BAGHDAD (AP) – Two rockets landed in Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone following clashes at anti-government protests that left five dead, according to Iraqi security and hospital officials. The rocket attack left no casualties as the munitions landed on the parade grounds in the center of the highly fortified Baghdad compound that is home to Iraq’s government and most foreign embassies.
It was not immediately clear who fired the projectiles. The protests were called for by influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and clashes that erupted as crowds pushed toward the Green Zone left two policeman and three protesters dead, according to police and hospital officials.
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republicans love cutting taxes, especially if they were authored by a president named Barack Obama. But as they push their wobbly effort to erase his health care overhaul, they’re divided over whether to repeal the levies the law imposed to finance its expanded coverage for millions of Americans. It’s a trillion dollar dilemma, actually closer to $1.1 trillion.
That’s the 10-year price tag the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office puts on revenue the government would lose if the law’s taxes on wealthy people, the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and others were eliminated. Republicans and President Donald Trump have been edging away from their promise to quickly eliminate Obama’s entire law.
SEATTLE (AP) – Anti-abortion activists emboldened by the new administration of President Donald Trump staged rallies around the country calling for the federal government to cut off payments to Planned Parenthood, but in some cities counter-protests dwarfed the demonstrations.
Thousands of Planned Parenthood supporters, many wearing the pointy-eared pink hats popularized by last month’s women’s marches, turned out for a rally in St. Paul, Minnesota, separated by barricades from an anti-abortion crowd of a couple hundred people. In Detroit, about 300 people turned up outside a Planned Parenthood office, most of them supporting the organization. In St. Louis, about 150 abortion opponents slightly outnumbered a group carrying pink signs that read, “I stand with Planned Parenthood.”