An extreme left-wing Israeli "peace" group plans to send realistic-looking fake Palestinian passports to some 70,000 Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (the so-called "West Bank") next week.
Officials with the group "One House" said the shock tactic is being employed to wake Jewish settlers up to reality that they will soon be living under the Palestinian Authority if they do not return to sovereign Israel of their own volition.
Tellingly, the green faux passports created by the group feature a map of all the Land of Israel under the heading "Palestinian National Authority."
The One House organization is led by leftist Israeli lawmaker Avshalom Vilan (Meretz). It's flagship program offers financial assistance to any settler who is willing to voluntarily quit Israel's biblical heartland and return inside the internationally-recognized "Green Line."
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By David Brinn    
Dr. Silvia Mandel: In the past, it was thought that once brain cells were damaged, there was no way to repair them. The major question is whether these promising results are reproducible in humans. 
Natural Israeli remedy holds out hope for diabetes sufferers
   The old British adage - 'have a cuppa tea' - has gained some powerful backing as a cure for life's ailments, thanks to the results of an Israeli study.
Researchers at the Technion Institute of Science in Haifa have shown that feeding green tea extract to mice with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease protects brain cells from dying, and helps 'rescue' already damaged neurons in the brain.
Numerous studies around the world have suggested that drinking tea may help support the brain as people get older. Tea consumption is inversely correlated with the incidence of dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, which may help to explain why there are significantly lower incidence rates of age-related neurological disorders among Asians than in Europeans or Americans.
But, according to Dr. Silvia Mandel of the Technion's Eve Topf Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, the study she led was one of the first to show how the main ...   more »

Shows map of Israel covered by Palestinian flag
by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook
As preparations for the American peace conference continue, the leaders of the Palestinian Authority have announced their demands for a future Palestinian state with an area of 6205 square kilometers. This would include the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. However, the message they have conveyed to their people for years, and continue to convey on the eve of the conference, is that "Palestine" exists and it replaces all of Israel.  
A clip broadcast by Fatah-controlled Palestinian television this week shows a map in which Israel is painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag, symbolizing Israel turned into a Palestinian state.
The description of all the state of Israel as "Palestine" is not coincidental and is part of a formal educational approach throughout the Palestinian Authority. This uniform message of a world without Israel is repeated in school books, children's programs, crossword puzzles, video clips, formal symbols, school and street names, etc. The picture painted for the Palestinian population, both verbally and visually, is of a world without Israel.
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VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Monday that the United States will risk God's wrath if it forces Israel to surrender part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
"He that touches Jerusalem touches the apple of God's eye," Robertson said on "The 700 Club," the daily religious news-and-talk television program he hosts from his Christian Broadcasting Network.
"And if we decide we're going to wrest East Jerusalem away from the Jews and give it over to the Palestinians, we're risking the wrath of God on this nation, and I think it's very dangerous," Robertson said.
Robertson made the remarks after watching a CBN news segment about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting Monday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Rice said the creation of a Palestinian state is a top U.S. interest. Also Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert hinted that he is ready to share control of Jerusalem, saying for the first time that Israel could do without controlling some of the holy city's outlying Arab neighborhoods.
Robertson triggered outrage last year by suggesting that former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was God's punishment for ordering Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. Robertson later apologized.
In August 2005, Robertson was ...   more »

By Lou Dobbs
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Diehard GOP faithful, the dwindling number of Bush loyalists and political pundits of every stripe and medium seem obsessed these days with defining or discerning the "legacy of George W. Bush."
Lou Dobbs says President Bush has diminished a great nation and may diminish it further.
 Frankly, I spend more time worrying about whether or not the United States can survive the remaining 15 months of his ebbing presidency.
There is little mystery about what future historians will consider to be the legacy of the 43rd president of the United States. Those historians are certain to describe the first presidential administration of the 21st century with terms such as dissipation and perversion.
Bush campaigned for the Republican Party's nomination eight years ago, styling himself as a compassionate conservative. He's amply demonstrated that he is neither.
Although many conservatives refuse to accept the reality, George W. Bush is a one-world neo-liberal who drove budget and trade deficits to record heights while embracing faith-based economic policies that perversely require only blind allegiance to free markets and free trade, without regard for consequence.
This president pursues a war without demanding of his generals either success or ...   more »

