MORE STATES MOVE TO END FEDERAL FLOW OF FUNDS TO PLANNED PARENTHOOD

Despite the Obama administration’s threat against terminating federal funding of Planned Parenthood, more states are cutting Medicaid funds to the nation’s largest abortion provider following videos that have exposed top medical directors of the organization engaged in the harvesting of body parts of aborted babies for potential sale to biomedical companies.

On Friday, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) directed his state Department of Human Services to terminate its Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood, effective 30 days from a letter dated Friday, August 14, 2015, states a press release from the governor’s office.

Hutchinson said:

It is apparent that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state and Arkansas is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them. This includes their affiliated organization, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.

I appreciate the legislature’s leadership on this important issue, especially that of Senator Eddie Joe Williams and Representative David Meeks.

Additionally, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert (R) has ordered his state’s agencies to end sending federal funds to Planned Parenthood.

According to the Idaho State Journal, Herbert said in a statement Friday that he was troubled by the recent investigative videos.

Alabama, Louisiana, and New Hampshire are also in the process of terminating Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood.

As more states move to end their Medicaid contracts with Planned Parenthood, StemExpress, the biomedical company that has acknowledged working with the organization in obtaining the body parts of aborted babies, has also said it will cut its tieswith Planned Parenthood.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Planned Parenthood executive vice president Dawn Laguens, said in a statement:

The federal government has made it clear that states cannot cut women off from high-quality health care at Planned Parenthood like this. It’s unlawful, unpopular, and harmful to women—and that’s why politicians who have tried to do this in other states have failed. Planned Parenthood will continue to fight on behalf of the people who count on us for high-quality healthcare across Arkansas.

In an earlier statement last week on Planned Parenthood’s website, Laguens said, “Extremists who oppose Planned Parenthood’s mission and services are making outrageous and completely false claims. They are engaged in a fraud, and other claims they’ve made have been discredited and disproven.”

Asserting that “the extremists” show “a total lack of compassion and dignity for women’s most personal medical decisions,” Laguens said the Planned Parenthood medical staff, shown in the videos in a lab separating the body parts of aborted babies, were actually engaging in “standard medical practice to review tissue to ensure the health and safety of patients…”

“Planned Parenthood’s medical providers and staff are the best in the country,” she said. “We have the highest professional standards, and we take swift action if we are ever aware of an instance where those standards aren’t being met.”

However, in April of 2013, in the midst of the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell – who was ultimately convicted of murdering infants born alive during abortion procedures – Breitbart News reported that Planned Parenthood Southeast Pennsylvania president and CEO Dayle Steinberg, speaking at a fundraiser, admitted that she knew what was transpiring at Gosnell’s “house of horrors,” but neither she nor her organization reported it to state health officials or others who could have stepped in.

Instead, Steinberg said Planned Parenthood left it up to women, traumatized by the horrors of Gosnell’s clinic, to report him.

“We would always encourage them to report it to the Department of Health,” she said.

With the release of the recent videos produced by Center for Medical Progress, national pro-life groups are calling out those who would continue to defend Planned Parenthood.

“We can now add harvesting baby organs without the consent of the mother to the list of ethical violations and criminal activities committed inside Planned Parenthood clinics,” said Lila Rose, president of Live Action, in a statement sent to Breitbart News. “If this was any other business there would be a rush by media and politicians for full disclosure, defunding and calls to shut down what appears to be a criminal enterprise.”

Following the most recent video in which StemExpress whistleblower Holly O’Donnell reveals details of how her former company, in conjunction with Planned Parenthood, did not obtain consent from women to take their babies’ body parts following abortion, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told Breitbart News, “This is betrayal in its worst forms. This is where the war on women is taking place.”

Hawkins, whose organization coordinated the #WomenBetrayed movement and rallies at the end of July, added:

For Planned Parenthood, an organization whose only talking point is that they are there for women in their time of need, that they care about women, that they are fighting for women’s health, this particular video is a devastating reminder that behind the façade of Planned Parenthood lies a horrible group that sells women out – and sells the body parts of their babies – for money.

