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A man was left “devastated” after finding out his wife had lied to him about their unborn baby’s gender. However, the internet seems to be taking her side. In a viral Reddit post shared to the popular r/AmItheA**hole forum, user u/Leading_Gene4976 questioned whether he overreacted after learning that his wife was having a baby girl, instead of a boy. The 32-year-old man explained that he had a “tumultuous” childhood and “always craved a strong male figure” growing up. “I never had that bond with my father and always envisioned having it with a son,” he wrote. “My wife was aware of this deep-rooted desire.” The husband shared that he missed his wife’s initial pregnancy appointments because he was often away on business trips. “These trips, though draining, are critical since I’m the only breadwinner, trying to ensure a different life for my child than I had,” he added. While he was away, his mother-in-law attended check-ups with his wife - who “excitedly” told him they were expecting a boy. “We invested emotionally and financially: a blue nursery, boy-themed items, even naming him after my late grandfather,” the husband said. However, that all came crashing down when his wife’s mother accidentally let slip that they were having a girl. “My wife admitted she knew from the beginning but didn’t tell me, thinking she was protecting my feelings. I was devastated, feeling the weight of past hurts and fresh betrayals,” he explained. “In my pain, I cleared out the nursery and, in a moment I regret, told her mother she wasn’t welcome at upcoming family events, seeing her as part of the deceit.” His outrage towards his mother-in-law prompted him to seek advice in the subreddit, where he admitted that he “acted out of deep-seated emotions and past traumas”. While the husband shared that he “regrets” lashing out, that didn’t stop more than 6,400 Reddit users from criticising him for his overreaction. “You very much did overreact in clearing out the nursery and disinviting her mother from coming over. This reaction is crazy and you talking about this pain and devastation surrounding having a girl is probably the reason she was afraid to tell you,” read the top comment. “She probably wants to be excited about this child and didn’t want to deal with you acting like it’s something devastating that it’s a girl.” “The fact that men are often disappointed by our very existence as women, even in utero, continues to highlight society’s s****y view of women. Sorry we exist? Sorry you think you can’t live out your Field of Dreams fantasies with us?” wrote another user. “She shouldn’t have lied, but it’s quite clear why she did.” Others believed that he was “projecting” his own expectations from his unhappy childhood onto his unborn child. “Also, you are projecting wayyyy too much on an unborn child,” added someone else. “What if you did have a boy, but he wasn’t as interested in this intense father-son relationship that you are craving? Can any real life father-son relationship actually even live up to the one in your head that is supposed to heal your past wounds?” Many people also called out the soon-to-be father for preferring his baby to be one gender over the other, rather than accepting his child for however they choose to identify. “If you’re not prepared to love a child regardless of gender identity, sexuality, their mental and physical health, you’re not ready to have a child,” commented one viewer. "Why would you pack up the nursery? You’re still having a baby. That baby will still need all the things in that nursery,” someone else wrote. “Maybe this is a good chance for you to reconsider your attitudes on sex and gender - because, spoiler alert, the baby doesn’t care what colour their clothes and blankets are.” In response to the backlash, the husband clarified that he would’ve “come to terms with it over time and embraced the idea of having a daughter”. “My main issue isn’t about the gender but the deception involved. I just wish [my wife] had been upfront with me from the beginning,” he explained. “Our soon to be daughter is everything to me. If we decide on more kids, there might be a part of me that’s quietly hoping for a boy,” he replied to someone else. This isn’t the first time a husband has been called out for his less than thrilled reaction to having a baby girl. In 2021, a viral TikTok video showed an expectant father standing alongside his wife and infant daughter as they popped a black balloon, which revealed several smaller pink balloons inside - indicating they were having a girl. However, he was criticised for his disappointed reaction to having another daughter. “Don’t worry. Your daughter won’t want you either,” one person wrote, while another person commented: “His daughter is going to be heartbroken when she sees this when she is older. Whatever biased opinions should disappear when you are having children.” Read More Bride asks for divorce a day after wedding due to groom’s cake prank Husband ‘ruins’ dinner because of his wife’s typo: ‘The worst kind of control freak’ Bride praised for kicking bridesmaid out of wedding after disagreement over dress colour Adele cries as she helps couple with their unborn baby’s gender reveal Baby’s baptism goes wrong in mother’s viral video Chrissy Teigen reveals her surrogate pumps breast milk for her and John Legend’s baby

