A singer who performed in front of a “mixed audience” of men and women was lashed 39 times to make him “repent,” after a ruling by a self-described rabbinic court on Wednesday.
Rabbi Amnon Yitzhak, founder of the Shofar organization aimed at bringing Jews “back to religion” (hazara betshuva), has made it his recent mission to fight against musical performances for both men and women.
‘Sinner’ singer given 39 lashes by rabbis
Obama could kill fossil fuels overnight with a nuclear dash for thorium
If
We could then stop arguing about wind mills, deepwater drilling, IPCC hockey sticks, or strategic reliance on the Kremlin. History will move on fast.
20,000 Iraq war victims unidentified at morgue
On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.
150 academics, artists back Israeli actors' boycott of settlement arts center
Last week nearly 60 theater professionals announced they would refuse to perform at new cultural center built in West Bank settlement of Ariel.The actors' boycott of the new Ariel cultural center received a boost yesterday with over 150 academics and several dozen authors and artists signing letters in their support.
In the academics' letter, released yesterday, over 150 faculty members from universities across the country vowed not to lecture or participate in any discussions in settlements, and voiced support for the theater artists who have said they would refuse to perform in the West Bank city. "We will not take part in any kind of cultural activity beyond the Green Line, take part in discussions and seminars, or lecture in any kind of academic setting in these settlements," the academics wrote.
Marijuana Eases Chronic Pain, Researchers Say
Smoking marijuana modestly reduced pain and other symptoms of chronic neuropathic pain, results of a small randomized, placebo-controlled trial showed. The most potent dose used reduced average daily pain scores by 0.7 points on an 11-point scale (5.4 versus 6.1 with placebo, 95% confidence interval for difference 0.02 to 1.4), according to Mark A. Ware, MBBS, of McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues.
Those who smoked weed with 9.4% of the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol THC) also reported sleeping better, the researchers reported online in CMAJ.These results are important in light of the fact that patients who hear about pain relief from ongoing publicity about medical marijuana have had only a "trickle" of evidence to prove it, explained Henry J. McQuay, DM, of Oxford University, in an accompanying editorial.
For Iraqis, Victims of War Are So Much More Than Numbers
On the charts that the American military provides, those numbers are seen as success, from nearly 4,000 dead in one month in 2006 to the few hundred today. The Interior Ministry offers its own toll of war — 72,124 since 2003, a number too precise to be true. At the morgue, more than 20,000 of the dead, which even sober estimates suggest total 100,000 or more, are still unidentified.
This number had a name, though. No. 5061 was Muhammad Jassem Bouhan al-Izzawi, father, son and brother. At 9 a.m., on that Sunday, Aug. 15, his family left the morgue in a white Nissan and set out to find his body in a city torn between remembering and forgetting, where death haunts a country neither at war nor peace.
Civil liberties groups challenge constitutionality of secret U.S. program to target terror suspects for killing
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the U.S. government's authority to target and kill U.S. citizens outside of war zones when they are suspected of involvement in terrorism.
The civil liberties groups sued in U.S. District Court in Washington after being retained by the father of Anwar al-Aulaqi, a radical U.S.-born cleric who is in hiding in Yemen.
Report: Warnings about e-mails went unheeded in Bush White House
Top aides to President George W. Bush seemed unconcerned amid multiple warnings as early as 2002 that the White House risked losing millions of e-mails that federal law required them to preserve, according to an extensive review of records set for release Monday.
The review, conducted by the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, follows a settlement reached last December between President Obama's administration, CREW and the National Security Archive, a George Washington University research institute. The groups sued the Bush White House in 2007, alleging it violated federal law by not preserving millions of e-mails sent between 2003 and 2005.
Questions loom over drug given to sleepless vets
Andrew White returned from a nine-month tour in Iraq beset with signs of post-traumatic stress disorder: insomnia, nightmares, constant restlessness. Doctors tried to ease his symptoms using three psychiatric drugs, including a potent anti-pyschotic called Seroquel.
Thousands of soldiers suffering from PTSD have received the same medication over the last nine years, helping to make Seroquel one of the Veteran Affairs Department's top drug expenditures and the No. 5 best-selling drug in the nation.
Several soldiers and veterans have died while taking the pills, raising concerns among some military families that the government is not being up front about the drug's risks. They want Congress to investigate.
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