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London’s espionage chief claims foreign states have been targeting UK universities

Academics and researchers at British universities will be vetted by the nation’s security services as part of government plans to crack down on alleged Chinese espionage, according to The Times.

The measures were reportedly announced following a meeting on Thursday between MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and the vice-chancellors of two dozen leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.

McCallum reportedly warned that hostile states are actively targeting universities to steal technology that can “deliver their authoritarian, military and commercial priorities.”

According to the M15 chief, a secret review into the vulnerabilities of the UK’s higher education sector has shown that countries like China are deploying both “overt and covert mechanisms” to “acquire intellectual property and steal advantage.”

Consultations are underway on a new system of government vetting that would see academics who have access to sensitive research face background checks by security services, according to the report.

The government will also be looking at new funding for higher education institutions to increase security around sensitive sites. Universities could also reportedly be required to consult with the security services when entering into funding partnerships and collaborations with foreign institutions.

Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the foreign affairs select committee, said in a post on X that academia has for “too long” pretended it has “no role to play in our national security” and could operate “free from geo-strategic realities.”

“Significant evidence indicates a systematic attempt by the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate British academia and exfiltrate critical research, capabilities and technologies,” she said.

Beijing has repeatedly denied any espionage-related accusations, branding them as “malicious smears.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said this week during a news briefing: “We would like to reiterate that the claim that China could be stealing UK intelligence is a groundless accusation and malicious smear, and we firmly oppose that accusation. Such malicious manipulation aimed at China should stop.”

MI5 had previously identified more than 50 Chinese college students enrolled at UK universities which it said were linked to the People’s Liberation Army, who have left the country in recent years as a result of a crackdown on what the spy agency described as the theft of defense-related technology and other sensitive research materials.

The French president has given a speech to highlight the EU’s achievements – but there’s little to celebrate

“We must be clear about the fact that our Europe today is mortal,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech this week. “She can die, and it depends only on our choices. But these choices are to be made now.”

What Macron portrays as an urgent need to resuscitate the EU comes after he himself has spent nearly seven years in power, having even been president of the Council of the European Union in 2022. He’s been credited for the nomination and confirmation of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, described by Forbes last year as the world’s most powerful woman. Or, as some might say, an unelected, omnipotent bureaucrat whose supranational authoritarianism supersedes the democratic process of member states. Or, as others might now say after Macron’s address, the Nurse Ratched at the EU’s deathbed.

Macron’s interminable speech should have been one big mea culpa on behalf of the EU’s establishment class. Tell us how you screwed up. At least then we’d know that there was hope for an actual course correction rather than just more of the same.

Instead, Macron argued that the EU hasn’t ever been a vassal of Washington. Saying that you’re not a vassal is exactly like having to tell people you’re not a prostitute. It’s not something that one has to go around saying if the optics aren’t already glaring. Queen Ursula is basically America’s viceroy in Europe at this point, and Macron himself can’t seem to manage to carve out any positions independent of the US that last longer than the time it takes for Uncle Sam to reach over and administer a transatlantic spanking.

Macron’s speech was a fascinating blend of delusion and insecurity. He chose Paris’ Sorbonne University as the venue. The theme? “Stocktake of European action.” Sure, tell us what’s really going on as though you had a clue – and an actual strategy and vision that wasn’t subjected to the constant whims and trends of the moment or any given election cycle.

Macron gave a similar speech at the Sorbonne in September 2017. Why there? Because as Macron said last time, “living collectively was the ideal of Robert de Sorbon” – the theologian who founded the university. It just so happens that circling the drain collectively is what the EU is really all about right now, thanks to the special brand of iron-fisted incompetence of those in charge. There’s a European Parliament election coming up, and the populists are surging in the polls right now.

The first step to recovery is admitting that there’s a problem. Macron, however, apparently feels compelled to do the opposite of that, and talk about all of the EU’s failures as though they’re successes. Like counterterrorism, for instance. France has made such great progress on that front that the country is now back on the highest alert just days before it's slated to host the Paris Olympics, including an open air Opening Ceremony along the Seine. It barely seems to have ever been downgraded from high alert; the initially white terror warning signs have been turning yellow from years of light exposure in the windows of buildings where they’re now permanent fixtures. Macron, however, highlighted the role of a new bureaucratic entity called the ECOFIN Council. Because nothing deters terrorists more than meetings.

In addressing Africa, Macron underscored the importance of another meeting: the “European Union - Africa Summit” held two years ago. The sparse content in the Africa section of Macron’s talk could be explained by minor details like French troops being drop-kicked back across the Mediterranean by African countries after French stability missions resulted in coups (which are kind of the opposite of stability).

Clearly not deterred by any inconvenient discrepancies between reality and projected fantasy, Macron’s speech also celebrated addressing the migration challenge, which the EU has basically paid to outsource to countries like Turkey, Tunisia, Mauritania and Egypt. The last I checked, none of these countries were actually in Europe. But the EU has outsourced almost everything else by this point, so they may as well.

Macron talked about the EU leading the ecological and environmental transition. To what, exactly? Poverty, probably. Just ask the farmers straitjacketed by Brussels' climate change diktats, their farmland being spied on by satellites to ensure compliance, how great that is. He brought up the EU’s energy sovereignty and reindustrialization. Not so fast; Germany in particular is still busy going in the opposite direction and de-industrializing. So it might be a while before the EU’s economic engine comes out on the flip side.

