soon have the option to remove parental supervision

By Kathryn Squyres, CNN

(CNN) — At least 22 candidates have filed to run for former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district in northwest Georgia.

The group includes veterans, farmers and business owners. Seventeen are Republicans. Some have challenged Greene in the past or have held local office, while others are newcomers to politics.

Few are talking much about Greene or her legacy in the district, while several claim to be President Donald Trump’s best local ally.

While the deep-red district is all but certain to stay in Republican hands, the race could give a sense for how voters come down on the split in the party between Greene and President Donald Trump.

All these candidates will run on the same ballot in the special election on March 10. If no candidate wins a majority, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff on April 7.

The information below comes largely from campaign websites and social media pages.

Republicans

Colton Moore, a former state senator, calls himself “Trump’s No. 1 defender” in the district. Before he resigned to run in the special election, he was expelled from the Senate Republican caucus in 2023 for ripping his colleagues over not agreeing to a special session to impeach Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who obtained a since-dismissed indictment of Trump. At the time, Trump praised Moore, thanking him for his “courage and conviction.” Moore was banned from the state House floor in 2024 for criticizing the late House speaker and was then arrested last January as he tried to push his way into the chamber during the State of the State address.

Jim Tully is a former Greene staffer and the immediate past chair of the district’s Republican committee, although he hasn’t been highlighting his affiliation with the former congresswoman during the campaign so far.

Clay Fuller is the elected district attorney for the judicial district at the northwestern tip of the state. A self-proclaimed “America First district attorney,” Fuller says he’s running to bring manufacturing back to the district.

Brian Stover served on the Paulding County Board of Commissioners for five years before unsuccessfully running for commission chairman. In an ad his campaign said ran during the Sugar Bowl, Stover says he has the same mission as Trump: “to take out the trash.”

Nicky Lama, who calls himself “100% MAGA,” resigned from his post on the Dalton City Council to enter the special election. Lama owns contracting and real estate companies, runs a farm and owns a restaurant in Dalton. He says he was inspired by marching with his grandfather during the tea party movement and voting for Trump in 2020 – the first presidential election in which he was old enough to vote.

Reagan Box is a horse trainer and political newcomer. Box, who had been running for US Senate before switching to the House race, casts herself as a Trump ally with an “

By Harmeet Kaur, CNN

(CNN) — As Americans across the country demonstrate their opposition to Donald Trump’s immigration offensive, the president and his administration aren’t classifying them as protesters. Instead, they’re calling them “agitators.”

In the words of the Trump administration, Renee Good, the woman killed by an ICE agent while protesting enforcement actions in Minnesota, and her wife, Becca Good, were part of a “mob of agitators.” A bystander who could be heard in a video of the interaction crying “shame, shame” was an “agitator, probably a paid agitator.” Minnesota residents who are protesting, angry that one of their neighbors was killed at the hands of federal authorities, are “professional agitators.”

“Agitator” is a Latin word meaning driver or charioteer, from the verb agitāre, meaning to put into motion, to rouse up or to disturb. Today, the Oxford English Dictionary defines an agitator as “a person who instigates public dissent or unrest,” while American English authority Merriam-Webster defines it as “one who stirs up public feeling on controversial issues.” (Separately, an agitator is also the post in the middle of a washing machine that helps slosh the clothes around.)

Exactly who is instigating public unrest or stirring up public feeling is a matter of interpretation. Throughout US history, the label “agitator” has largely been deployed in one direction — “by the powerful to delegitimate real grievances of the marginalized and oppressed seeking change,” Aldon Morris, a professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University, wrote in an email to CNN.

Per Morris, the “agitator trope” was used by enslavers to describe abolitionists, by business magnates to characterize labor union organizers and by segregationists to smear Black civil rights activists. (In some instances, so-called agitators appear to have claimed the label as a point of pride.) And from 1967 to 1971, the FBI kept what it first called its Rabble Rouser Index, then renamed the Agitator Index, containing information about dissidents that it deemed a threat to order.

Martin Luther King Jr., one of the most well-known figures ever to be deemed an “agitator,” warned against dismissing those who engage in nonviolent civil disobedience.

“And I am further convinced that if our white brothers dismiss as ‘rabble rousers’ and ‘outside agitators’ those of us who employ nonviolent direct action, and if they refuse to support our nonviolent efforts, million

CNN

By Isobel Yeung, Aida Karimi, Catherine Nicholls, Augusta Anthony, CNN

(CNN) — Fears are growing for the fate of a detained Iranian protester who may soon be executed, according to a family member and the US State Department, amid a brutal and ongoing crackdown on nationwide anti-government protests by Iranian authorities.

In a Tuesday post on X, the US State Department said that Iranian authorities are planning to execute Erfan Soltani, who was arrested at his home last Thursday in connection with protests in Fardis, a city about 25 miles west of Tehran.

“More than 10,600 Iranians have been arrested by the Islamic Republic regime simply for demanding their basic rights. Erfan Soltani, 26, whose death sentence was issued for January 14, is among them,” the State Department said.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, Somayeh, a relative of Soltani who declined to be identified by her full name due to security concerns, said he is an “incredibly kind and warm-hearted young man” who has “always fought for the freedom of Iran.”

Soltani was not allowed a lawyer or an appeal after being sentenced to death, according to Somayeh, who said that his trial was rushed.

Rushed death sentences and sham trials are a common occurrence in Iran, according to regional experts.

“This time, the Islamic Republic regime didn’t even bother with its usual 10-minute sham trial,” the US State Department said in a post on X.

CNN is reaching out to Iranian authorities for comment.

Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Movahedi Azad said over the weekend that legal proceedings against protesters, whom he called “terrorists,” will be carried out “without leniency, mercy or appeasement,” according to the semi-official news agency Tasnim.

On Wednesday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said its intelligence network has received nearly 400,000 public reports, leading in some cases to arrests.

Denied access to case

Hengaw, a Norway-based human rights organization, reported that Soltani was arrested at his home last Thursday. Four days after his arrest, his family was told that his execution had been scheduled, it said.

Soltani’s family has been denied access to any information regarding his case, including the charges against him, Hengaw reported Monday. His sister, a licensed lawyer, has tried to pursue the case, “but authorities have so far prevented her from accessing the case file,” the organization said.

His family has been granted only “a brief opportunity for a final visit” before his execution, according to Hengaw.

The feared execution looms as tensions between the US and Iran further intensify, with US President Donald Trump considering taking military action against Iran.

On Tuesday, Trump warned the regime against executing protesters and said the US would take