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Bethany Patton steps up to the counter and places her pink mug into a shoebox-sized dishwasher. It spins. It whirs. Water splashes inside. After 90 seconds, the door opens and steam emerges. A barista grabs the mug, dries it and prepares Patton’s order — a 16-ounce Starbucks double espresso on ice. For bringing her own cup, Patton gets $1 off her drink. “Saving the environment is important and all, but I probably come here more in knowing that I’m going to get a dollar off,” says Patton, 27, a cancer researcher at Arizona State University. Two friends who came on the afternoon coffee run nod as they hold the cups that they, too, brought along. Just as noteworthy as what they're carrying is what they are not: the disposable Starbucks cup, an icon in a world where the word is overused. For a generation and more, it has been a cornerstone of consumer society, first in the United States and then globally — the throwaway cup with the emerald logo depicting a longhaired siren with locks like ocean waves. Ubiquitous to the point of being an accessory, it has carried a message: I am drinking the world's most recognizable coffee brand. Now, in an era where concern for sustainability can be good business, the Starbucks disposable cup may be on its way to extinction thanks to an unlikely force: Starbucks itself. CONVENIENCE COLLIDES WITH VIRTUE By 2030, Starbucks wants to move away completely from disposable cups, which represent big portions of the company’s overall waste and greenhouse gas emissions. The stated reason is that it's the right thing to do for the environment, and Starbucks has a history of lofty sustainability goals around various aspects of their global operations. Some have been met, such as new stores being certified for energy efficiency; others have been revised or scrapped entirely. For example, in 2008 the company said that by 2015 it wanted 100% of its cups to be recyclable or reusable. Today, that's still a long way away. Today's drive to overhaul the cup comes with an obvious business imperative. Producing disposable products like cups creates greenhouse gas emissions, which warm the planet and lead to extreme weather events and other manifestations of climate change. That goes against customers' increasing expectations for companies to be part of the solution to climate change. Still, while customers want companies to be environmentally conscious, that doesn’t mean they’re willing to give up convenience. And there's this: Could eliminating the millions of paper and plastic cups used each year hurt Starbucks? After all, those cups, in the hands of customers, are advertising — a market penetration that makes Starbucks feel ubiquitous. At the store where Patton gets her coffee, Starbucks already doesn't serve any in disposable paper or plastic cups. Customers who don’t bring their own are given a reusable plastic one that can be dropped off in bins around campus. It’s one of two dozen pilots over the last two years, aimed at changing how the world’s largest coffee maker serves its java. The goal: to cut the company's waste, water use and carbon emissions in half by 2030. Pulling that off will be tricky and fraught with risks. It provides a window into how companies go from ambitious sustainability targets to actual results. “Our vision for the cup of the future — and our Holy Grail, if you will — is that the cup still has the iconic symbol on it,” says Michael Kobori, head of sustainability at Starbucks. “It’s just as a reusable cup.” Starbucks sees the change as an opportunity to cast the siren, and the company, in a different light. It also wants to push more suppliers in its production chain to provide recycled material and partners, such as universities and other locales that house stores, to be able to handle all that comes with reusable cups. Erin Simon, vice president for plastic waste and business at World Wildlife Fund, says commitment from major companies can help. But ultimately, she says, major change can happen only with corporate collaboration — and government regulation. “Not one institution, not one organization, not even one sector can change it on its own," Simon says. At Starbucks, the changes will create ripple effects. Jon Solorzano, a Los Angeles lawyer who advises companies on developing climate-friendly operations and disclosures, (an area referred to as “environmental, social and governance”), says the company likely has hundreds of suppliers that help manufacture cups. “It’s kind of like turning an aircraft carrier around,” Solorzano says. “Little tiny tweaks, which seem insignificant, can actually have big operational challenges for an organization." Starbucks is not the first company to push toward a reusable cup. From large