The EU has become more dependent on pricier American liquefied natural gas, which sounds like the opposite of sovereignty. France’s own LNG imports from the country the EU implies an explicit need to be sovereign from — Russia — are now up 75% in the first few months of this year, compared to a year ago. France was Russia’s top customer for LNG in Europe last February, according to a Politico report. For all the noise it makes, it’s not like the EU has stopped importing gas from Russia. They just replaced their Russian pipeline gas imports with Russian LNG – a billion dollars worth of Russian arctic liquified natural gas into the EU every month, to be exact. In 2023, the bloc was actually still importing 15% of its pipeline gas from Russia, according to Reuters. While that’s down from 45% before the conflict in Ukraine, it still might come as a shock to people who were actually listening to Brussels brag about how they were sticking it to Putin by depriving him of energy revenues, that they were still importing any pipeline gas at all. The NGO Global Witness reported last year that the EU really just pivoted to importing Russian liquefied natural gas, instead of pipeline gas, with Russian LNG imports into the EU jumping 40% since the onset of the conflict — even more than in each of the previous two years. 

Speaking of Ukraine, Macron said that “the sina qua non condition for our security is that Russia does not win the war of aggression it is waging against Ukraine. This is essential.” What’s more essential is that Macron should spell out what Ukraine “winning” actually means. It would seem that Ukraine not continuing to senselessly grind down its demographics should be seen as a win, given the non-zero chance of a battlefield game-changer that risks igniting a Third World War. Macron, however, clearly has other ideas, what with all his cosplaying as Napoleon Bonaparte and fantasizing about smoking Russians by openly talking about sending French troops to Ukraine.

Not that Ukraine is actually in the EU, but Macron now explains that the EU has “started to rethink our geography within the boundaries of our neighborhood.” Imagine the EU’s reaction to Russia uttering those same words.

In the end, however, this is just another speech, calibrated for maximum impact ahead of the upcoming June EU parliamentary elections. Like much of what EU leaders such as Macron are peddling nowadays, firehosing reality and diluting it with ideological rhetoric might tug on a few hearts, but won’t win over any brain that isn’t totally shot full of holes like a block of Comté.

The director of the FBI is being accused of hypocrisy for allowing the targeting of concerned parents, Trump supporters, and American Catholics but not “monitoring” pro-Hamas rallies and protests on college campuses.

Director Christopher Wray was asked in an interview on Tuesday about “actively monitoring” the rallies erupting across college and university campuses, which have become the subject of controversy and condemnation from even senior government officials. Wray replied, “We don’t monitor protests.” He added, “But we do share intelligence about specific threats of violence.”

Social media users reacted, accusing Wray of hypocrisy. Conservative podcast host Graham Allen quoted Wray saying, “We don’t monitor protests,” and wrote:

“They just monitor:
Republicans
Church
Christians
Donald Trump supporters
Parents who attend a PTA meeting”

Author and conservative media commentator Jesse Kelly pointed out the FBI’s failure to investigate the vandalizing and firebombing of pregnancy resource centers, commenting:

“‘We can’t find who’s bombing pregnancy centers cause they’re doing it at night.’ — Merrick Garland
‘We don’t monitor protests.’ — Chris Wray”

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Numerous social media users posted photos of known or suspected FBI agents undercover at pro-Trump rallies, alleged that the FBI embedded undercover agents at the January 6, 2021 rally at the U.S. Capitol building, or noted the FBI’s designation of parents protesting school board meetings or “radical traditionalist Catholics” as potential domestic terror threats. Referring to the infamous memo from the FBI’s Richmond field office, detailing plans to infiltrate and spy on Catholic parishes, one user commented, “I guess they are too busy monitoring Catholic churches.”

The U.S. House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government previously castigated the FBI’s memo for its reliance on biased sources, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which lists “radical traditionalist Catholics” as a hate group, alongside neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. The controversial memo, leaked early in 2023, labeled American Catholics who attend the Tridentine Mass (the form of the Mass common prior to 1969) as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” (RMVEs). The memo’s creation included communication with other FBI field offices, interviews with at least one priest and a choir director, and the approval of senior FBI lawyers. The House Committee warned, “The FBI must be held accountable for its actions. It is not enough for the FBI to investigate itself and remedy its own wrongdoings, especially when it involves law-enforcement overreach involving fundamental religious freedoms.”

But that’s what the FBI appears to have done. Last week, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz submitted a report to Congress absolving the FBI of any wrongdoing in the drafting and circulating of the memo. Horowitz wrote, “Our review did not find evidence that anyone ordered or directed Analyst 1 or 2 to find a link between RMVEs and any specific religion or political affiliation, including Church 1, or that there was any underlying policy direction concerning such a link.” The report added, “Additionally, our review of emails, instant messages, and text messages for Analysts 1 and 2 during the relevant time period did not identify any evidence of discriminatory or inappropriate comments by them about Church 1, or individuals who practiced a particular religious faith or held specific political beliefs.”

Previously, both Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland have stonewalled Congress in response to requests to interview FBI agents and analysts responsible for drafting and circulating the memo.

Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The FBI shouldn’t be monitoring most protests, but when massive demonstrations are shutting down higher education institutions that threaten fellow students and incorporate genocidal slogans like ‘From the river to the sea,’ that all should pique the interest of federal law enforcement.”

She continued, “Wray’s comments are yet another hit to the FBI’s credibility after the Department of Justice’s inspector general held last week that the FBI did not commit any wrongdoing when it was looking into ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ that they alleged were connected to ‘radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.’”

Del Turco added, “The FBI’s heightened concern over traditional Catholics appears especially absurd when considering the agency’s total disinterest in protestors who are threatening Jewish students on college campuses.”

Currently, pro-Hamas rallies are taking place at schools such as Ohio State University and the Ivy League Columbia and Yale universities.

LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

The post FBI Director Christopher Wray Targeted Pro-Life Protests, But Not Monitoring Pro-Hamas Protests appeared first on LifeNews.com.

A network of nonprofits has reportedly paid student groups organizing tent cities in colleges, according to the New York Post

Several student groups that have organized protest “camps” at major US universities have received money from activist billionaire George Soros, the New York Post reported on Friday.

Protests that began earlier this month at Columbia University in New York City have since spread to 40 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, including Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley. The Columbia protest was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime.

All three have received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations through a network of nonprofits, the Post claimed, citing its own research. Other major donors to the student groups were identified as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and former Wall Street banker Felice Gelman.

None of the groups responded to the Post’s requests for comment.

The outlet also named three “fellows” of the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), paid several thousand dollars to organize campaigns on campus. Two of them are former interns for congressional Democrats.

Activists have demanded that universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as Lockheed Martin, that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US government to stop giving any more money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Leader of the pro-Israel group Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, blamed the protests on “campus proxies” of Iran in an interview with MSNBC this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in the US and were calling for “the annihilation of Israel.” He compared the protesters to German Nazis in the 1930s and said their actions had to be “condemned and condemned unequivocally.” 

Israel sent troops into Gaza after a series of deadly raids by Hamas on October 7 last year, killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis. Netanyahu has vowed to completely destroy the Gaza-based Palestinian group. So far, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military operation and another 80,000 wounded. Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed as well.

A network of nonprofits has reportedly paid student groups organizing tent cities in colleges, according to the New York Post

Several student groups that have organized protest “camps” at major US universities have received money from activist billionaire George Soros, the New York Post reported on Friday.

Protests that began earlier this month at Columbia University in New York City have since spread to 40 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, including Harvard, Yale and UC Berkeley. The Columbia protest was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Within Our Lifetime.

All three have received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundations through a network of nonprofits, the Post claimed, citing its own research. Other major donors to the student groups were identified as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and former Wall Street banker Felice Gelman.

None of the groups responded to the Post’s requests for comment.

The outlet also named three “fellows” of the Soros-funded US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), paid several thousand dollars to organize campaigns on campus. Two of them are former interns for congressional Democrats.

Activists have demanded that universities “divest” from companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, as well as Lockheed Martin, that have contracts with the Israeli government. They also want the US government to stop giving any more money to Israel, citing its “genocide” of the Palestinians in Gaza.

Leader of the pro-Israel group Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, blamed the protests on “campus proxies” of Iran in an interview with MSNBC this week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that “anti-Semitic mobs have taken over leading universities” in the US and were calling for “the annihilation of Israel.” He compared the protesters to German Nazis in the 1930s and said their actions had to be “condemned and condemned unequivocally.” 

Israel sent troops into Gaza after a series of deadly raids by Hamas on October 7 last year, killing an estimated 1,200 Israelis. Netanyahu has vowed to completely destroy the Gaza-based Palestinian group. So far, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli military operation and another 80,000 wounded. Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed as well.

In his 2021 inaugural address, President Biden remarked, “The will of the people has been heard, and the will of the people has been heeded. We have learned again that democracy is precious.”

Then, a year later, this self-declared unifier sued my state for exercising democracy.

Idaho passed the Defense of Life Act in 2020 to protect the lives of women and their unborn children. The law officially became enforceable in June 2022, when the Supreme Court ruled Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the people and their elected representatives in the states have the power to pass pro-life laws. Idahoans stand to protect life, and our law is a reflection of their will.

But the Biden administration didn’t care. A couple of months after Dobbs gave this decision-making power back to the states, the administration manipulated a federal law to say we still don’t have that power. The Justice Department sued Idaho, claiming that a federal law — the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) — supersedes our own law and in fact even forces emergency room doctors to perform abortions.

This could not be further from the truth. EMTALA contains no provisions about abortion. In fact, that particular law requires emergency room physicians to care for pregnant women and their “unborn child[ren].” No conflict exists between Idaho’s law and EMTALA. A conflict does exist, however, between the will of the people of Idaho and the Biden administration’s adherence to an extreme abortion agenda.

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EMTALA was passed to ensure that emergency rooms serve everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. The purpose of this law is to save lives, not to take them. Similarly, Idaho’s law ensures that mothers’ and children’s lives are protected. There is harmony between Idaho’s law and EMTALA, but the administration is attempting to sow discord. Rather than seek to save lives, it is twisting the law into something unrecognizable, all to endanger lives and unnecessarily burden emergency room staff.

Emergency room doctors in Idaho — and in every state, in fact — treat women who suffer from ectopic pregnancies, miscarriages, and other life-threatening conditions. Doctors are bound by oath to protect their patients — every patient, including unborn children. The actions of the administration would force them to violate their oath and violate state law.

Because the administration is attempting to put its will above the people of Idaho, my office is standing in defense of our law. A lower court ruled against our ability to enforce our law, so we appealed that decision to the high court. Our efforts have already paid off. In January, the Supreme Court not only agreed to hear our case but also allowed us to enforce our law while the Court reviews the administration’s actions.

Make no mistake about it: Although Biden claims that his “whole soul” is in on uniting America, his administration is pushing an extreme agenda that is seeking to end lives rather than save them. His administration is attempting to use federal law to trump state law in direct opposition to the people of Idaho and legal precedent. Rather than respect democracy, Biden is kowtowing to abortion lobbyists, who stand to lose the most by allowing the unborn to have a chance at life.

With the help of the legal firms Alliance Defending Freedom and Cooper and Kirk — both of which have impressive track records at the U.S. Supreme Court — my office is working to uphold Idaho’s law. The Supreme Court heard our case Wednesday as we asked the court to end the Biden administration’s lawlessness and reckless disregard for life, women’s health, medical integrity, and democracy. A favorable ruling will uphold what Idaho’s law and EMTALA are both written to do: save lives.

