Virginian vetoes clinic cutoff bill
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe has vetoed a bill that would have restricted funding for Planned Parenthood clinics.
The Democrat vetoed the measure Tuesday during an event outside the executive mansion. He vetoed the same measure last year and said Tuesday that it would harm tens of thousands of Virginians who rely on Planned Parenthood.
The organization provides abortions as well as other health services such as cancer screenings.
The bill from Republican state lawmaker Ben Cline would have prohibited the state health department from providing money to any entity that performs abortions not covered by Medicaid. The money would be redirected to other health clinics.
Arrestee said to be terrorist aspirant
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Federal officials say a Missouri man faces federal charges after being accused of helping to plan what he believed would be a Washington’s Birthday terrorist attack on buses, trains and a rail station in Kansas City.
Robert Lorenzo Hester Jr. was charged in federal court in Kansas City with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. Hester, 25, of Columbia was arrested Friday when he arrived at a meeting with someone he thought was an Islamic State sympathizer who actually was an undercover FBI agent.
A criminal complaint said federal officials began investigating Hester in August 2016 after receiving tips about social media posts in which he said he had converted to Islam and expressed hatred for the United States and a tendency toward violence. Undercover FBI agents posing as Islamic State group sympathizers contacted Hester first online and then in several face-to-face meetings to discuss whether he wanted to participate in a terrorist attack.
Dozens taken from filthy floodwaters
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Rescuers chest-deep in water steered boats Tuesday carrying dozens of people, some with babies and pets, from a San Jose neighborhood inundated by water from an overflowing creek.
Farther north, farmers used tractors to shore up an endangered levee in California’s agricultural heartland, officials opened a spillway at the Don Pedro Reservoir for the first time in 20 years, and a Sierra Nevada highway threatened to collapse after the latest downpours swelled waterways, leaving nearly half of the state under flood advisories.
In San Jose, at least 225 residents were taken to dry land and rinsed with soap and water to prevent them from being sickened by floodwaters from Coyote Creek that had traveled through engine fuel, garbage and debris and over sewer lines, San Jose Fire Capt. Mitch Matlow said.
The rains were the latest produced by a series of storms generated by so-called atmospheric rivers that dump quantities of Pacific Ocean water on California after carrying it aloft from as far away as Hawaii.
The latest downpours swelled waterways to flood levels and left about half the state under flood, wind and snow advisories.