Via: Breitbart

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As Biden weighs a 2016 campaign, does he want to be the anti-Clinton?

By many accounts, Vice President Biden has spent his vacation week mulling whether to run for president — again. The decision will test head and heart and involve no small amount of emotion.

Tracking the story of is-he-or-isn’t-he-going-to-run is akin to chasing smoke, even to those who are loyal friends. Few people beyond his family are privy to his real thinking. Some Democrats say his advisers are making calls. Everyone looks for evidence of active pursuit of a campaign. Friends say they don’t yet sense a real campaign-in-the-making, and they doubt there ever will be. But they hedge.

Joe Biden has run for president twice without success, but almost three decades after his first campaign, the embers of ambition continue to glow. There was a time a few years ago when he might have willingly set aside those personal ambitions, if only because he could believe that his son Beau, a talented politician in his own right, would one day run for and perhaps be elected president.

Beau Biden’s tragic death a few months ago robbed the vice president of that hope. It is now left to the father to decide whether to do what his son reportedly urged him to do — to run once more. The death of Beau Biden also has prolonged the decision-making process about another campaign. It’s understandable that the vice president has not yet said “no” to a campaign in 2016. He is being tugged in different directions.

Biden can find reasons to think he should run. He is an accomplished public servant. He is a politician with 36 years of experience in the Senate. He served as chairman of both the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees. He has been one of the most active vice presidents in history.

As he looks at Hillary Rodham Clinton, is there any doubt that he wonders why so many Democrats have tried to smooth her path to the nomination while seeming to ignore him? Does she have longer experience, more authenticity, a firmer connection to the middle class? He has long been an advocate for the struggling middle class, and unlike Clinton, he has not become fabulously wealthy.

Via: Washington Post

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Snowden Documents Reveal AT&T Helped NSA Spy on Internet Traffic

Under a decades-old program with the government, telecom giant AT&T in 2003 led the way on a new collection capability that the National Security Agency said amounted to a "'live' presence on the global net" and would forward 400 billion Internet metadata records in one of its first months of operation, The New York Times reported.

The Fairview program was forwarding more than 1 million emails a day to the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, the newspaper reported. Meanwhile, the separate Stormbrew program, linked to Verizon and the former company MCI, was still gearing up to use the new technology, which appeared to process foreign-to-foreign traffic.

In 2011, AT&T began handing over 1.1 billion domestic cellphone calling records a day to the NSA after "a push to get this flow operational prior to the 10th anniversary of 9/11," according to an internal agency newsletter cited by the Times. Intelligence officials have told reporters in the past that, for technical reasons, the effort consisted mostly of landline phone records, the newspaper reported.

The NSA spent $188.9 million on the Fairview program, twice the amount spent on Stormbrew, its second-largest corporate program, the newspaper reported.

Such details from the decades-long partnership between the government and AT&T emerged from NSA documents provided by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden, the Times reported in a story posted Saturday on its website. The Times and ProPublica jointly reviewed the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013.

While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, the newspaper reported, the documents show that the government's relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as "highly collaborative," while another lauded the company's "extreme willingness to help," the newspaper reported.

The documents show that AT&T's cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the Times. AT&T has given the NSA access, through several methods covered under different legal rules, to billions of emails as they have flowed across its domestic networks.

It also has provided technical assistance in carrying out a secret court order permitting the wiretapping of all Internet communications at U.N. headquarters, a customer of AT&T, the Times reported. While NSA spying on U.N. diplomats had been previously reported, the newspaper said Saturday that neither the court order nor AT&T's involvement had been disclosed.

The documents also reveal that AT&T installed surveillance equipment in at least 17 of its Internet hubs on American soil, the Times reported, far more than similarly sized competitor Verizon. AT&T engineers were the first to try out new surveillance technologies invented by the NSA, the newspaper reported.