companies in Europe, such as RECUP in Germany, which uses reusable cups and other food packaging, to local coffee houses in cities like San Francisco, the goal for years has been to shed disposable paper and plastic. But as the largest coffee company in the world, with more than 37,000 stores in 86 countries and revenues of $32 billion last year, Starbucks could force change across the industry. At the same time, failure to adapt and lead could hurt the coffee giant in customers' eyes. “I’ll always choose the more sustainable company,” says Irene Linayao-Putman, a public health worker from San Diego who recently bought Starbucks while visiting Seattle. The road to overhauling the container transcends just making a different choice or spending money. Improving sustainability requires navigating a web of technological developments, seeking out like-minded suppliers and testing how far customers can be pushed to change. For Starbucks, it means doing two major things in parallel that seemingly conflict: Move toward only reusable cups while developing disposable cups that use less material and are more recyclable. And managing the optics along the way. “They are just trying to get more buyers,” 10-year-old Aria June said with a laugh after buying Starbucks in Seattle. Then, prodded by her father, she added that sustainability and getting more business could co-exist. THE MECHANICS OF REUSE At the Arizona State store, if customers don’t bring their own cup, they are given a reusable plastic one with a Starbucks logo. If they bring it back, they get $1 off, just like customers who bring their own. And if they don't want to hold onto it? There are bins around campus, and the cups are washed by the university — part of a partnership with Starbucks — and returned to the store. Cups too damaged to be reused, along with disposable Starbucks cold drink cups and other plastic found in the trash, are sent to the university’s Circular Living Lab. They're shredded, melted and extruded into long, lumber-like pieces. Those pieces are cut, sanded and built into boxes, which become the return bins for the reusable cups. “This obviously has some energy and production costs, but using recycled content is always going to be less energy intensive (and) emit less CO2 than using virgin plastics,” says Tyler Eglen, the lab's project manager. For several years, Starbucks has been increasing the amount of recycled material in disposable paper cups. In some markets last year, Starbucks began using single-use paper cups made with 30% recycled material, an increase from 10%. The plan is to have all cups at 30% recycled material in in all U.S. stores starting in early 2025. That pushes the limits of what can be done with recycled paper material that holds hot liquids. Paper pulp from recycled cups has shorter fibers than virgin pulp, which means less rigidity, important particularly with hot coffee. How much recycled material can be used in manufacturing new cups depends on how equipped any particular area is to gather material and recycle it. Big cities have major recycling infrastructure, but many communities around the world have little to no recycling capacity. Another barrier: the lining inside the cup, crucial to keeping a hot liquid from quickly breaking down the paper. Made of polyethylene, a heat-resistant plastic, the liner is about 5% of the total cup but a significant piece of its overall carbon footprint. There is also the plastic lid. “Today, the reality is that for protection, as we put a hot beverage inside, we need a good seal on those cups," says Jane Tsilas, Starbucks’ senior manager for packaging. A similar testing and refining process is happening with disposable cold-drink cups. At the Tryer Center innovation lab in Starbucks' Seattle headquarters, drinks with ice in plastic cups are placed in holders attached to a platform. It then shakes as technicians look for leaks and flaws. For the last several years, Starbucks has been testing different kinds of plastics. In 2019, the company went to a strawless lid, eliminating a good amount of plastic. By the end of 2023, the goal is to reduce by 15% the amount of material in each cup. To do that, technicians examine different parts of the cup to see where less material may be used without weakening it. For example, could reducing the thickness where many people hold the cup, about halfway between the middle and lid, mean the cup collapses and the drink spills on the customer? "If it passes tests with baristas, then we would put it in the stores,” says Kyle Walker, a packaging engineer on Starbucks' research and development team. NOT AS EASY AS IT MIGHT SEEM Eventually, the endpoint is this outcome, which is more sustainable and good PR, too: No more disposables at Starbucks. That's because no matter the tests or technological innovations, there are limits to how much waste can be reduced with disposable paper and plastic cups. Long-term reductions in waste will come from reusable cups. The company has a long way to go. Since the reintroduction of reusable cups in some stores in July 2021 — reusable cups were not used during much of the COVID-19 pandemic — only 1.2% of worldwide sales in fiscal year 2022 came from reusables. Starbucks refused to provide data on how many disposable cups it uses in any given year. For all the talk of sustainability and increasing consciousness about climate change, it’s fair to assume that a significant number of Starbucks’ disposables end up in landfills. Even in Seattle, a progressive city with good recycling infrastructure, there are many cups in garbage cans outside Starbucks stores. Valencia Villanueva, a barista at the Arizona State store, has noted a growing consciousness among customers about the cup-washing machine and the “borrowed” cup program. That gives her confidence that the future is reusable cups. After all, it's not as if anyone is clamoring to be wasteful — even if what they're giving up is an item that became something of a global status symbol. “Nobody," she says, “has complained and said they wanted a single-use cup.” ___ Peter Prengaman is news director of The Associated Press' climate and environment team and can be followed here. Video journalist Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed to this report. ___ AP climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Read More Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Citing sustainability, Starbucks wants to overhaul its iconic cup. Will customers go along? From piñata to postage stamp, US celebrates centuries-old Hispanic tradition Starbucks cheers ‘good progress’ in plan for 100 new UK shops

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An Idea judge has denied “cult mom” Lori Vallow a new trial after she was convicted of murdering her two youngest children and conspiring to murder her new husband Chad Daybell’s first wife. The 49-year-old mother-of-three was last month found guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and grand theft over the deaths of her daughter Tylee Ryan, 16, and son Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, in Ada County Court in Boise, Idaho. She was also found guilty of conspiracy to commit the murder of Tammy Daybell, the then-wife of Vallow’s husband Mr Daybell. Her lawyers returned to court on Thursday to argue that she deserved a fresh trial, claiming the jury was confused by misleading instructions, reported KIFI. Her defence team argued that the court should overturn her previous trial and that she be re-tried along with Mr Daybell, who will face a jury next year. They also argued that one juror, who later appeared in media interviews, knew about evidence not presented at trial. Vallow was smiling as she arrived in court wearing an orange and white prison jumpsuit, with her feet shackled together, reported KIFI. District Judge Steven Boyce rejected the claims and she is scheduled to be sentenced on 31 July at the Fremont County Courthouse. Chad Daybell’s trial is scheduled for 1 April, 2024. JJ and Tylee vanished without a trace back in September 2019, with their mother refusing to reveal their whereabouts to both authorities and the children’s desperate family members. One month later, Tammy – an otherwise healthy 49-year-old – also died suddenly. Her death was initially ruled natural causes. This bizarre spate of disappearances and death came just months after Vallow’s fourth husband Charles Vallow was shot dead by Vallow’s brother Alex Cox in Arizona in July 2019. With Vallow’s children and both of their spouses then out of the way, she and Mr Daybell embarked on a new life together – flying to Hawaii to get married in a fairytale wedding on the beach. But, with months passing since the last signs of life of Vallow’s children, concerns continued to grow, prompting authorities to exhume Tammy’s body. A subsequent autopsy revealed that she had died by asphyxiation. In June 2020 – nine months after they were last seen alive – Tylee and JJ’s remains were found buried on the grounds of Mr Daybell’s property in Rexburg, Idaho. JJ, who had autism, had been smothered with a plastic bag taped over his face, his little body still dressed in a pair of red pyjamas. Tylee’s cause of death meanwhile has been impossible to establish as the teenager’s dismembered, charred bones and body parts were found scattered in the ground on Mr Daybell’s pet cemetery. Jurors in Ada County Court in Boise, Idaho, took almost seven hours to find Vallow guilty on all charges over the three murders after a gruelling six-week trial where the panel heard harrowing details about the doomsday mom’s path of deadly destruction and were shown graphic images of the murdered children’s remains. Read More Lori Vallow had two alleged accomplices in her children’s murders. One will never face justice What we know about the Lori Vallow Daybell ‘doomsday cult’ murder trial Lori Vallow Daybell: Timeline of ‘doomsday cult mom’s’ mystery case Lori Vallow has been convicted of her children’s murders. What happens next? Idaho mom convicted in deaths of 2 kids and romantic rival faces new Arizona charge

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