Abortion Center in Dallas First to be Shut Down in 2015

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Photo Credit: Life News
By Cheryl Sullenger. As the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals considers the constitutionality of Texas abortion safety laws, Operation Rescue has confirmed that Northpark Medical Group, an abortion facility in Dallas, Texas, has halted all abortions after the hospital that provided its two abortionists with privileges closed.

This represents the first abortion clinic to terminate abortion services in 2015, leaving just 549 surgical abortion clinics in America after clinic numbers hit a high-water mark on 1991 with 2,176 surgical abortion clinics. Last year, 73 abortion clinics nationwide closed or halted abortion services for at least part of the year – 60 of them permanently according to a survey conducted by Operation Rescue.

In Texas, 16 surgical abortion clinics remain, down from 44 in 2013, before Texas passed HB2, the law requiring abortion facilities to meet minimum safety standards. (Read more about the abortion center in Dallas that closed its doors HERE)

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Abortion Activist Says Pro-Lifers are Just as Bad as Terrorists

By Jill Stanek. Jodi Jacobson, editor-in-chief of the pro-abortion website RH Reality Check, claimed today on Twitter there is no difference between Islamic terrorists and Christian pro-lifers, as documented by blackcommunitynews.com.

@seanmdav Yes, cuz U C, there’s no difference whn ideology is used 2 kill, maim, imprison women thru denial of healthcare or other violence.

— Jodi Jacobson (@jljacobson) January 9, 2015

Wow. Abortion activist @jljacobson just said there is “no difference” between the French terrorists and pro-lifers. https://t.co/oSST0fiNXI — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) January 9, 2015

(Read more from this story HERE)
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Pro-Life Video Graphically Shows What 56,000,000 Dead Mean to the United States

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Mysterious Booms have Oklahoma Rattled

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A spate of mysterious booms that has been shaking central Oklahoma returned for a second day Friday, again rattling houses and frightening livestock.

Oklahoma Geological Survey research seismologist Austin Holland said a series of booms, much like a sonic boom, rattled the Norman area starting at 11:19 a.m. Friday. Numerous others had been reported Thursday in the same area at about the same time.

Friday’s booms weren’t “quite as frequent” as Thursday’s, Holland said. “It’s quite interesting.”

The windows of Anthony Young’s home in the town that’s the outskirts of Oklahoma City rattled. “We thought some nut was out here, you know, with explosives,” Young told KOCO-TV. “It sounded like thunder, you could feel the ground shake, but it was nothing like an earthquake”

Both Holland and National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Day didn’t have an explanation for the booms. (Read more about the mysterious booms HERE)

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Feds Fund Nearly $20,000 Dissertation on Mating Habits of Syrian Hamsters

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Photo Credit: Washington Free Beacon The National Science Foundation (NSF) is giving an assistant professor nearly $20,000 to write a dissertation on the mating habits of Syrian hamsters.

“What factors drive a female to choose a particular mate?” the grant for the project begins. “This is an important question to scientists interested in animal behavior, sexual selection, and life history theory. Individual variation in female mate preferences and choice is common. However, our understanding of the mechanisms behind this phenomenon is still quite limited.”

Thus, the NSF-funded dissertation seeks to understand how female Syrian hamsters’ reproductive age affects their “mate preference and choosiness” for male Syrian hamsters.

“The research team will experimentally accelerate reproductive aging in young female hamsters to determine if reproductive age modulates mate choice behavior,” the grant explained. “This will be the first study to assess the effects of reproductive aging on behavior in mammals.”

Young adult female Syrian hamsters will be injected with 4-vinylcyclohexene diepoxide (VCD), which makes their ovaries age faster, to see the drug’s effect on hamsters’ sexual preferences. Female hamsters usually prefer a “dominant” male, the grant said. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Iraq is Giving US Weapons to Iranian Militias

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By Joel Himelfarb. U.S. weapons intended for Iraq’s embattled military are winding up in the hands of Shiite militias backed by Iran, Bloomberg reports.

Obama administration officials and U.S. lawmakers say the Baghdad government, which received $1.2 billion in training and equipment assistance in the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress last month, has been turning military hardware over to the militias.

