Obama says Planned Parenthood is ‘not going anywhere’

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By Rachel Rose Hartman, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 1 hr 18 mins ago

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President Barack Obama on Friday defended Planned Parenthood, the largest source of reproductive health care which also provides abortions, against its opponents and warned critics that the organization remains steadfast.

"Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere," Obama said at the organization's annual national conference in Washington, D.C. "It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow."
The organization has long been a target of abortion opponents, who in recent years have fought to cut off federal funding to the organization even though that funding by law cannot be spent on abortions, which make up an estimated 3 percent of the organization's budget.
The president on Friday lauded the organization's work “providing quality healthcare to women all across America." "We are truly grateful to you.”
He noted that 1 in 5 women in America have sought services from Planned Parenthood, which is the primary source for health care for many women. When politicians attempt to turn Planned Parenthood into "a punching bag," Obama said, they are shutting out women who need health care and communities who may need health care services the most.
Obama used his appearance to champion his health care law, which he said promotes many of the same principles as Planned Parenthood. Obama said his law supports health care for women including by allowing young women to be covered by their parents' health care insurance plans and preventing women with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recently targeted the organization with a scathing op-ed for conservative news site Red State accusing Planned Parenthood and Democrats of supporting infanticide. Priebus wrote that testimony from a Planned Parenthood lobbyist in Florida indicated the organization supports the killing of infants.
Planned Parenthood later released a statement on the lobbyist's testimony, saying, "As a trusted health care provider, Planned Parenthood strongly condemns any physician who does not follow the law or endangers a woman's or child's health. And while HB 1129 addresses a situation that is extremely unlikely and highly unusual, if the scenario presented by the legislation should happen, of course a Planned Parenthood doctor would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant."
The president's appearance at the conference comes at a time when infanticide has been in the national news due to the murder trial of former abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, of Philadelphia, is charged with murder in the death of a woman in 2009 during an abortion procedure and in the deaths of four babies.

Obama and predecessors mark opening of George W. Bush library

RSSBy Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 1 hr 1 min ago

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Click image to see more photos. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

DALLAS—President Barack Obama praised his predecessor George W. Bush as a “good man” who should be commended for his resolve in trying to keep the country safe after the 9/11 attacks, and for his foresight in leading the fight for immigration reform.
Obama’s remarks came as he and the other four living presidents along with dozens of state, federal and foreign dignitaries gathered here to mark the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University.
Obama, who has been a fierce critic of Bush’s handling of the country, and his colleagues followed the tradition of past presidential library ceremonies by putting political differences aside. Obama praised what he called Bush’s “compassion,” “generosity” and “personality,” and said, “To know the man is to like the man.”
Remarking on the rare gathering of all five presidents, Obama spoke of the “exclusive club” that he shares with Bush as well as Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter—who were also in attendance. But, he said, “it’s more like a support group.”
He recalled finding a letter in his desk from George W. Bush upon arriving in the Oval Office in 2009 offering his successor advice.
“He knew I would come to learn what he had learned,” Obama said. “Being president above all is a humbling job. There are moments when you make mistakes. There are times when you wish you could turn back the clock.”
But, Obama noted, “We love this country and we do our best.”
Obama’s remarks came after former Clinton and Carter offered similar praise of Bush. Among other things, they touted Bush’s efforts to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa.
But Clinton’s remarks seemed more like a roast of his successor, as he spoke warmly of Bush and talked about how close he had gotten to the Bush family after he defeated George H.W. Bush. He joked of being “the black sheep son” and said his mother had told him not to speak too long at the event, turning to acknowledge former first lady Barbara Bush, who giggled in response.
He also praised George W. Bush’s recently discovered artistic skills as a painter, saying Barbara Bush had shared portraits her son had painted of animals. “I thought they were great,” Clinton said, adding that he had considered asking Bush to paint his portrait.
Clinton said he had hesitated, however, after seeing Bush’s self-portraits in the bathroom. “At my age, I think I should keep my suit,” Clinton said, as Bush laughed wildly.
A bittersweet moment came when George H.W. Bush briefly addressed the crowd, thanking them for coming. The elder Bush was hospitalized in December, and the family worried he might not make it to see his son unveil his presidential library.
From the podium later, George W. Bush praised his father for “teaching him how to be a president, but first teaching him how to be a man,” and said it was the first time in history that father-and-son presidents had attended the opening of each other’s libraries.
Addressing the crowd of more than 8,000 supporters and former staffers, Bush repeatedly became emotional as he thanked those who had turned out to mark the library’s opening. At one point he joked, “There was a time in my life when I wasn’t likely to be found in a library, much less founding one.”
In praising his ex-staffers, Bush said, “History is going to show I served with great people.” He then gave a shout-out to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who is barely mentioned in the library’s exhibits, telling him, “I’m proud to call you a friend.”
In brief remarks, Bush recalled the goals that led him while in office.
“In democracy, the purpose of public office is not to fulfill personal ambition,” he said, echoing a line that he’s used throughout his career. “Elected officials must serve a cause greater than themselves. The political winds blow left and right, polls rise and fall, supporters come and go. But in the end, leaders are defined by the convictions they held.”
At the end of his speech, Bush audibly choked up. With tears in his eyes, he returned to this seat, where he smiled and threw three fingers in the air in the shape of a ”W.”

