Politics

Happy-Target Tours to the 'Holy Land'

Muslim Fires on Tourists in Israel
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - A gunman trying to infiltrate an Israeli border crossing from Jordan fired on a crowd of tourists Wednesday, wounding five Ecuadoreans, officials said. The assailant was shot dead. The shooting occurred at the Rabin terminal, an open-air checkpoint near Eilat, a Red Sea tourist town on Israel's southern tip, next to the Jordanian resort of Aqaba. The military said the attacker leapt from the back of a truck and fired on a crowd that included foreign tourists before he was shot dead by security personnel. All five of the wounded tourists were from Ecuador, said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jill Reinach.

Massachusetts Governor Vows Constitutional
Amendment to Preserve Marriage Institution
In its 4-3 decision, the Supreme Judicial Court gave the Legislature 180 days to rewrite the state's marriage laws for the benefit of gay couples. Gov. Mitt Romney and other state lawmakers vowed to push for the constitutional amendment. Following similar court rulings, Hawaii and Alaska "made these kind of constitutional amendments, and I think we have to do the same thing to preserve the institution," Romney said Wednesday on NBC's "Today" show. An amendment could go before voters in Massachusetts as early as 2006 if it won approval by the end of the 2003-2004 legislative session. (Lev.20:13)

U.S. to Test 'Mother of All Bombs' on Florida
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military plans this week to conduct its final developmental test on the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in its arsenal, a weapon so big it is dubbed the "mother of all bombs," the Air Force said on Tuesday. The Air Force plans to detonate a 21,700-pound satellite-guided GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb, or MOAB, on Thursday at Eglin Air Force Base in the panhandle of northwestern Florida, said Jake Swinson, a spokesman for the Air Armament Center at the base.

Report: Democrats Targeted For Soft Money
WASHINGTON, Nov. -- Top Republicans are aggressively questioning the legality of a host of newly created Democratic soft money organizations, reports The Hill newspaper. This has caused alarm among lobbyists and Democratic lawmakers, who accuse the GOP of having launched a partisan witch hunt. The Democrats are angry that Republicans have asked six Democratic fundraising groups to testify before the House Administration Committee.

New Interest Groups At-A-Glance
Among new groups that can collect soft money -- contributions from corporations, unions in any size and unlimited donations from any source.

NIH Launches First Human Trial of Ebola Vaccine
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Tuesday announced the start of the first human trial of a vaccine for Ebola virus infection, a currently untreatable disease that kills most of its victims. The vaccine, a version of which protected monkeys from the virus in a previous trial, will be tested for safety and for its effects on the immune system, according to a news release from the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). A volunteer at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md., received the first injection in the trial. The announcement of the trial comes a day after the World Health Organization reported 11 cases of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in the Congo.

The Fallacy Of Vaccination
By John Pitcairn / Anti-Vaccination League of America
Vaccination is the putting of an impure thing into the blood - a virus or poison -- often resulting in serious evil effects. In vogue for more than one hundred years, it has been received by most persons without question. Yet the time is passing when people will accept a medical dogma on blind faith; they now demand to know something about the practices to which they are called on to submit. And most insistent of all should be the demand to know something of a practice which, like vaccination, involves the risk of disease and of possible death.

Posted by Editor at November 19, 2003 11:36 AM