LifeNews Note: Raúl Labrador is Idaho’s attorney general.

The post Joe Biden is Trying to Force My State to Kill Babies in Abortions, Supreme Court Must Stop Him appeared first on LifeNews.com.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has signed a pro-life bill to edcuate students about fetal development — an important measue given how many people don’t understand that an unborn baby is a human being starting at conception.

The bill will allow public school students to watch a pro-life metal development video that will properly educate them on the development of unborn children.

Tennessee, Iowa and West Virginia were considering approving bills that would require middle and high school students to watch Live Action’s “Baby Olivia” video. The video shows different stages of fetal development, complete with timestamps and a narrator describing the baby’s growth.

The pro-life group Live Action said the legislation would ” require all public schools in the state to include an approved prenatal child development segment in the state-mandated age-appropriate family life curriculum.

“Meet Baby Olivia” was created by Live Action in collaboration with medical experts, using data from the Endowment for Human Development  (EHD), a non-profit organization “​​committed to neutrality  regarding all controversial bioethical issues.” Yet pro-abortion media outlets have attacked  “Baby Olivia” as being medically inaccurate, largely using abortionists or abortion activists as their sources. However, some have admitted  that the real problem is that they feel “Baby Olivia” could ‘stigmatize’ abortion: the direct and intentional killing of preborn human beings, making young people more likely to choose life.

Women are indeed less likely to choose abortion if they are shown the humanity of their children.

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The common sense measure has been met with opposition from pro-abortion advocates and several Democratic lawmakers in all the states in which it is being considered. AP News published an article in February, calling the video “deceptive and problematic for a young audience.”

In The Tennessean article, Ashley Coffield, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi, pushed back against the legislation and called it “unscientific and emotionally manipulative.”

“It parrots the same lies and misinformation that anti-abortion groups and lawmakers used to impose a total abortion ban on Tennessee,” she said, according to the news outlet.

In a February news release, Live Action founder and President Lila Rose maintained that the video is medically accurate and was created in collaboration with a panel of pro-life doctors, which included fetal and embryonic experts.

The Tennessee House Republican Caucus posted on X on March 19 that the “Baby Olivia” video is a medically reviewed, detailed depiction of the growth of a child from conception to birth.

“It tells the factual, biological truth about when human life begins,” the post said. “It is unsettling for pro-choice Americans and those at [the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists] because it shows what they would otherwise choose to ignore, which is the fact that from zygote to embryo to fetus to baby to toddler and so on, we are talking about human beings.”

The post Tennessee Governor Bill Lee Signs Bill to Educate Students About Fetal Development appeared first on LifeNews.com.

On April 22, 2024, New York Attorney General Letitia James began a carbon-copy notice of litigation against Christian pro-life pregnancy centers. Ten pro-life pregnancy centers have been served so far for alleged “misleading statements or omissions in the advertising of the Abortion Pill Reversal (“APR”) protocol.”

Similar allegations were filed against pro-life groups by abortion advocate and Attorney General Rob Bonta of California in the Fall of 2023. The powerhouse public interest law firm, Thomas More Society based in Chicago, is representing pro-life defendants in both cases, pro bono. The pregnancy centers were given five days to respond before the massive legal hammer of the New York Attorney General’s office drops.

This is only the most recent move by pro-abortion political extremists in a two-year, multi-layered, blue-state, pattern of attack against pro-life pregnancy centers—similar to Marxist-style allegations of misinformation leveled by Jane’s Revenge terrorist group against pro-lifers.

The attacks on pregnancy centers began on June 7, 2022, with the firebombing of CompassCare’s medical office in Buffalo, injuring two firefighters. Firebombing of pro-life groups is now deemed domestic terror by the DOJ.

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One week after the firebombing, NY Governor Kathy Hochul weaponized legislation by signing a bill to investigate the victims, alleging misinformation while referring to pro-life people as Neanderthals. Shortly after, New York Attorney General Letitia James conspired with big tech like Google to censure pro-life pregnancy centers, keeping women from finding them on map features. James applauded Google’s illegal compliance in August 2022. The timeline of attacks including vilification of pro-life pregnancy centers through negative PR and activist litigation can be found on CompassCare’s webpage.

“First of all,” asserts Rev. Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare, “according to the 1st Amendment of the Constitution, pro-abortion government agents don’t get to decide what is true or false. But more importantly, if politicians like Letitia James get their way and hamstring pro-life groups and doctors, New York will be engaging in forced abortion. Women who start the chemical abortion process often change their mind after taking the first dose. In Letitia’s ideal world, if a woman starts an abortion the government will force her to go through with the abortion or travel out-of-state to save her baby.”

Rev. Harden continues, “But then, it has never really been about choice, or women, or rights. Letitia James and other politicians that get elected on abortion industry money are not interested in healthcare but rather a fascist, billion-dollar criminal abortion empire committing serial medical malpractice and fraud.”

Recent studies show that 1 in 17 women who start the chemical abortion process wind up in the ER with sepsis, hemorrhaging, or undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy. Meanwhile, 60% of those ER visits are miscoded as a miscarriage. Further, chemical abortion is fraudulently touted as ‘safer than Tylenol.’ Additionally, the shipment of these drugs across U.S. borders and state lines is a violation of Federal law carrying a $250,000 fine and jail time per instance. At over 60% of all abortions in the U.S., enforcement would incur a minimum of $2.4T in fines and lifetimes of jail time. Rev. Harden also notes, “It is also worth mentioning that the chemical abortion drug Mifepristone is in violation of the 3rd Provision of the Nuremberg Code as proper testing protocols were not followed.”

