Norma McCorvey, known as “Jane Roe,” the anonymous plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court case that established a constitutional right to abortion, died on Saturday, a priest close to her family said. Multiple media sources said she was 69.
McCorvey died at 12:07 p.m. ET in the Houston area with her daughter, Melissa, and several grandchildren present, the Rev. Frank Pavone said on Facebook.
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Pavone did not give the cause of death but said McCorvey had been a heavy smoker and had respiratory problems. She’d been in and out of assisted living facilities over the past year.
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McCorvey once supported the pro-choice movement but switched sides in 1995. She converted to Christianity, joined anti-abortion activists and started an outreach group called Roe No More.
Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian-born cleric serving a life sentence for plotting the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center and other terror attacks in New York, has died, a prison spokesman said Saturday.
Abdel-Rahman died Saturday morning from natural causes at age 78, said Greg Norton, spokesman with the federal correctional complex in Butner, North Carolina. He had battled diabetes and coronary heart disease, Norton said.
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The February 1993 attack on the Manhattan landmark left six people dead and injured more than 1,000 others. Abdel-Rahman was linked to the attack after other suspects were found to have frequented the New Jersey mosque where he preached.
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The bombing would presage the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center eight years later.
Rahman denied involvement in the earlier attack in which a bomb exploded in a parking garage under 2 World Trade Center.
The real world is pretty strange right now, and escaping from it, at least temporarily, is absolutely necessary. So why not pay a visit to an even stranger world with a good science fiction movie? Time travel, aliens, robots and more will take people away from politics, international relations and Russian intrigue — at least for a few hours
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Image Credit: YouTube
This movie never gets old, and no one is ever too old to watch it. Steven Spielberg’s film manages to be simultaneously heartwarming and just a little eerie as it tells the story of an alien who befriends a young boy.
A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.
Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. He was preparing a cross-country tour for Mr. Carson, who is expected to be confirmed by the Senate this month.
But according to the two people briefed, Mr. Singleton’s background check had not been completed. As it was being finished this week, Mr. Trump’s advisers turned up public writings by Mr. Singleton that appeared during the later stages of the campaign in which he was deeply critical of the candidate.
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Ben Carson, right, greeted Shermichael Singleton, a top aide, before the start of his confirmation hearing to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development last month.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
Retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward has turned down an offer to become President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, a White House official said on Thursday.
“It’s purely a personal issue,” Harward told The Associated Press on Thursday evening. “I’m in a unique position finally after being in the military for 40 years to enjoy some personal time.”
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, “He is a great man who has served his country with distinction. Any discussion was subject to him overcoming family and financial concerns [which] he could not do.”
Trump is searching for a replacement for retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who resigned on Monday over phone calls with Russia’s ambassador to the United States, communications that reportedly involved discussions of sanctions leveled against the country during the Obama administration.
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Vice Adm. Robert Harward in 2011. Sgt. Shawn Coolman / U.S. Marine Corps/AP
Who programs the programmers? Soon enough, it might not be people behind the development of advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence tech, but other AI. MIT looks at the most recent work done by a range of different organizations, including Google Brain, who are working on AI that can develop machine learning software – and finds that in many cases, the results that come from machines coding other machines match or even exceed equivalent work done by humans.
Does that mean even machine learning programmers are facing employment extinction? Not exactly, and not yet – efforts to create machine learning programs that best their human-designed equivalent require a lot of computing firepower thrown at the problem; Google Brain’s person-besting experiment in building image recognition systems via AI development used 800 ugh-powered graphics processors working together, which is a costly endeavor to be sure.
ISIS has claimed responsibility for a deadly car bomb explosion Thursday in southwestern Baghdad, according to a statement released by ISIS-affiliated Amaq News Agency.
The blast killed 51 people and wounded at least as many others, Gen. Saad Maan, spokesman for Baghdad’s Operations Command, said in a statement.
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The attack targeted a busy car market in the predominately Shiite al-Bayaa district of the Iraqi capital, a security official told CNN.
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Even before the ISIS statement began circulating among supporters on social media, the US State Department blamed the terror group for the massacre.
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“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the horrible terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS targeting a car dealership in Baghdad, Iraq, today,” said Mark Toner, the department’s acting spokesman. “We extend our deepest condolences to the victims’ families and friends, and wish a full and quick recovery to those injured.”
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A burned-out car sits at the site of a deadly bombing Thursday in Baghdad.