The NSA, AT&T and Verizon declined to discuss the findings from the files, according to the Times. It is not clear if the programs still operate in the same way today, the newspaper reported.

One of the documents provided by Snowden reminds NSA officials to be polite when visiting AT&T facilities, the Times reported, and notes, "This is a partnership, not a contractual relationship."

Via: NewsMax

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2 killed, 25 wounded in weekend shootings across Chicago

A 27-year-old man was driving near the intersection of Carroll and Central Park avenues when he was shot multiple times in the chest, back and arm, according to Chicago Police. His vehicle then crashed into a pole.

He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office withheld his name Saturday night pending family notification.

The weekend’s first shooting also turned fatal after a West Garfield Park drive-by attack about 6:40 p.m. Friday.

Alex Malone was outside in the 4100 block of West Wilcox when someone fired shots from a passing minivan, authorities said.

He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 2:17 p.m. Saturday, authorities said. Malone was from the 1600 block of South Spaulding.

The weekend’s most recent shooting happened Sunday morning in the West Side Austin neighborhood.

Three men were shot in the 4800 block of West Van Buren at 5:10 a.m., police said. A 32-year-old man was shot in the right forearm and was treated by paramedics at the scene, but refused additional medical treatment.

A 24-year-old man was shot twice in the armpit and walked into Stroger Hospital, where he is listed in good condition. A third man, 27, suffered a graze wound to the left foot and walked into West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. He was listed in good condition.

Police said all three victims are documented gang members and aren’t cooperating with investigators.

At least 22 other people have been wounded in other shootings across the city since about 10:45 p.m. Friday.

Additionally, a Chicago Police officer shot and seriously wounded a man during a Chatham neighborhood traffic stop about 7:45 p.m. Saturday. Another man with a gun was arrested at the scene, police said.

Via: Chicago Sun-Times

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U.S. pulling Patriot missiles from Turkey

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, an F-16 Fighting Falcon takes off from Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, as the U.S. on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2015, launched its first airstrikes by Turkey-based F-16 fighter jets against Islamic State targets in Syria. (Krystal Ardrey/U.S. Air Force via AP))

The U.S. military is pulling its Patriot missiles from Turkey this fall, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara announced Sunday.

The Patriot missiles "will be redeployed to the United States for critical modernization upgrades," according to a statement from the U.S. Embassy in Turkey.  "This decision follows a U.S. review of global missile defense posture."

"The U.S. and NATO commitments to the defense of Allies - including Turkey - are steadfast," the statement said.

The U.S. military has deployed Patriot missiles along the Turkey-Syria border since 2013 along with a ground force of 300 U.S. Army soldiers to operate them, protecting Turkey from potential Syrian missiles.

The decision to pull the missiles has been "long planned" and is not a response to Turkey's unannounced massive airstrike against a Kurdish separatist group in northern Iraq on July 24, a State Dept. official said. The strike endangered U.S. Special Forces on the ground training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, angering U.S. military officials. The U.S. military was taken completely by surprise by the Turkish airstrike, which involved 26 jets, military sources told Fox News.

Patriot missiles have been upgraded in recent years to shoot down ballistic missiles, in addition to boasting an ability to bring down enemy aircraft. The U.S. military has deployed these missiles along Turkey's border with Syria.

When a Kurdish journalist asked the Army's outgoing top officer, Gen. Raymond Odierno, about the incident over northern Iraq at his final press conference Wednesday, Odierno replied: "We've had conversations about this to make sure it doesn't happen."

The Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, has been listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. It is influenced by Marxist ideology and has been responsible for recent attacks in Turkey, killing Turkish police and military personnel. A separate left-wing radical group was responsible for attacking the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul last week.

State Department and Pentagon officials have said in recent days that Turkey has a right to defend itself against the PKK.

A senior military source told Fox News that Turkey is worried about recent gains by Syrian Kurds, some affiliated with the PKK. But the group is seen as an effective ground force against ISIS, helping pinpoint ISIS targets for U.S. warplanes. 