“You know,” quipped Rev. Harden, “being sued by New York State for ‘misinformation’ oddly gives us the platform to educate the nation concerning the stubborn facts abortion industry puppets, like AG James, seek to hide; abortion is attended with a 44% increased risk of breast cancer, a 52% increased risk of future preterm deliveries, and a 5-fold increased risk of suicide. If it takes being sued by Letitia James to save women and babies from being used and victimized by a mercenary abortion industry, come and get us!”

Interestingly, a year ago in January, CompassCare CEO, Rev. Jim Harden, predicted these types of politically motivated attacks ahead of the 2024 Presidential election saying, “Based on the political power struggle currently happening in the aftermath of Roe’s reversal and the lead up to the 2024 Presidential election…I predict…that the pro-abortion empire and those politicians and big corporations that protect it will increase attacks against pro-life people and organizations.”

And so they have.

The post New York Attorney General Letitia James Trying to Shut Down Every Pro-Life Pregnancy Center appeared first on LifeNews.com.

The country can’t part with air defense systems that are crucial for its deterrence capabilities, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said

Athens will not supply Kiev with US-made Patriot or Soviet-designed S-300 air defense systems, the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said.

Local media reported earlier this week that the country might provide Kiev with at least one Patriot system, following pressure from the EU and NATO on member states to increase support for Ukraine as it experiences a shortage of air defense systems and munitions.

However, in an interview with Iefimerida on Wednesday, Mitsotakis made it clear that the delivery is not going to happen. “Greece will not send either S-300[s] nor Patriot[s] to Ukraine,” he said.

“We have said from the start that we cannot provide weapons systems that are critical to our deterrence capability,” the prime minister explained.

Athens has supported Kiev “in various ways,” including by providing weapons, during the conflict with Russia and will continue to do so if it finds “surplus material,” he promised.

But the air defenses in question “are critical systems for the protection of Greek airspace and cannot be ceded to Ukraine,” he reiterated.

Together with Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain, Greece is among six European nations that operate the Patriot systems.

While Berlin has promised to supply another Patriot to Ukraine, Poland said earlier this week that it has no air defense systems to spare. Spanish daily El Pais reported on Friday that Madrid will only provide air defense missiles to Kiev, but not the Patriot systems.

In late March, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that at least five Patriots operated by Kiev’s forces have been destroyed by the Russian military since the start of the year.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the decline in deliveries of Western aid in recent months has left Ukrainian troops “outgunned, allowing Russia to push forward on the front line.”

“Ukraine has lacked air defense, enabling more Russian missiles and drones to hit their targets,” he said. However, the NATO chief claimed that “it is not too late for Ukraine to prevail because more support is on the way.”

READ MORE: Poland doesn’t have Patriots to give Ukraine – Tusk

Russia has warned that deliveries of foreign weapons systems to Kiev will not prevent Moscow from achieving its military goals, but will merely prolong the fighting and could increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. According to officials in Moscow, the provision of arms, the sharing of intelligence, and the training of Ukrainian troops means that Western nations have already become de-facto parties to the conflict.

The country can’t part with air defense systems that are crucial for its deterrence capabilities, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said

Athens will not supply Kiev with US-made Patriot or Soviet-designed S-300 air defense systems, the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said.

Local media reported earlier this week that the country might provide Kiev with at least one Patriot system, following pressure from the EU and NATO on member states to increase support for Ukraine as it experiences a shortage of air defense systems and munitions.

However, in an interview with Iefimerida on Wednesday, Mitsotakis made it clear that the delivery is not going to happen. “Greece will not send either S-300[s] nor Patriot[s] to Ukraine,” he said.

“We have said from the start that we cannot provide weapons systems that are critical to our deterrence capability,” the prime minister explained.

Athens has supported Kiev “in various ways,” including by providing weapons, during the conflict with Russia and will continue to do so if it finds “surplus material,” he promised.

But the air defenses in question “are critical systems for the protection of Greek airspace and cannot be ceded to Ukraine,” he reiterated.

Together with Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain, Greece is among six European nations that operate the Patriot systems.

While Berlin has promised to supply another Patriot to Ukraine, Poland said earlier this week that it has no air defense systems to spare. Spanish daily El Pais reported on Friday that Madrid will only provide air defense missiles to Kiev, but not the Patriot systems.

In late March, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that at least five Patriots operated by Kiev’s forces have been destroyed by the Russian military since the start of the year.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday that the decline in deliveries of Western aid in recent months has left Ukrainian troops “outgunned, allowing Russia to push forward on the front line.”

“Ukraine has lacked air defense, enabling more Russian missiles and drones to hit their targets,” he said. However, the NATO chief claimed that “it is not too late for Ukraine to prevail because more support is on the way.”

READ MORE: Poland doesn’t have Patriots to give Ukraine – Tusk

Russia has warned that deliveries of foreign weapons systems to Kiev will not prevent Moscow from achieving its military goals, but will merely prolong the fighting and could increase the risk of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO. According to officials in Moscow, the provision of arms, the sharing of intelligence, and the training of Ukrainian troops means that Western nations have already become de-facto parties to the conflict.

Officers used tear gas to disperse activists at Emory University campus amid a nationwide crackdown

Police officers in the US state of Georgia used tear gas and tasers to disperse a pro-Palestinian student encampment on Thursday, as law enforcement targeted activists at university campuses nationwide.