Charles M. Blow (column, nytimes.com, Feb. 9) describes Donald Trump’s constant need “to grind the opposition underfoot.” As mental health professionals, we share Mr. Blow’s concern.
Silence from the country’s mental health organizations has been due to a self-imposed dictum about evaluating public figures (the American Psychiatric Association’s 1973 Goldwater Rule). But this silence has resulted in a failure to lend our expertise to worried journalists and members of Congress at this critical time. We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.
Mr. Trump’s speech and actions demonstrate an inability to tolerate views different from his own, leading to rage reactions. His words and behavior suggest a profound inability to empathize. Individuals with these traits distort reality to suit their psychological state, attacking facts and those who convey them (journalists, scientists).
Congressional Republicans, who craved unified control of the government to secure their aggressive conservative agenda, have instead found themselves on a legislative elliptical trainer, gliding toward nowhere.
After moving to start rolling back the Affordable Care Act just days after President Trump was sworn in last month, Republican lawmakers and Mr. Trump have yet to deliver on any of the sweeping legislation they promised. Efforts to come up with a replacement for the health care law have been stymied by disagreements among Republicans about how to proceed. The same is true for a proposed overhaul of the tax code.
The large infrastructure bill that both Democrats and Mr. Trump were eager to pursue has barely been mentioned, other than a very general hearing to discuss well-documented needs for infrastructure improvements. Even a simple emergency spending bill that the Trump administration promised weeks ago — which was expected to include a proposal for his wall on the Mexican border — has not materialized, leaving appropriators idle and checking Twitter.
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Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, left, and Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, during a news conference on Wednesday where they discussed plans to replace the Affordable Care Act.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times .
In the world, human beings are facing various problems. People who are full of greed, anger, and ignorance are seen to be fighting with each other in words and deeds. As the fighting continues, various problems such as civil wars, wars of aggression, and wars of aggression are occurring. As world peace is being destroyed, humans are facing unbearable problems. Innocent children and women are not getting the rights they deserve and deserve. I can't think of one thing every time. What is it? The United Nations. If we look at the responsibilities and duties of the United Nations, I think it is not suitable for solving the problems that are happening in the world today. In fact, the United Nations and the World Security Council, such an organization must rule the world, must be able to give orders, and must have various ways to obey orders. There must be no organization that can influence more than that organization. There should be experts from each country. They can even dominate the superpowers like the US, China, and Britain. Only then will global peace be achieved quickly. Now, if a country with power develops more militarily, economically, or socially than its own country, then powerful countries will jealously seek out enemies and wage war. Or they will attack with fighter jets. In this, innocent people are losing their lives. No one understands the value of a life. You should think about how to achieve global peace by controlling these. If the US continues to be the permanent president of the UN, world peace will never be achieved. If you think carefully, no one sees that they are working for the common good, but for their own benefit, for the benefit of their own country. The permanent president of the UN and the Security Council has rejected this, As a young Rohingya, I have come to realize that only by electing the president and secretary from among the countries in the world through a secret ballot system and governing the world fairly can we achieve global peace. The United Nations and the Security Council are organizations in which any country must govern, give orders, and make them obey their orders. For example, only when a defendant is tried in court can we hold the leaders of the countries in check and control them, can we achieve global peace smoothly. Otherwise, it will not be easy for powerful countries to use various excuses to end this war every year, every year, for the benefit of themselves and their countries. No country's leaders pay any attention to the words of the United Nations and the Security Council. If we look at it in practice, look at the Rohingya issue. Myanmar is a small country. Even that country has been under siege for 8 years. What action can be taken? Why is the UN and the Security Council Powerless? Without such Power, how can the organization bring about global peace? Everyone should think about it. Whether there is a veto or a strong one, all countries in the world can only achieve global peace if they are subject to the UN and the Security Council. Seek peace in the quiet embrace of nature. Peace is an indispensable need of the human race. It is not as if one person can kill another person, and it is as if one country can attack another country, but instead of trying to build peace, we must try to destroy the peace now, and the world is getting hotter and is on the verge of collapse. I especially appeal to all the world experts to urgently try to bring about peace in all parts of the world. Mr, Noor Muhamed Arkhan Rohingya Youth Myanmar
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
Norma McCorvey
A burned-out car sits at the site of a deadly bombing Thursday in Baghdad.
Copyright: Michael Oswald