The Turks, however, worry Syrian Kurds will take over most of the 560-mile border it shares with Syria.

Currently, ISIS controls a 68-mile strip along the Turkey-Syria border, but Turkey does not want Kurdish fighters involved in the fight to push out ISIS from this portion of the border because it would enable the Kurds to control a large swath of land stretching from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Right now Syrian Kurds occupy both sides of the contested 68-mile border controlled by ISIS.

Of the 30 million Kurds living in the Middle East, 14 million reside in Turkey. They are one of the world's largest ethnic groups without its own country.

Despite Turkey being listed among the 62-nation anti-ISIS coalition, it has yet to be named as a country striking ISIS in the coalition's daily airstrike report.  

A week ago, after months of negotiations, the U.S. Air Force moved six F-16 fighter jets to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey from their base in Italy and several KC-135 refueling planes. Airstrikes against ISIS in Syria soon followed.    

The decision to allow manned U.S. military aircraft inside Turkey came days after an ISIS suicide bomber killed dozens of Turkish citizens.

Part of Turkey's reluctance to do more against ISIS is because Turkey wants the U.S. military to take on the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. But that is not U.S. policy.  

"We are not at war with the Assad regime," Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said recently.

The animosity between Turkey and Syria goes back decades. In 1939, Turkey annexed its southern most province, Hatay, from Assad family land. Syria has never recognized the move and the two countries have been at odds ever since.

"If needed, we are prepared to return Patriot assets and personnel to Turkey within one week," a defense official told Fox News.

Via: Fox News

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O'Malley wants to debate Clinton on Wall Street, trade, XL pipeline

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley wants a debate with Hillary Clinton so that he can get the Democratic front-runner to commit to positions on Wall Street, trade, and the Keystone XL pipeline.

"I would ask Hillary Clinton what sort of ideas she has to make our economy work again for all of us and whether or not she has the independence to rein in the sort of recklessness on Wall Street that has tanked our economy once and threatens to do it again," the former Maryland governor and Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday morning on CBS.

O'Malley, who has strenuously argued for more debates in the Democratic primary, went on to recite a list of issues on which he has staked out a position and Clinton has hedged her responses.

"I am in favor of re-instituting Glass-Steagall," he said of the Depression-Era separation of commercial and investment banks. "I am in favor of putting robust prosecutorial efforts back on Wall Street."

Via: Washington Examiner

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[VIDEO] Robinson: Clinton’s Claim to be Victim of Partisan Attack ‘Doesn’t Ring So True’

Ball: Email scandal causing tensions within her campaign

Sunday’s Meet the Press panel said Hillary Clinton’s claims of partisan attacks on her don’t “ring so true” and that the private email story that has dogged her since March is causing tensions within her presidential campaign.

Last Friday, Clinton joked about her private server at the State Department and said the investigation into her was petty politics as usual.

“It’s hard to claim this is all just a partisan witch hunt when the Justice Department under a Democratic administration is looking into the whole email mess,” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said. “So, that doesn’t ring so true.”

After months of refusing to turn over her private server, Clinton decided last week to give it to the Justice Department. The Clinton campaigned has struggled to move past the email story and responding to it politically has caused some disagreement between Clinton supporters, The Atlantic’s Molly Ball said.

“And the fact that this story has not gone away has really worried a lot of people in the inner circle. You do have this tension within the campaign,” Ball said. “And so, you know, then it turns into an organizational mess which is what bogged down her campaign in 2008.”

Via: WFB

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ENVIRONMENTAL GROUPS PROVIDE COVER FOR EPA INCOMPETENCE THAT CAUSED TOXIC WASTE SPILL

The same environmental groups who called for severe penalties against companies and industry executives responsible for similar environmental catastrophes are singing a different tune now that the EPA has caused a toxic waste blowout into Colorado’s Animas River.