  
Linking ammo, weapon it was fired from is goal
By James P. Sweeney and Michael Gardner
SACRAMENTO – Delivering a top priority of the gun-control movement, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation yesterday requiring that new models of semiautomatic handguns sold in California be able to stamp identifying serial numbers on shell casings.
In a surprise move, he also signed a bill banning lead ammunition in the sprawling range of the endangered California condor.
The handgun-ID law will enable police to link spent shells to the gun that fired them, and could make California a testing ground for the process known as “microstamping.”
No other state or nation uses the technology, which etches codes on internal gun components such as firing pins that stamp the numbers on shell casings when they are fired.
“While I appreciate and understand that this technology is not without limitations, I am signing this bill to provide law enforcement with an additional tool for solving crimes,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “I encourage all stakeholders to work on improving this technology.”
Sam Paredes of the Gun Owners of California said Schwarzenegger may have become “the most anti-gun governor in California history.”
Paredes noted that Schwarzenegger, ...   more »

By  Renee Boucher Ferguson
It's illegal now for California employers to force anyone to have an RFID device implanted under his or her skin as a condition of receiving something—such as a paycheck or government benefits.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 362 on Oct. 15, prohibiting the forced implantation of RFID (radio-frequency identification) chips. The bill, authored by state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), will go into effect on Jan. 1, 2008.
The anti-tagging bill, now a law, is not the first piece of privacy-based RFID legislation authored by Simitian to pass the governor's desk. A little more than a year ago Gov. Schwarzenegger quietly vetoed SB 768, also known as the Identity Information and Protection Act of 2006, which would regulate the use of RFID in state and local documents.
At the time, the bill was thought by many to be a call for other states to enact similar legislation. But when that effort failed, so did the hopes that California's actions would spur additional state legislatures to address RFID-related privacy concerns.
In the wake of the 2006 veto, Simitian took the next feasible step. He broke the Identity Information and Protection Act into smaller bits and shipped ...   more »

CDC: More than 90,000 get potentially deadly "superbug" infections annually
The incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people
Prevention methods include curbing the overuse of antibiotics
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ.
Deaths tied to these infections may exceed those caused by AIDS, said one public health expert commenting on the new study. The report shows just how far one form of the staph germ has spread beyond its traditional hospital setting.
The overall incidence rate was about 32 invasive infections per 100,000 people. That's an "astounding" figure, said an editorial in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, which published the study.
Most drug-resistant staph cases are mild skin infections. But this study focused on invasive infections -- those that enter the bloodstream or destroy flesh and can turn deadly.
Researchers found that only about one-quarter involved hospitalized patients. However, more than half were in the health care system -- people who had recently had surgery or were on kidney dialysis, for example. Open wounds and exposure ...   more »

By Maggie Fox,
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two drug-resistant "superbugs" are becoming more common across the United States including one that causes hard-to-treat ear infections in children, researchers reported on Tuesday.
Another, called methicillin-resistant staph aureus or MRSA, killed an estimated 19,000 Americans in 2005 and made 94,000 seriously ill, according to one report in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Michael Pichichero and Dr. Janet Casey, both of the University of Rochester and Legacy Pediatrics, their practice in New York, found a new type of drug-resistant cases of Streptococcus pneumoniae in children with ear infections.
Five of those children had to be treated with an antibiotic approved only for adults because children's drugs were not strong enough to kill it.
The pediatricians said doctors could help prevent the ear infection problem by performing an old-fashioned, low-tech procedure called an ear tap, which can be used to both diagnose and sometimes treat the infections.
And both reports suggest that doctors and hospitals are not following guidelines for controlling bacterial infections.
Pichichero and Casey treated middle ear infections in 1,816 children and performed ear taps on 212 of them. This involves punching a hole in the eardrum to remove fluid ...   more »