The clashes took place at Emory University in Atlanta, where protesters – including students from several nearby universities – had set up tents. They were rallying against what they termed “the genocide of Palestinians” by Israel, and against Cop City, a local police and fire department training center currently under construction.

“We are demanding total institutional divestment from Israeli apartheid and Cop City at all Atlanta colleges and universities,” an organizer said. “We are occupying Emory, not because it is the only institution that is complicit in genocide and police militarization, but because its ties are some of the strongest.”

READ MORE: US campus protesters akin to 1930s Nazis – Netanyahu

The university said in a statement that several dozen people had “trespassed” on its campus, and warned that it would “not tolerate vandalism or other criminal activity.” Members of the Emory Police Department, Atlanta Police, and Georgia State Patrol were called to the scene, according to local media.

”Atlanta community members were indiscriminately attacked today with pepper bullets, tear gas, and tasers for the simple act of camping out on a school lawn,” the organizers said.

Extremely disturbing footage. Atlanta cops tasing a restrained student protester at Emory university minutes ago.

pic.twitter.com/Iq9p98za8y

A video purportedly filmed at the location shows several officers holding down a handcuffed man, as one of them appears to fire a taser into his leg.

The APD confirmed using “chemical irritants,” but stressed that its officers did not “deploy rubber bullets,” contrary to some reports circulating online.

While the university initially claimed that the activists were “not members of our community,” it later acknowledged that out of 28 people arrested in the raid, 20 were from Emory.

Pro-Palestinian activists faced crackdowns across the US this week. The wave of campus demonstrations was triggered last week by a protest at Columbia University in New York, and then spread to some 40 universities and colleges in the US and Canada, according to NBC News. On Thursday, police reportedly targeted encampments at Indiana University Bloomington and Ohio State University.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed the US police crackdown, branding the protesters “anti-Semitic mobs” and comparing them to Nazi sympathizers in the 1930s.

Jonathan Greenblatt, leader of the US pro-Israel group Anti-Defamation League, claimed in an interview with MSNBC this week that the wave of protests was organized by “campus proxies” of Iran.

Israel attacked Gaza in October last year in retaliation for a deadly incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas, in which 1,200 Israelis were reportedly killed. The death toll in the enclave has since surpassed 35,000, according to Palestinian officials.

With its dual rulings on abortion, the Florida Supreme Court delivered Governor Ron DeSantis both a major victory and one of the greatest challenges yet to his legacy as governor. Babies with a heartbeat will be protected starting May 1. However, a constitutional amendment to enshrine all-trimester abortion will appear on the ballot this November.

I was recently in Florida talking with donors about the implications of the ballot measure and Big Abortion’s attack on the states. Rewriting state constitutions is key to the abortion lobby’s national strategy after Dobbs. Out-of-state billionaires and far-left groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are going around the country, picking off pro-life states with deceptive ballot measures that override existing laws to create a right for second- and third-trimester abortion.

But until now, they haven’t had to contend with Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis recently called out the amendment for being too extreme and misleading. This clarity from the governor will be worth more than millions of dollars in deception from the abortion industry, and is an example for every pro-life governor facing an abortion amendment.

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At a press conference for a bill signing, the governor said the ballot measure is like a California abortion law which would remove parental consent laws from the books. He also said, “These things cost tens of millions of dollars . . . so somebody’s paying for that and somebody’s going to benefit from that.”

That somebody is Big Abortion. Nearly one-third of the money raised for Florida’s abortion measure comes straight from the abortion industry. Mona Reis, an owner of a large abortion facility in the state, is a key driving force behind the measure, as she and others in the industry stand to realize a major ROI when they can perform abortions at any time, with zero state regulations and without parents standing in their way.

The millions coming from the abortion industry and the ACLU will center upon one key message: the lie that women will have to leave the state to receive care for a miscarriage or a life-threatening pregnancy complication. In Ohio last year, the pro-abortion side lied 14 times about this during a televised debate. Pro-abortion forces spent a staggering $66.7 million promoting these deceptions, outspending pro-life advocates two to one.

In Florida, CNN is already parroting the abortion lobby’s lie on a “public health crisis,” despite the fact that a small fraction of abortions are for medical reasons, and the heartbeat law contains no fewer than five different exceptions including the mother’s life and a fatal prenatal diagnosis.

If anyone can cut through the lies, DeSantis can.

The truth is, Prop 4 threatens to erase years of progress on life made during the DeSantis administration.

Florida would again become a southeastern sanctuary state for barbaric late-term abortions when babies feel pain. In Ohio, abortion supporters conceded that their amendment failed to define what a “health” reason means, leaving it up to the abortionist who directly profits.

Florida’s law requiring parental consent – not merely notification – for minors before an abortion, which DeSantis signed in 2020 with the support of nearly three quarters of Florida voters, would be eviscerated. The governor recently pointed out the deceptive way the ballot measure mentions parental notification after a minor has had an abortion but eliminates parental consent. “Don’t be fooled though, that is severing the parental consent for minors,” he said.

Prop 4 would also gut health and safety standards that have led the state to shut down abortion facilities that severely injure women. Any “healthcare provider” – not even a doctor – would be free to perform abortions regardless of medical expertise.

Florida has one advantage that Ohio did not: the amendment must get 60 percent of the vote to pass. The state has a Republican voter registration advantage of nearly one million and growing. Passage is not a certainty, even with virtually unlimited money (and paid pro-abortion activists who are willing to cheat). It is a winnable fight – but only if voters really understand what’s at stake and Republicans especially turn out to vote NO.

