Abortion Rates Fall to Their Lowest Points in Over 30 Years

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Photo Credit: LifeNews The CDC expanded on its figures it released last week showing that abortions dropped another three percent in 2010 and are down 8 percent over the last two years. The new report shows the abortion rate has fallen to its lowest point in over 30 years.

The new report said: “The abortion rate was the lowest recorded during the 1976–2009 period and has dropped almost continuously since 1980. The abortion rate in 2009 (18.5) was 32% lower than in 1990 (27.4). The 2009 abortion rate for teenagers (16.6 per 1,000) was less than one-half the rate in 1991 (37.4) and 1990 (40.3).”

Among pregnant unmarried women, the abortion rate fell from 47.7 per 1,000 in 1990 to 28.9 per 1,000 in 2009. Among pregnant married women, the abortion rate fell from 10.6 per 1,000 to 6.1 per 1,000 over the same time. Combined, the rate fell about a third and is the lowest since 1976 — just three years after the Supreme Court allowed virtually unlimited abortions in Roe v. Wade..

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Saudis Turn to Russia in Move to Re-Balance Mideast

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Photo Credit: WND Saudi Arabia is proposing a sweeping deal to Russia that solidifies Moscow’s position in the Middle East and Persian Gulf largely at the expense of the United States, according to informed Egyptian security officials.

The deal incorporates increased Russian involvement in Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf, and even involves a Saudi guarantee to aid against terror plots targeting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The Egyptian officials said the deal seeks to replace the U.S. with Russia as the major weapons dealer to Egypt.

However, the weapons sales to Cairo are only the tip of the potential re-balancing iceberg that follows a major fallout with the Saudis after President Obama’s outreach efforts to Iran.

The Saudis asked for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Riyadh would help establish a permanent central Russian role in the future of Syria, with a military presence in the country, the officials said.

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Report: NSA Tracks Billions Of Cellphones Daily

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Photo credit: from_koThe National Security Agency tracks the locations of nearly 5 billion cellphones every day overseas, including those belonging to Americans abroad, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.

The NSA inadvertently gathers the location records of “tens of millions of Americans who travel abroad” annually, along with the billions of other records it collects by tapping into worldwide mobile network cables, the newspaper said in a report on its website.

Such data means the NSA can track the movements of almost any cellphone around the world, and map the relationships of the cellphone user. The Post said a powerful analytic computer program called CO-TRAVELER crunches the data of billions of unsuspecting people, building patterns of relationships between them by where their phones go. That can reveal a previously unknown terrorist suspect, in guilt by cellphone-location association, for instance.

As the NSA doesn’t know which part of the data it might need, the agency keeps up to 27 terabytes, or more than double the text content of the Library of Congress’ print collection, the Post said. A 2012 internal NSA document said the volumes of data from the location program were “outpacing our ability to ingest, process and store” it, the newspaper said.

The program is detailed in documents given to the newspaper by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden. The Post also quotes unidentified NSA officials, saying they spoke with the permission of their agency.

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Liberal Legal Expert Testifies to Congress: Obama Has Become Danger to Constitution (+videos)

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Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesA noted liberal Georgetown University law professor who represented members of Congress in a lawsuit over the Libyan war, represented workers at the secret Area 51 military base and served as counsel on national security cases says Barack Obama is a danger to the U.S. Constitution.

The comments from Jonathan Turley came during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday.

Chairman Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., asked him: “Professor Turley, the Constitution, the system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of government from usurping another. It’s about protecting the liberty of Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does the president’s unilateral modification of act[s] of Congress affect both the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty interests of the American people?”

Turley replied: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration of power.”

Turley explained that the “Newtonian orbit that the three branches exist in is a delicate one but it is designed to prevent this type of concentration.”


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FBI Lists Southern Poverty Law Center As ‘Resource’ for Hate Crimes (+video)

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Photo Credit: Web screenshotThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says listing the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a resource on its “Hate Crimes” website page and linking to the organization is “not an endorsement” of the group or its research materials on hate crimes.

“The Resource link to SPLC is for informational purposes and not an endorsement of the organization or the information on their website,” an FBI spokesman told CNSNews.com.

On the FBI’s “Hate Crimes” page, it gives a general description of hate crimes and then includes a section headlined “In Depth,” which includes a prominent sub-head, “Resources.” Listed there under the Resources with a hyperlink is “Southern Poverty Law Center.”

CNSNews.com asked about the link to the SPLC because the man convicted of domestic terrorism this year for the shooting attack at the Family Research Council (FRC) told FBI investigators that he targeted the FRC after finding their name on the SPLC’s own “Hate Map,” where the pro-family and Christian organization is labeled as “anti-gay.”

“I find it incredible that a federal agency charged with protecting the American people allows itself to be connected to a group that was certified in court as the source that inspired an act of terrorism,” Lt. Gen Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of FRC, told CNSNews.com.

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Newtown Massacre Recordings Reveal Calm, Anguish and Gunshots (+audio)

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Photo Credit: APA teacher calmly explains she has been shot in the foot. Another woman, sounding anguished, pleads for help. A custodian relays information from officers at the scene to a police operator.