5 Cheshvan 5768, 17 October 07 09:35by Hillel Fendel(IsraelNN.com) The Patzael region in the central Jordan Valley, just 20 kilometers north of Jericho, was touched by a small earthquake on Saturday night, registering 3.0 on the Richter scale.  A similar quake occurred in the same area two months ago.
On Sunday morning, researchers at Tel Aviv University presented a new study on the timeline of earthquakes throughout history.  No precise future earthquake dates can be extrapolated from the data, but the researchers say one is on the way - as no major quake has hit the danger area between the Dead Sea and the Kinneret in centuries.
"It's like the first winter rain," said Dr. Shmuel Marko, who took part in the study. "The longer the dry summer lasts, the closer the first rain is.  Here, as well: The quiet is worrisome.  The longer we go without a large quake, the more we can expect one."
On the other hand, experts have said that Israel's earthquakes are in general less frequent than those in other quake-prone regions such as California, Japan and Turkey. 
Israel is located along the Syria-Africa rift, a friction point between two subterranean plates and is therefore ...   more »

An Israeli mission to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in the Gaza Strip is inevitable, an Israeli official said Monday.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Israel should conduct a mission similar to the country's Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank, which occurred in the spring of 2002.
Lieberman also advised Rice not to pressure Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to take steps that would cause the downfall of the Israeli government.
"In the current political conditions, the government cannot allow itself to make controversial decisions on sensitive issues," Lieberman told Rice. "The conference planned for Annapolis is a mistake. It will be just another conference and just another document. Without a noticeable improvement in Israeli security or Palestinian economic conditions, the conference will not be different than any of the unsuccessful conferences of the past."
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Leaders slam Olmert for 'willingness to divide Judaism's capital'
By Aaron Klein
Israel rabbis meeting yesterday in Tel Aviv
TEL AVIV – A group of hundreds of prominent Israeli rabbis yesterday called on Jews worldwide to speak out against what rabbinic leaders called the "crime of dividing Jerusalem as proposed by the current Israeli government."
The move follows a flurry of media reports that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is contemplating handing over sections of Jerusalem to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization.
Yesterday Olmert hinted he would be willing to divide Jerusalem, asking during a speech whether it was "really necessary" to retain certain Arab neighborhoods in Judaism's capital.
At a Tel Aviv press conference yesterday, leaders of the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 350 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis, including some of Israel's most prominent Jewish leaders, urged Jews worldwide to speak out.
"We must scream and protest not only to go through the motions, but maybe our protest will bring another one in its chain and awaken the public," said RCP leader Rabbi David Drukman, the rabbinic leader of the Kiryat Motzkin Israeli community.
"It pains us to see that there is ...   more »

By Aaron Klein
JERUSALEM – The evacuation the past few days of five makeshift Jewish communities in the West Bank was micromanaged behind the scenes by the U.S. government, WND has learned.
Israeli police, backed by the Israel Defense Forces, clashed in recent days with Jewish activists and West Bank Jewish residents while destroying the five small outposts the government deemed illegal, because construction was not coordinated with proper housing authorities. The outposts, erected alongside existing legal West Bank Jewish communities, were first built Sept. 30, during the Jewish Succot holiday.
Israel strictly enforces regulations against Jewish building in the West Bank while hundreds of thousands of illegal Palestinian outposts have been constructed the past few years. That includes massive apartment complexes and refugee camps on hundreds of acres of land in Jerusalem owned by the Jewish National Fund, a Jewish nonprofit that uses donor funds to purchase property for Jewish settlement.
Four of the five new makeshift West Bank Jewish communities were evacuated by Israeli forces last week. Meanwhile, police are still struggling to uproot the final outpost, named Shvut Ami, Hebrew for "Return of My People." Activists and police authorities clashed yesterday at the community, located near the ...   more »