Controversial Latino groups, including the National Council of La Raza, were granted virtual veto power over the immigration bill hammered out yesterday by Senate Republicans, Democrats and the White House, the Washington Post reported.
A number of prominent Republicans have rejected the bill – which still has not been issued in its final form – as "amnesty" for millions of people who came to the U.S. illegally.
The National Council of La Raza, or "The Race," was condemned last year by Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., as a radical "pro-illegal immigration lobbying organization that supports racist groups calling for the secession of the western United States as a Hispanic-only homeland."
Norwood, writing in Human Events, called on La Raza to renounce its support of the campus group MEChA – Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees "The Race" as part of a transnational ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.
(Story continues below)
As WND reported, Norwood said last year the National Council of La Raza campaigned hard against a plan to provide funding, training and resources ...   more »

ST. LOUIS, May 21 (UPI) -- U.S. medical researchers have reported the discovery of a virus that's linked with unexplained respiratory infections.
The Washington University School of Medicine researchers, led by David Wang, said clinicians can typically use a patient's symptoms to determine a virus is the likely culprit in a respiratory infection. But, even with advanced testing, they can't pin the blame on a particular virus in roughly one-third of all such infections.
Scientists can't yet prove the new virus, known as the WU virus, is making patients sick. But Wang has started follow-up studies.
"We've completed the first step required to link the WU virus to disease," said Wang, an assistant professor of molecular microbiology. "First, you have to detect the potential pathogen in someone who's sick. Then you have to develop a way to grow the new micro-organism in the laboratory. Finally, you have to show that you can make an animal model sick by exposing it to the micro-organism."
The research appeared in journal PLoS Pathogens.
Original Source

   more »

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates —
The U.S. Navy staged its latest show of military force off the Iranian coastline on Wednesday, sending two aircraft carriers and landing ships packed with 17,000 U.S. Marines and sailors to carry out unannounced exercises in the Persian Gulf.
The carrier strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes landing ships carrying members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
The Navy said nine U.S. warships passed through the narrow Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. Merchant ships passing through the busy strait carry two-fifths of the world's oil exports.
• Monitor the nuclear showdown in FOXNews.com's Iran Center.
Aircraft aboard the three carriers and the Bonhomme Richard were to conduct air training while the ships ran submarine, mine and other exercises.
The maneuvers came just two months after a previous exercise in March when two U.S. carrier groups carried out two days of air and sea maneuvers off the Iranian coast.
Before the arrival of the Bonhomme Richard strike group, the Navy maintained around 20,000 U.S personnel at sea in the Gulf and neighboring waters....   more »

by Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky
A thousand years after Shavuot, the Jews willingly reaffirmed their commitment to Torah. Why the need for two acceptances?
Revelation of the Torah at Mount Sinai is the cornerstone of faith upon which all of Judaism rests. As Maimonides ("Foundations of the Torah" 8:1) points out, revelation is not simply a proof of faith but the perception of the Divine in the most direct way possible. While other miracles served to prove Divine existence, revelation was the experience of the Divine itself. For one brief moment, the curtains of concealment were parted, letting in the rays of the Divine in all its brightness.
Yet, strangely enough, our Sages tell us that the experience of revelation at Sinai was somehow not the ultimate in acceptance of God's dominion. The Talmud (Shabbat 82) tells us that at Sinai "the mountain was poised over the Jews like a barrel." The Jews were forced into accepting the Torah.
It was not until the miracle of Purim, a thousand years later, that the Jews willingly reaffirmed their commitment to Torah. It seems strange that the Jews had to be forced to accept the Torah after they beheld and experienced the Divine ...   more »