Beyoncé’s Grimacegate: Pop Star Bans Independent Photographers From Shooting World Tour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Laura Ferreiro

(Al Pereira, WireImage)It's hard to forget the less-than-flattering images of Beyoncé that circulated around the Internet after the 2013 Super Bowl. The contorted grimace and unseemly scowl of the usually perfectly coiffed pop star were captured during her halftime performance and posted online ad nauseum.

After Buzzfeed ran the images, Beyoncé's publicist requested that the website take down the unflattering pics, but Buzzfeed instead added fuel to the fire, posting a story with the headline, "The 'Unflattering' Photos Beyoncé’s Publicist Doesn’t Want You to See." Not surprisingly, the story and the images made their way around the world, and soon Photoshopped pictures of Beyoncé making her look like a Star Wars character, a lobster lady, an Olympic weightlifter, and the Incredible Hulk were popping up everywhere.
This time around, Beyoncé isn't taking any chances. The star has reportedly instituted a ban on independent professional photographers to shoot her ongoing Mrs. Carter World Tour, according to the New York Post and The Guardian. Instead, news outlets are being given a link to a website featuring pre-approved photos of Beyoncé taken by ONE photographer.
This may end up working against the star, as news outlets compete to run original images and may end up using amateur photos taken from the crowd--with bad lighting. Oh, the horror!

Pagination

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• Beyonce Dazzles, Flies Over Crowd in New Trailer for ‘Mrs. Carter Show’ World Tour

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5 Star reviews on the App store.

 

 

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Boston bombings suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev captured

 

AP Photo: Julio Cortez. Boston bombing suspect captured: Joseph Eli Libby, 20, of Boston, carries a flag near a makeshift memorial near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, April 19.

2 hr ago By Eileen Sullivan of Associated Press

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Boston celebrated Friday night and Saturday morning after law enforcement officials found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in a boat in the backyard of a house in Watertown, Mass.

WATERTOWN, Mass. — For just a few minutes, it seemed like the dragnet that had shut down a metropolitan area of millions while legions of police went house to house looking for the suspected Boston Marathon bomber had failed.
Weary officials lifted a daylong order that had kept residents in their homes, saying it was fruitless to keep an entire city locked down. Then one man emerged from his home and noticed blood on the pleasure boat parked in his backyard. He lifted the tarp and found the wounded 19-year-old college student known the world over as Suspect No. 2.
Soon after that, the 24-hour drama that paralyzed a city and transfixed a nation was over.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture touched off raucous celebrations in and around Boston, with chants of "USA, USA" as residents flooded the streets in relief and jubilation after four tense days since twin explosions ripped through the marathon's crowd at the finish line, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

Bombing suspect in…

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The 19-year-old — whose older brother and alleged accomplice was killed earlier that morning in a wild shootout in suburban Boston — was hospitalized in serious condition Saturday, unable to be questioned to determine his motives. U.S. officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects would question him without reading him his Miranda rights, invoking a rare public safety exception triggered by the need to protect police and the public from immediate danger.
Gallery: Manhunt for Boston bomber wraps up in Watertown, Mass.   
President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others. He urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations.
Dzhokhar and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, just outside Boston. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early in the day from gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury. He was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded, according to investigators.
During a long night of violence Thursday and into Friday, the brothers killed an MIT police officer, severely wounded another lawman during a gun battle and hurled explosives at police in a desperate getaway attempt, authorities said.
Late Friday, less than an hour after authorities lifted the lockdown, they tracked down the younger man holed up in the boat, weakened by a gunshot wound after fleeing on foot from the overnight shootout with police that left 200 spent rounds behind.
The resident who spotted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his boat in his Watertown yard called police, who tried to talk the suspect into getting out of the boat, said Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.
"He was not communicative," Davis said.
Instead, he said, there was an exchange of gunfire — the final volley of one of the biggest manhunts in American history.

AP Photo: Robert Ray. Boston bombing suspect captured: A still frame from video shows Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in an ambulance after he was captured in Watertown, Mass., on Friday.