Breitbart asked three leading environmental groups – the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC], and Earth Justice – to explain why they aren’t working to see EPA leaders punished in the same way they wanted private industry executives held responsible for similar spills.

Only the NRDC offered a response.

Earth Justice and several other environmental groups have made no public comment on the Animas River spill at all. In their public statements, neither the NRDC nor the Sierra Club pointed the finger at the EPA.

Though the Sierra Club did not respond to our inquiries, it did offer this public statementon August 11:

The Animas River was sadly already contaminated due to the legacy of toxic mining practices. The company that owns this mine has apparently allowed dangerous conditions to fester for years, and the mishandling of clean-up efforts by the EPA have only made a bad situation much worse. As we continue to learn what exactly happened, it’s time that the mine owners be held accountable for creating this toxic mess and we urge the EPA to act quickly to take all the steps necessary to ensure a tragedy like this does not happen again.

In a recent statement, the NRDC’s President Rhea Suh said only that the EPA “inadvertently triggered the mine waste spill last week,” while casting mining companies and Republicans in the House of Representatives as the responsible parties.

Retired geologist Dave Taylor, who predicted that the EPA project that caused the massive spill would “fail within 7 to 120 days,” tells Breitbart News that the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council [NRDC] are trying to shift the blame from the EPA to the mining companies.

“They’re trying to blame the mining companies, not the EPA that caused the spill,” Taylor tells Breitbart News in an exclusive interview.

A spokesperson for the NRDC elaborated on the organization’s views in an interview with Breitbart News.

“EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said on Tuesday everyone at EPA was very sorry for the spill and would work to make sure this tragedy never happens again,” NRDC spokesperson and director of strategic engagement Bob Deans tells Breitbart News.

Deans says NRDC thinks the EPA should be “held accountable” for the spill, but was unable to say what “holding them accountable” actually means.

He declined to call for the firing of any EPA executives, when asked specifically whether EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy or EPA Region 8 Administrator Sean McGrath should be fired.

“We want to withhold comment until all the facts are in. You know, when the BP oil rig blew out in the Gulf Coast a few years ago, it took months to find out what happened.”

When Breitbart asked if he believed the BP incident was comparable to Animas River, Deans said “No.”

The retired geologist Taylor doesn’t need months to know what the EPA did that caused the environmental catastrophe.

As he told Breitbart News, “It was incompetent and stupid for [the EPA] to go up to that existing plug [in the Gold King mine] and try to remove it without knowing how much water was upstream and behind it and what the hydrostatic pressure was. The plug was stable until they fooled around with it. Once they disturbed it, that’s what activated the blowout.”

According to one report, the EPA coerced the owner of the Gold King mine to grant them access or else face a fine of $35,000 per day.

The CBS affiliate in Denver reported that Todd Hennis, the owner of the Gold King mine, “said the EPA forced him to allow access to his mine four years ago. He did not want to give the EPA access to investigate the leakage from his mine but said he was fined daily.”

“When you’re a small guy and you’re having a $35,000-a-day fine accrue against you, you have to run up the white flag,” Hennis told CBS Denver.

Dave Taylor is unimpressed with the spin coming from both the NRDC and the Sierra Club..

“They’re trying to throw it back on the miners,” Taylor tells Breitbart News. “What about the EPA being held accountable?”

The NRDC tried to spin the debacle in a way that reflected favorably on the EPA.

“This thing [the Gold King mine] was pouring out contaminated water at the rate of 3 million gallons every 4 days, all going down and then into the Animas River,” Deans tells Breitbart News.

In an emailed statement, Deans adds “the Gold King Mine was leaking toxic mine waste at the rate of 1.845 cubic feet per second – roughly 1.2 million gallons per day – before the EPA accident.”

“On Sunday, EPA officials said the mine continues to discharge waste – now being channeled into ponds – at the rate of about 500 gallons per minute, or 720,000 gallons per day, which is the (lower) base figure we used to derive the estimate of 3 million gallons every four days or so, prior to the accident,” the emailed statement continues.