A senior administration official told Bloomberg’s Josh Rogin and Eli Lake that the U.S. government is aware of this but is caught in a dilemma. Iraqi security forces are unable to fight ISIS without the assistance of the militias, who are sometimes commanded by officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

But if Washington were to stop arming the Iraqi military, the situation would get even worse, with ISIS overrunning even more of Iraq and committing atrocities on an even larger scale. The official said the risk of failing to help the Baghdad government was greater than the risk of doing so. (Read more about Iraq giving US weapons to Iranian militias HERE)

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U.S. Military Back to Training in Iraq, but it’s a Little Different this Time

By Loveday Morris. Years after the U.S. military tried to create a new army in Iraq — at a cost of over $25 billion — American trainers have returned to help rebuild the country’s fighting force.

But this time, things are different.

With the Iraqis dependent on their own logistics, there is a shortage of weapons and ammunition available for training. For the time being, soldiers at Camp Taji are restricted to shouting “bang bang” to simulate firing during exercises. And, mindful of how Iraqi troops fled their positions last June during a major offensive by Islamic State extremists, U.S. trainers have added some new elements to boot camp. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Obamacare Expert Rips Obama Admin, Valerie Jarret for ‘Incompetence’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller By Al Weaver. In an interview with NPR, Steven Brill, author of “America’s Bitter Pill,” slammed the White House for its Obamacare launch, saying there has “never been a group of people who more incompetently launched something.”

Brill’s premiere Obamacare critique, as he tells host Terry Gross, is that the health care overhaul is “emblematic of what’s eating away at our country,” pointing directly to the politics and the “challenge of governance” it presents. Brill also told NPR that President Obama was largely protected by the likes of Valerie Jarrett, and had no idea of the issues until they ultimately reared their head. (Read more about what the Obamacare expert said HERE)

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House Approves Obamacare Bill Despite Veto Threat

By Fox News. The House voted Thursday to curb a provision in ObamaCare that some lawmakers say is hurting the job market, as the new Republican-controlled Congress moved quickly to challenge the administration on several fronts.

The House voted 252-172 for the ObamaCare bill, which tweaks the law’s definition of full-time workers who must be offered employer-provided health care. Twelve Democrats sided with Republicans in approving the first Affordable Care Act-related legislation of the new Congress.

The bill changes the full-time worker threshold from 30 hours weekly to a 40-hour minimum. Critics claim defining full-time employees as those working at least 30 hours is pressuring firms to save money by cutting workers’ hours below that and, in turn, the number of full-time jobs.

The White House, though, already has vowed to veto the bill, drawing jeers from GOP leaders. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Dozens of Children have Died from Flu Outbreak in U.S.

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By Liz Szabo. Flu is now widespread in 46 states and has killed 26 children, health officials said today.

“This year is shaping up to be a bad one, particularly for people 65 and older,” says Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Children younger than 5 are also at high risk of hospitalization, particularly babies under 6 months, who are too young to be vaccinated.

Flu is hitting the USA especially hard this year for two reasons.

First, the dominant flu strain in circulation is H3N2, a type that tends to cause twice as many hospitalizations and deaths as other strains of flu, Frieden says. Hospitalization rates have risen to 92 per 100,000 people, compared with 52 hospitalizations per 100,000 in a typical year. (Read more the story “26 Children Have Died From Flu” HERE)

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19 Measles Cases have been Tied to Trips to Disneyland

By Amy Taxin. Nineteen people from three states who visited Disney theme parks in California last month have now fallen ill with measles, health officials said Friday.

The patients all visited Disneyland or Disney California Adventure between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20, the California Department of Public Health and the Orange County Health Agency said.

Sixteen of the cases were in California, two in Utah, and one is in Colorado, officials said.

Officials in California said that of the 16 cases in the state they have only verified that two were fully vaccinated against the disease. Some were partially vaccinated and at least two were too young to be vaccinated. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Labor Force Participation Rate Craters: 92,898,000 Americans Not Employed

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Photo Credit: Breitbart
A record 92,898,000 Americans 16 years and older did not participate in the labor force last month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The BLS defines people not in the work force as people 16 years and up who are not employed and haven’t “made specific efforts to find employment sometime during the 4-week period ending with the reference week.” The labor force participation rate — or the “The labor force as a percent of the civilian noninstitutional population” — also dipped back down to 62.7 percent, from 62.9 percent in November.

September also saw a labor force participation rate of 62.7 percent, however prior to then, the last time the rate hit 62.7 percent was in February of 1978.

While the level of labor force participation declined — due not only to potentially discouraged workers but also baby boomers hitting retirement age — the BLS reported Friday that in December the unemployment rate declined to 5.6 percent and payroll jobs increased by 252,000.