Gov. DeSantis understands how to win on abortion. By combining clarity, compassion and contrast, DeSantis fended off a challenge from former U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist after signing the 15-week late-term abortion limit into law. DeSantis was clear and unapologetic about his own stance. He showed that Floridians care about women while at the same time humanizing the unborn child. He went on offense to expose the extremism of his opponent, who refused to protect babies even when they are born alive after failed abortions.

While federal candidates who chose the “ostrich strategy” of avoiding the issue suffered heavy losses, DeSantis won re-election by nearly 20 points.

With the support of 62 percent of Florida voters, DeSantis then signed the Heartbeat Protection Act, which also allocated $25 million immediately for the state’s pregnancy centers to serve more moms during pregnancy and beyond. In his presidential campaign, DeSantis defended heartbeat protections against critics in the media and in his own party.

Right now, pro-abortion Democrats wrongly believe they have an unbeatable formula, with abortion as the silver bullet that will save them from an unpopular incumbent and failed administration. President Biden rolled out a “seven-figure” ad campaign and an abortion tour with his latest stop in Florida this week. Hillary Clinton weighed in, as did DeSantis’ nemesis in California, Governor Gavin Newsom. But as DeSantis says, Florida isn’t California. In their overconfidence, seizing on a bombastic goal of flipping Florida may prove a big mistake.

This moment poses DeSantis’ greatest opportunity yet – to save lives and defeat the Left. As the governor says, Florida is “where woke goes to die” and with his help, it will be where Big Abortion’s plans die too.

LifeNews Note: Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and author of “Life is Winning: Inside the Fight for Unborn Children and Their Mothers.”  Jeanne Mancini is the president of the March for Life.

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Jesuit-affiliated Xavier University in Cincinnati, OH, appears to list abortion on its student health insurance plan. The university maintains that it does not cover abortion.

“[Xavier’s] plan not only appears to cover abortion – it looks like the school specifically added it into the coverage,” Hope College student William Hurley wrote in The College Fix Tuesday.

“A ‘policy endorsement’ on the plan appeared to delete an ‘exclusion’ of abortion,” Hurley indicated:

The plan lists abortion as a “Non-EHB [Essential Health Benefit] added to plan via additional endorsement.” It includes, like other covered benefits, the amount the plan pays for in-network and out-of-network providers.

…

“Benefits will be paid at the benefits levels indicated in the schedule of benefits,” the endorsement states.

The “policy endorsement” in question “appears to be signed by university President Colleen Hanycz,” added Hurley.

An Xavier public relations employee denied that the plan covered abortion when he was asked by the Fix. 

“He said ‘nothing has changed regarding this policy from previous years,’” Hurley noted. The employee also claimed that “there are few enrollees in the plan.”

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Last month, Xavier spokesman David Hamilton told the Fix: “The confusion regarding the wording is definitely understandable — but again, the answer to your question is, no, elective abortions are not a covered benefit under the policy.”

A PDF of the plan linked in Hurley’s article mentions abortion a total of nine times.

“Benefits for therapeutic abortion are provided only when the therapeutic abortion is performed: To save the life of the mother [or] [a]s a result of a case of rape or incest,” the plan states under its “Medical Expense Benefits” section.

An April 2022 post to Xavier Students For Life’s X (then known as Twitter) account featured a picture of three members of the student pro-life group meeting with President Hanycz.

So glad for the opportunity to meet with @PrezHanycz today to discuss ways of promoting an open dialogue of the life issues on campus, as well as ways to build a culture of life and serve the most vulnerable in our community! #AllForOne #LetsGoX pic.twitter.com/rp7WSDWwWl

— Xavier Students For Life (@xustudents4life) April 6, 2022

“So glad for the opportunity to meet with [Hanycz] today to discuss ways of promoting an open dialogue of the life issues on campus, as well as ways to build a culture of life and serve the most vulnerable in our community!” the post states.

Hanycz is the first lay president in Xavier’s 193-year history. She previously served as president of two other Catholic institutions of higher education: La Salle University in Philadelphia, and Brescia University College in London, Ontario, Canada.

Her profile page on the Jesuit university’s website declares: “President Hanycz has been an active proponent of Catholic education as a means to advance the common good and to celebrate the dignity of each person, and will continue this commitment in a Jesuit setting at Xavier.”

Readers can find Hurley’s full article in The College Fix here.

LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.

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Student action on university campuses against US involvement in Israel’s slaughter of Gaza has exploded across the country. Suddenly there is the distinct feel in the air of the anti-Vietnam war protests once they finally caught on in 1968 and soon thereafter changed the course of US history.

Both protest movements were fully demonized by the same forces of the mainstream Left/Right regime and what libertarian writer Jacob Hornberger rightly calls the “National Security State.” I would add the mainstream media from Fox to MSNBC. But these days there is relatively more freedom of expression available to Americans via some of the social media outlets. The US government war on one of these outlets – TikTok – may also be fueling protests, as this outlet is particularly popular among younger Americans and has become the platform for them to hear more objective and independent views on what is happening in Gaza. It should not be considered a coincidence that not long after Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblat was caught on tape panicking over the shift in opinion away from fealty to Israel among the younger generation, a big PR operation about “Chinese infiltration” of the platform emerged as did calls to ban the popular application.

“We have a major, major, major generational (TikTok) problem,” Greenblat said. This past week both Houses of Congress voted to ban TikTok. Problem solved? Not exactly.

So back to the protests.

Tens of thousands of students from New York’s Columbia University to the University of Southern California have risen up to demand an end to US support for Israel’s 200 day – and counting – total demolition of Gaza in retribution for the October 7th Hamas bloody incursion into Israeli territory.

To date, more than 35,000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been killed including an estimated 15,000 children. Hamas, by contrast, is reportedly not significantly degraded and its massive tunnel system remains intact. Former Israeli Defense Forces General Yitzhak Brick told Israeli newspaper Maariv that Israel has already lost the war against Hamas and must admit it.

