Month: May 2021

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an abortion case that could alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights, particularly with three justices appointed by President Donald Trump as part of a 6-3 conservative majority.

The court is taking on a case about whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb. Mississippi is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but is not asking the court to overrule the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision confirming a woman’s right to an abortion, or a decision 19 years later that reaffirmed it. However, many still feel the case is a clear threat to abortion rights. Even if the court does not explicitly overrule earlier cases, a decision favorable to the state could lay the groundwork for allowing even more restrictions on abortion, including state bans on abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, as early as six weeks.

The case probably will be argued in the fall, with a decision likely in the spring of 2022. Mississippi’s ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus can survive outside her womb. The Supreme Court had previously turned down state appeals over provability abortion bans.

At least two people were killed and more than 150 injured after a bleacher collapsed at an uncompleted West Bank synagogue on Sunday, the eve of a major Jewish holiday. The bleacher was packed with ultra-Orthodox worshippers and collapsed during prayers at the beginning of Shavuot. Paramedics had treated more than 157 people for injuries and pronounced two dead, a man in his 50s and a 12-year-old boy. The collapse comes weeks after 45 ultra-Orthodox Jews were killed in a stampede at a religious festival in northern Israel.

Israeli military said in a statement that it dispatched medics and other search and rescue troops to assist at the scene, and army helicopters were airlifting the injured.

Shavuot is a spring harvest festival that also marks the day in the Jewish calendar on which the Torah was given to Moses on Mount Sinai. It is traditionally marked with all-night Torah study and the consumption of dairy.

A Union Pacific Railroad train derailed on Sunday in Sibley, Iowa due to a bridge collapse. No one was reported as injured, though evacuations were ordered in a 5-mile radius around the scene of the derailment. In addition, emergency personnel blocked all waterways near the derailment.

Sibley is in the far northwestern corner of Iowa, about 200 miles northwest of Des Moines. Parts of the 3,000-population town were evacuated. Aerial video of the scene showed dozens of train cars in a heap, in flames, the smoke rising from the front. The train was hauling fertilizer and ammonium nitrate.

Residents not evacuating were encouraged to open their windows on both sides and position themselves in the middle of their homes as a “preventative safety measure in case one of the rail cars on fire explodes.”