“Today’s solid employment report caps off a strong year for the U.S. labor market, which achieved a number of important milestones in 2014,” Jason Furman, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in a statement. “Total job growth last year was the strongest since 1999, while the unemployment rate fell at the fastest pace in three decades.” (Read more about all the Americans unemployed HERE)

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The Case of the Missing Castro: It’s Officially Been One Year Since the Cuban Dictator has been Seen Publicly

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By Fox News Latino. Today marks 365 days since the former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, 88, was last seen in public — he was a gaunt presence who delicately shuffled his way through an art gallery in Havana.

His absence has been especially conspicuous because so far has he made no comment about the announcement that the U.S. will restore diplomatic relations after more than 50 years of hostility.

Little information about Castro is officially disclosed, including where he lives. But his silence has once again started rumors about his fragile health.

Late on Thursday, various media outlets reported that Castro had died and that Cuban officials were to hold a press conference on his death after a report was published by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera about Castro’s demise.

Cuban officials vehemently denied both Castro’s death and the press conference and the Italian newspaper eventually retracted its story, but not before social media sites like Twitter exploded with rumors of the elder Castro’s death. (Read more about the missing Castro HERE)

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One Castro is Dead. Long Live the Other One.

By David Francis. Around 6:00 this morning, amid a flurry of news on the search for the Parisian gunmen, a curious rumor started to circulate on social media: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro had died.

Initial reports appear to have come from the Diario Las Américas, an anti-Castro Cuban exile paper in Miami. Soon, German and British media picked up on the story. By 6:30 a.m., Twitter was filled rumors of the longtime Cuban leader’s demise.

This makes sense: News of Castro slipping into the great beyond is shovel-ready for Twitter. The 88-year-old Castro is known to be in poor health and is rarely seen in public, so his death wouldn’t be all that surprising. It also fits well into the current U.S.-Cuba thaw narrative. It would serve as a fitting end to the era of Cold War hostilities.

Perhaps most importantly, Castro’s passing would be sure to spark controversy. He remains a divisive figure for Cubans and Cuban exiles; his passing would ignite debate over whether he was Cuba’s savior or if he doomed the island nation to decades of poverty. What better place to hash this out than Twitter?

Unfortunately for the anti-Castro crowd, the rumor appears to be untrue. But it gained enough traction on social media that the Cuban government was forced to deny that it would hold a press conference to comment on reports. (Read more from this story HERE)

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False Rape Accusation Leads to Death of Alaska Man

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Photo Credit: The Daily Caller A man was beaten to death by the boyfriend of a woman who falsely claimed he raped her in a Fairbanks, Alaska motel room on Wednesday.

The woman, 31-year-old Dominique Vasquez, reportedly did not want to admit to her boyfriend, 39-year-old Abraham Stine, that she had cheated on him and so lied about the rape . . .

She also knew that Stine had a history of violence when she lied and told him that 37-year-old Wesley Lord — who was also Stine’s cousin — raped her at a the Extended Stay Hotel in Fairbanks.

Based on that belief, Stine came into the motel room through a window and began punching and beating Lord . . . Vasquez reportedly held her hand over Lord’s mouth while he was being assaulted. (Read more about the false rape accusation HERE)

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More White House Extremism: Obama Admin. Now Says We Need to DEFEND Islam (+video)

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Photo Credit: Getty Images On Thursday, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced that the Obama administration would prioritize fighting Islamophobia in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo in France. Never mind that most Westerners aren’t Islamophobic, but rather “Getting-Shot-In-The-Face-For-Expressing-My-Opinion” Phobic.

The real problem, according to the Obama administration, is lack of leadership in defending Islam:

There are some individuals that are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it, and trying to use its tenets to inspire people around the globe to carry out acts of violence. And we have enjoyed significant success in enlisting leaders in the Muslim community, like I said, both in the United States and around the world to condemn that kind of messaging, to condemn those efforts to radicalize individuals, and to be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are. And we’re going to redouble those efforts in the days and weeks ahead.

This, of course, is not the first time the Obama administration has discovered a duty to illuminate the inherent beauty and wonder of Islam. Over and over again, the Obama administration, in high culturally imperialist dudgeon, has attempted to explain to the world the true meaning of Islam.

(Read more about the Obama Administration saying we need to defend Islam HERE)

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