But Taylor makes short shrift of this argument, pointing out that due to the EPA’s management of information, it is very difficult to get a true estimate of contaminated water flows from the Red and Bonita mine and the Gold King mine before and after the toxic blowout caused by the EPA at the Gold King mine on August 5.

“They [the EPA] just back figured the spill. They’re hiding information,” Taylor tells Breitbart News.

“It’s almost impossible to find out how much water before the screw up was coming out of the Red and Bonita Mine,” he adds.

“How much was coming out of Gold King mine? Next question—the Gold King Mine blows…. How many hours did it take for this 3 million gallons of contaminated water filled with sludge to get out of there? Two hours? Ten hours?” Taylor asks.

“They’re [the EPA] hiding that information. They hide everything,” he says.

“We got cadmium, we got arsenic, copper, and lead. What did we have in the creek before? It’s all hidden scientific gobbledygook. Maybe they don’t think we’re smart enough to understand it. They’re just taking the information and twisting it around,” Taylor adds.

As for the claim by the NRDC that there was little difference between the 3 million gallons of contaminated water that the NRDC and the EPA claim had leaked from the Gold King mine in the four days preceding the blowout and the 3 million gallons that escaped during the blowout, Taylor explains why this claim is not correct.

“The mines [the Red and Bonita mine and the Gold King mine] were making 500 gallons per minute before the EPA caused blowout, according to press reports. One of the reasons this blowout was a lot more catastrophic is that the water that was leaking out before the spill was not full of sludge. It was basically clear,” Taylor says.

“Their incompetence — the EPA’s that is — was so bad, the adit [the passage leading into the mine] it was on top of a huge [contaminated] tailings pile, when that blowout occurred, the water [flowing out] cut down through the tailings pile, carrying the tailings, and it stirred the whole mess up.”

“The reason that blowout spill turned the river orange in some places is it had all that contamination in it from the flushing action. Had it come out slowly, it would have never turned the Animas orange,” Taylor says.

The most dramatic photographs of the Animas River immediately after the EPA caused blow out showed that it had turned the color of the river to a deep orange.

Breitbart News pressed the NRDC on Taylor’s point.

“Was that waste [in the four days before the blowout] substantially free of sludge, in contrast to the 3 million gallon blowout that occurred on August 5?” Breitbart News asked the NRDC.

“It’s not clear what was in it, but it was coming out of the mine,” an NRDC spokesperson responded in an emailed statement.

In other words, the NRDC is attempting to downplay the environmental damage from the contaminants contained in the blowout caused by the EPA incompetence, which was significant, as CBS reported:

Testing from the river hours after the spill shows the amount of lead in the water was more than 3,500 times the limit that is safe for humans. The arsenic levels were 823 times above the limit. And cadmium levels were 33 times higher.

Taylor points out that the blowout may have increased the regular flow of water from the Gold King mine into the Cement Creek, according to some of the publicly reported information. Mine owner Todd Hennis, for instance, told CNN that the flow before the blowout was 250 gallons per minute. After the blowout, that rate has increased to 615 gallons per minute.

As CNN Wire Services reported:

It is a Kinross [Gold]-owned mine — Sunnyside Mine — that Hennis blames for the accumulation of wastewater that spilled.

In the mid-1990s, Kinross got permission to bulkhead, or plug, a segment of the Sunnyside Mine called the American Tunnel.

The project was approved to reduce pollution, but Hennis claims that the actual effect was that it pushed wastewater into other mines, including his.

Before the American tunnel was plugged, the Gold King Mine discharged 7 gallons of water a minute, and didn’t pose a health risk, Hennis said. After the project at the Sunnyside Mine, the discharge from the Gold King Mine discharge had grown to 250 gallons of water a minute, he said…

One week after the spill, the Gold King Mine continues to discharge water at an elevated rate.