Watertown residents who had been told in the morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.
Celebratory bells rang from a church tower. Teenagers waved American flags. Drivers honked. Every time an emergency vehicle went by, people cheered loudly.
"They finally caught the jerk," said nurse Cindy Boyle. "It was scary. It was tense."
Police said three other people were taken into custody for questioning at an off-campus housing complex at the University of the Massachusetts at Dartmouth where the younger man may have lived.
"Tonight, our family applauds the entire law enforcement community for a job well done, and trust that our justice system will now do its job," said the family of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who died in the bombing.
The FBI was swamped with tips — 300,000 per minute — after the release of the surveillance-camera photos, but what role those played in the overnight clash was unclear. State Police spokesman Dave Procopio said police realized they were dealing with the bombing suspects based on what the two men told a carjacking victim during their night of crime.
The search by thousands of law enforcement officers all but shut down the Boston area for much of the day. Officials halted all mass transit, including Amtrak trains to New York, advised businesses not to open, and warned close to 1 million people in the entire city and some of its suburbs to unlock their doors only for uniformed police.
Around midday, the suspects' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., pleaded on television: "Dzhokhar, if you are alive, turn yourself in and ask for forgiveness."
Until the younger man's capture, it was looking like a grim day for police. As night fell, they announced that they were scaling back the hunt and lifting the stay-indoors order across the region because they had come up empty-handed.
But then the break came and within a couple of hours, the search was over. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured about a mile from the site of the shootout that killed his brother.
A neighbor described how heavily armed police stormed by her window not long after the lockdown was lifted — the rapid report of gunshots left her huddled on the bathroom floor on top of her young son.
"I was just waiting for bullets to just start flying everywhere," Deanna Finn said.

Boston day of terror: 24…

12 hr ago Duration: 2:53 Views: 49k

When at last the gunfire died away and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken from the neighborhood in an ambulance, an officer gave Finn a cheery thumbs-up.
"To see the look on his face, he was very, very happy, so that made me very, very happy," she said.
Authorities said the man dubbed Suspect No. 1 — the one in sunglasses and a dark baseball cap in the surveillance-camera pictures — was Tamerlan Tsarnaev, while Suspect No. 2, the one in a white baseball cap worn backward, was his younger brother.
Chechnya, where the brothers grew up, has been the scene of two wars between Russian forces and separatists since 1994, in which tens of thousands were killed in heavy Russian bombing. That spawned an Islamic insurgency that has carried out deadly bombings in Russia and the region, although not in the West.
The older brother had strong political views about the United States, said Albrecht Ammon, 18, a downstairs-apartment neighbor in Cambridge. Ammon quoted Tsarnaev as saying that the U.S. uses the Bible as "an excuse for invading other countries."
Also, the FBI interviewed the older brother at the request of a foreign government in 2011, and nothing derogatory was found, according to a federal law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The official did not identify the foreign country or say why it made the request.
Exactly how the long night of crime began was unclear. But police said the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a gas station.
They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.
The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police. A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ran over his already wounded brother as he fled, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation. At some point, he abandoned his car and ran away on foot.
The brothers had built an arsenal of pipe bombs, grenades and improvised explosive devices and used some of the weapons in trying to make their getaway, said Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Watertown resident Kayla Dipaolo said she was woken up overnight by gunfire and a large explosion that sounded "like it was right next to my head ... and shook the whole house."
"It was very scary," she said. "There are two bullet holes in the side of my house, and by the front door there is another."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev had studied accounting as a part-time student at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston for three semesters from 2006 to 2008, the school said.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was registered as a student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Students said he was on campus this week after the Boston Marathon bombing. The campus closed down Friday along with colleges around the Boston area.
The men's father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said in a telephone interview with AP from the Russian city of Makhachkala that his younger son, Dzhokhar, is "a true angel." He said his son was studying medicine.
"He is such an intelligent boy," the father said. "We expected him to come on holidays here."
A man who said he knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Krystle Campbell, the 29-year-old restaurant manager killed in Monday's bombing, said he was glad Dzhokhar had survived.
"I didn't want to lose more than one friend," Marvin Salazar said.
"Why Jahar?" he asked, using Tsarnaev's nickname. "I want to know answers. That's the most important thing. And I think I speak for almost all America. Why the Boston Marathon? Why this year? Why Jahar?"
Two years ago, the city of Cambridge awarded Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a $2,500 scholarship. At the time, he was a senior at Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, a highly regarded public school whose alumni include Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing.
Tsarni, the men's uncle, said the brothers traveled here together from Russia. He called his nephews "losers" and said they had struggled to settle in the U.S. and ended up "thereby just hating everyone."

More from MSN News: Boston area on lockdown amid terror search Timeline: The search for the Boston bombings suspects Watertown manhunt in photos Boston suspect's web page venerates Islam, Chechen independence Chief: Slain MIT officer was dedicated, well-liked Video: Uncle to bombing suspect: 'Turn yourself in' Video: Shootout between police, suspects in Watertown Boston lockdown in photos

Sullivan and Associated Press writers Stephen Braun, Jack Gillum and Pete Yost reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mike Hill, Katie Zezima, Pat Eaton-Robb and Steve LeBlanc in Boston, Rodrique Ngowi in Watertown, Mass. and Jeff Donn in Cambridge, Mass., contributed to this report.