The wild disproportionality of the Israeli response has animated and ignited the sense of repulsion and demand for justice among the nation’s youth. Most recently the grisly details of Israel’s apparent mass slaughter of hundreds of patients at the Nasser Hospital in Gaza – many discovered with their hands and feet bound – may have been the last straw that led to mass student action across the country.

When the wave of student protests settled in the Lone Star State on Wednesday, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott wasted no time at all calling in the Texas State Troopers to smash the protest at the University of Texas. Heavily-armed Troopers – some on horseback – marched onto campus attempting to force the crowd of protesters to disburse. As might be expected, the situation very quickly got out of hand, with Troopers assaulting and arresting those participating in what began as a peaceful protest.

Shortly after siccing the heavily armed state militia on student protestors, Abbot released this Tweet:

Arrests being made right now & will continue until the crowd disperses.

These protesters belong in jail.

Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period.

Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled. https://t.co/XhLlQdvUl0

Abbott’s blanket accusation that these protests are prima facie anti-Semitic is belied by the fact that Jews across the country are participating in the mass action, including on university campuses.

There is clearly a major attempt being made to conflate legitimate concern over tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians being slaughtered – and hundreds of thousands facing starvation – with blanket hatred of Jewish people. But the youth are not buying it. So it’s time to send in the militarized police to shut down peaceful protest and the First Amendment.

In the case of Texas, one cheeky conservative Twitter/X user pointed out that, “Abbott sent more troops to shutdown peaceful protests at UT than he did to secure the border.”

Ouch – but revealing.

Other observers have similarly pointed out the hypocrisy of the massive deployment of militarized police to quell a peaceful political protest, commenting on a video montage of police beating and arresting American university students that, “imagine if this video was out of Tehran University in Iran, our politicians & media would have endless calls for regime change.”

Throughout the country, many “influencers” on the professional political Right are acting like the “woke snowflakes” they have derided, demanding that our fundamental liberty to freely assemble and speak our minds be amended in this particular instance due to the subject matter.

Many “professional right-wingers” have done their best to try and convince us that these protesters are identical to the BLM protesters of several years ago. Matt Walsh at the Daily Wire put out a podcast today claiming that, “The ‘Free Palestine’ Movement Is Just BLM Repackaged.” 

The problem in his and the rest of their calculus is that the state and local authorities would not lift a finger to stop the BLM riots, yet they are cracking heads robustly among the Palestine protests.

Walsh even seemed to sense the inconsistency in his logic, questioning Governor Abbott’s move against the protesters by Tweeting, “Did Abbott ever arrest BLM protesters for antiwhiteism? Is antisemitism the only hateful ideology not permitted in Texas? Are you legally allowed to hate some groups but not others?”

He added, in a criticism of Abbot’s suggestion that the protesters were being arrested for “antisemitism,” that, “If you’re arresting them for an illegal encampment or for making threats then say that. But arresting people for ‘antisemitism’ is obviously a clear violation of the First Amendment. I can’t stand these protesters but you can’t arrest people simply for having ‘hateful’ views.”

He deserves credit for this observation.

As is often the case, action by state actors against this protest movement will only strengthen the movement. We have not even seen the beginning of what is in store

Polls clearly show that a considerable majority in America believes Israel has gone way too far in its reaction to October 7th. America for the first time in my lifetime is in the majority opposed to Israel, and that shift is more than anything else a generational shift. Hence Greenblat’s panic.

This movement is picking up steam and threatens to turn Biden’s big Democratic Convention coronation ceremony into the disastrous 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the Lyndon Johnson campaign went to die. Ironically the Democratic Party convention this year is to be held in…Chicago!

May 4th will be the 54th anniversary of Nixon’s National Guard killing four students at Ohio’s Kent state University for protesting our killing squads in Vietnam (My Lai massacre). Will soldiers in the US start cutting protesters down again? 

Advisers to the former US president are considering penalties for nations seeking to trade in national currencies, the outlet has reported

Economic aides to former US President Donald Trump are looking for options to stop countries from shifting away from the US dollar as it faces a growing challenge from emerging markets, including BRICS nations, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

The presumptive Republican nominee for the November presidential election and his team are discussing penalties against both allies and adversaries who seek to divert their trade from the greenback to other currencies. The options could include export controls, currency manipulation charges, and tariffs, the outlet said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The global trend toward using national currencies in trade instead of the dollar gained significant momentum after Russia was cut off from the Western financial system and had its foreign reserves frozen in 2022, as part of Ukraine-related sanctions.

A bill with provisions authorizing the US to confiscate frozen Russian assets, which Biden signed on Wednesday, could further spur de-dollarization, financial experts have warned. The so-called REPO Act, which was incorporated in the $61 billion military aid package for Kiev, authorized the US president to seize Russian state assets held in American banks.

As quoted by Bloomberg, Trump warned on Thursday that with US President Joe Biden, “you’re going to lose the dollar as the standard. That’ll be like losing the biggest war we’ve ever lost.”

According to the news agency, Trump’s economic advisers and his campaign team have specifically considered curbing de-dollarization efforts by BRICS countries.

The group – which recently expanded and now comprises Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Ethiopia, Iran, Egypt – is boosting the use of national currencies in mutual trade. It has even signaled the possibility of introducing a new single currency in the coming years.

Trump has repeatedly said that he wants the dollar to remain the world’s reserve currency.

“I hate when countries go off the dollar,” Trump told CNBC in March. “I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war,” he said, adding that it would be a “hit” for the US.