As of Wednesday the polluted water was flowing from the mine at a rate of 610 gallons per minute, as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The August 5 EPA caused toxic waste blowout is expected to have long term effects far beyond Colorado. As the Associated Press reported:

In New Mexico, officials lifted a precautionary ban on water from private wells throughout the Animas River valley but kept in place warnings not to drink water from the river or give it to livestock.

Gov. Susana Martinez also formed a special team charged with monitoring the spill’s long-term effects.

“As the river begins to clear up, there are still many questions left unanswered by the EPA,” she said. “New Mexicans deserve to know the long-term effects this environmental catastrophe will have on our communities, our agriculture and our wildlife.”

On the Navajo Nation, tribal officials continued to warn residents and farmers not to use water from the San Juan River, which was also polluted as a result of the spill.

The tribe has set up fresh water stations for residents and water was being delivered for farmers and livestock.

Despite these long term environmental effects, the few environmental groups who are willing to even offer a comment on EPA’s involvement in this incident appear to be more interested in spinning the narrative to blame the mining companies, while largely absolving the true culprit in this incident—the EPA itself.

Via: Breitbart

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StemExpress Is Cutting Ties With Planned Parenthood

StemExpress, a biomedical company engulfed in the scandal surrounding allegations that Planned Parenthood is selling fetal organs, is cutting ties with the nation’s largest abortion provider, according to a report by Politico.

Politico reports that StemExpress “notified Planned Parenthood and Congress Friday of its decision to end the relationship.”

StemExpress and Planned Parenthood face questions from lawmakers about the financial nature of their relationship after undercover videos were released by the Center for Medical Progress depicting senior executives at the organization describing the sale of fetal organs.

Spokespersons for Planned Parenthood and StemExpress have denied the allegations and called the videos “heavily edited.”

In footage produced by the Center for Medical Progress, Holly O’Donnell, a former blood and tissue procurement technician for StemExpress, described how employees were assigned to Planned Parenthood clinics in order to obtain what they referred to as “the products of conception.”

She said the organizations acquired fetal body partswithout obtaining maternal consent.

In another video, O’Donnell says that Planned Parenthood received a financial benefit from StemExpress for providing them with fetal body parts.

Profiting from the purchase or sale of human organs—including fetal human organs—is a felony in the United States.

A spokesperson for StemExpress provided a statement to The Daily Signal:

“StemExpress at its core is a small life sciences company committed to accelerating research, advancing medicine, and saving lives. We partner with organizations also seeking to help researchers find solutions to some of life’s most significant medical conditions and diseases. Our commitment to quality defines us and is demanded by our customers in the research community. We value our various partnerships but, due to the increased questions that have arisen over the past few weeks, we feel it prudent to terminate activities with Planned Parenthood. While we value our business relationship with Planned Parenthood, that work represents a small percentage of our overall business activity and we must focus our limited resources on resolving these inquiries.

StemExpress works tirelessly to accelerate the speed of helping patients globally: 7.6 million people die of cancer each year, another 7.4 million of heart disease, over 4.6 million from lung cancer, AIDS and diabetes and every 12 minutes another name is added to the national transplant waiting list. These numbers drive our work and the research community. StemExpress looks forward to the swift resolution of all inquiries and audits so we can focus our full attention on helping the medical and research community improve and save lives.”

In a statement, a spokesperson for The Center for Medical Progress said:

“Earlier this week, the CEO of Planned Parenthood Northern California said they were proud of their baby parts program with StemExpress. Now, StemExpress claims it is terminating its ‘business relationship’ with Planned Parenthood. Yet StemExpress leadership confirmed to CMP investigators in May they are struggling to meet demand for intact fetal livers. Was there a dispute about money with Planned Parenthood? Or is StemExpress following orders from Planned Parenthood National to save face? Does Planned Parenthood abortion doctor Ronald Berman continue to serve as Medical Director of StemExpress? Planned Parenthood and StemExpress should both answer questions about this shady move, and the full details of their “business relationship,” under oath before Congress and the American people.”

Via: Daily Signal

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