There is also the booming echo of gunshots.

Officials in Newtown, Connecticut, on Wednesday released audio recordings of emergency 911 phone calls from the Connecticut school shooting that killed 20 children and six educators almost a year ago, revealing raw emotion in the voice of the callers.

The audio files may be the final pieces of evidence released about the tragedy that rocked the United States on December 14, 2012, when gunman Adam Lanza, 20, shot dead his mother at home and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary school, where he massacred 26 people before killing himself.

“They’re still running, they’re still shooting,” pleaded one woman, sounding increasingly distraught over the course of the 24-second call. In the final seconds, she grows more insistent, pleading with the 911 operator for help.

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Report: American Teacher Killed in Benghazi

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Photo Credit: Fox News An American citizen who was working at an international school was shot and killed in the Libyan city of Benghazi Thursday morning by unknown assailants, a school board member told Fox News.

The State Department identified the victim as Ronald Thomas Smith II, and confirmed that he was a teacher at an international school in Benghazi.

“We can confirm that a U.S. citizen was shot and killed in Benghazi,” a State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in the statement.

“We offer our condolences to the victim’s loved ones. We are in contact with the family and are providing all appropriate consular assistance. Out of respect for the privacy of those affected, we have no further comment at this time. For questions on the investigation, I refer you to the Libyan authorities,” the statement said.

School board member Adel Mansouri said the teacher was shot around lunchtime near his home.

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Audit: IRS Loses Billions Due to Stolen ID Numbers

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Photo Credit: APTax cheats armed with stolen identification numbers are costing the Treasury billions of dollars a year, according to a new audit.

Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration says that, in 2011 alone, tax cheats were able to steal or falsely obtain some 285,000 employee identification numbers, which the IRS uses to identify a taxpayer’s business account.

In all, the IRS could be issuing around $2.3 billion a year in these sorts of false payments — or around $11.4 billion over a five-year span.

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Planet Has Been Discovered That Should Not Be There

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Photo Credit: GuardianLVA planet has been discovered that should not be there. Astronomers have discovered a planet so strange that they say it should not even be in existence. It orbits its personal star at such an astonishing distance; it is causing some theories of planetary formation to be destroyed, stated researchers. It is unlike anything that is in our solar system.

The planet has a mass almost 12 times the size of Jupiter and an orbit over 650 times larger than the distance between the Earth and Sun. This newly discovered globe, with the “exciting” name HD 106906 b, is throwing quite a blow against existing planet formation concepts.

Research leader Vanessa Bailey stated that the planet is especially fascinating because no prior model of such a planet exists which can start to explain what it is that they are seeing. But she admitted that astronomers are extremely puzzled by the planet’s presence.

Bailey explained that scientists have always believed that planets which orbit too closely to stars have been created from dust, gas and debris from asteroids that enclose a fledgling star. They also thought this process was much too sluggish for tremendously large planets to be able to form so far away from a star in space.

The researcher and her associates’ have done much examination on the orb HD 106906 b, and all of it has been accepted to be printed in The Astrophysical Journal.

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Surrender: Obama Admin. Accepts China’s New Controversial Air Zone

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Photo Credit: Foreign PolicyTop Obama administration and Pentagon officials signaled a willingness to temporarily accept China’s new, controversial air defense identification zone on Wednesday. Those officials expressed disapproval for the way in which the Asian power has flexed its muscles, and cautioned China not to implement the zone. But they also carved out wiggle room in which the United States and China ultimately could find common ground on the issue, indicating that they may be willing to live with the zone for now — as long as China backs off its demand that all aircraft traveling through it check in first.

“It wasn’t the declaration of the ADIZ that actually was destabilizing,” said Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s highest-ranking military officer. “It was their assertion that they would cause all aircraft entering the ADIZ to report regardless of whether they were intending to enter into the sovereign airspace of China. And that is destabilizing.”

That’s a change from just a few days ago, when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden demanded that China take back its declaration of the zone. And it’s another demonstration that China’s recent decisions have forced the United States to tread carefully. On Wednesday, Biden met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing for more than five hours, according to a senior administration official. In brief public remarks midway through the marathon session, Biden didn’t mention the air defense zone at all.

Japan, a vital American ally, has expressed fury over the Chinese move and ordered its commercial airliners not to provide information about their flight paths to the Chinese military. By contrast, the United States made a point of flying a pair of B-52s through it last week, but seems to have accepted that China will keep the zone in place indefinitely. U.S. officials have shifted their focus instead on preventing a potential military clash between Japan and China.

In meetings in Beijing on Wednesday, Biden laid out the U.S. position in detail, reiterating that the United States does not recognize the new zone and has deep concerns about it, a senior administration official said. Biden told Xi that the United States wants China to take steps to lower tensions in the region, avoid enforcement actions that could lead to crisis, and to establish communication with Japan and other countries in the region to avoid altercations, the administration official added. Privately, Biden did not call for the air defense identification zone it to be rolled back — something administration officials had done Monday while Biden was visiting Japan. Instead, the vice president asked the Chinese leader to be careful about how his country operated the zone going forward.

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