Governor Charlie Baker is pledging to boost state funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in Massachusetts if his fellow Republicans in Washington push ahead with a plan to slash the flow of federal dollars to the organization.

“The administration is prepared to fund these services should the federal government pursue changes that would block care for women and families here in Massachusetts,” she said.

“We certainly object to giving the money to Planned Parenthood when there are hundreds of other facilities that do health care services,” Beckwith said.

BEIJING — “FAKE NEWS,”

propagandists spiced up social media posts and news articles with Trumpian flourishes this week.

“The stories were essentially fake news,” Xinhua wrote, adopting a phrase that Mr. Trump has embraced

President Donald Trump will head to the Navy's newest, most sophisticated vessel Thursday as he seeks to prolong the glow from his well-received address to Congress and provide a jolt of momentum to his governing agenda.

In a dramatic made-for-television production, George W. Bush flew onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq in 2003. His speech, given under a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," became a symbol of hubris and of the premature declaration of victory in Iraq, a country where US forces are now battling ISIS.

The partisan furor that broke out with the Justice Department’s acknowledgment of the contacts late Wednesday began to take on a bipartisan sheen as the controversy spilled into Thursday morning.

“There is no longer any question that we need a truly independent commission to investigate this issue,” Mr. Cummings said.

Late last year, Christer Stoltz, chief of contingency planning for Gotland, Sweden’s largest island, got an unusual letter from the central government in Stockholm, telling him to get ready for war.

“increase their ability to resist an armed attack against Sweden from a qualified opponent,”

The planning was also intended to respond to natural disasters, oil spills or cyberattacks that could disrupt power and water supplies

The U.S. on Thursday engaged in its first military action in Yemen since the raid that killed Navy SEAL Ryan Owens in January, three U.S. defense officials confirmed to Fox News.

Three other Americans were wounded in the operation and a $75 million aircraft was destroyed after it crash-landed bringing in reinforcements offshore.

The early-morning airstrikes -- more than 20 in all -- targeted Al Qaeda fighters, Pentagon spokesman Capt. Jeff Davis said. The strikes hit three south-central provinces suspected to have terrorist activity: Abyan, Shabwa and Bayda.

Democrats squandered an opportunity

If anyone still wondered whether there was an established institution in this country strong enough to save us from Donald Trump and his authoritarian impulses, the media hot takes and Democratic response to Trump’s speech last night should put those questions to rest. And just so we’re clear, the answer is no, no one is going to save us.

“He became president of the United States in that moment, period.”

IT IS the best and worst of times for the Five Star Movement (M5S), the populist group that is Italy’s main opposition

On February 7th Ms Raggi learned that prosecutors had formally placed her under investigation for a second time. The mayor, who denies wrongdoing, risks indictment for falsifying a document and abuse of her office.

Rome, on the other hand, for all its ravishing beauty, is corrupt, chaotic and cynical. Ms Raggi inherited a city hall notorious for sleaze that had been under central-government administration because of an investigation into links between local-authority executives and organised crime. Several officials were behind bars.

Gender is a useful wedge, though, when it comes to highlighting what has become one of their main planks: a critique of immigration, particularly from the Muslim world. The European far right has long seized on the hijab as a symbol of patriarchy; more recently it has said that attacks on gays and women in Muslim enclaves are evidence of the Islamic threat to European values.

“They defend ‘our’ women against harassment by foreigners — strangers, migrants, Muslim men,” says Ms. Wodak, the author of “The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean.” “However, they never spoke out against sexual harassment before.”

Female leaders in Europe span the ideological spectrum. Two of the Continent’s most powerful leaders, Ms. Merkel of Germany and Theresa May of Britain, are on opposite sides of Britain’s plan to leave the European Union.

“It has gotten so bad that nearly 20 million Americans have chosen to pay the penalty or received an exemption rather than buy insurance. That’s something that nobody has ever heard of or thought could happen, and they’re actually doing that rather than being forced to buy insurance.”

It’s worth noting that many people likely only paid a penalty for some months, not an entire year. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that on average, about 3 million people will pay the penalty for being uninsured in any given month in 2016.

The Republican Washington–to–New York establishment is alienated by Trump

he has now brought them more opportunity for conservative political change than any Republican candidate in a century only adds insult to their sense of injury.

Trumpism promotes traditionalism

A Russian spy ship last seen off the coast of Connecticut was spotted late Wednesday steaming south -- and near the largest naval base in the world, where the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Fleet is located.

U.S. SPIES REPORTEDLY KEEPING INTELLIGENCE FROM TRUMP

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday it was in the interests of both Russia and the United States to restore ties between the two nations' intelligence agencies

“He will not be the first president who has decried leaks once they become president.”

“That does seem to be pretty much a constant in the Oval Office,” she said. “It’s definitely true that he embraced them when the shoe was on the other foot.”

“The idea that there’s been zero attention paid to an issue of that sensitivity should be concerning and alarming,” he said.

The posters backed a government-sponsored measure that would ease the path to citizenship for third-generation immigrants like the second Vanessa. And on Sunday, the measure was approved in a nationwide referendum.

Swiss law typically requires foreigners to be residents of the country for 12 years before applying for citizenship;

“It’s quite systematic — they are really trying what Trump’s campaigns did, to go beyond the facts,” said Lukas Goldber, an analyst at Gfs.bern, a political and social research institute, referring to President Trump’s election campaign in the United States.

The U.S. says it has seen the announcement from Russia, Turkey and Iran on their intent to establish a mechanism to enforce a cease-fire in Syria and welcomes actions that de-escalate violence in the country.

U.S. calls on the three countries to press the Syrian government and its allies, as well as opposition forces, to abide by the cease-fire in order to create an environment more conductive to political discussions between Syrians.

The Russian military says its bombers have struck Islamic State positions in eastern Syria in the third such raid in four days.