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ERLANGEN, Germany, June 26, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A city court in Erlangen, Bavaria, gave Lutheran Pastor Johannes Lerle a one year jail sentence for the “crime” of comparing abortion to the Nazi holocaust. In response, Jim Hughes, Vice President of International Right to Life Federation has called on pro-life activists internationally to take action on the matter by contacting German authorities to demand freedom of speech and freedom of religion for the pastor (see contact information below story). Pastor Johannes Lerle compared the annual murder of 150,000 babies through abortion in Germany to the murder of thousands of innocent Jews...

Robot teachers for USA nursing institute By Thomas Claburn 7 June 2007 12:15 AEST General News Educators annoyed by the mental absence of gadget-engaged students now have their revenge: they can be physically absent while they teach. The Nursing Institute of West Central Ohio today said it would begin using the Remote Presence Robotic System (RP-7) to allow nursing faculty to teach from remote locations. Debi Sampsel, executive director of the institute, said in a statement that the RP-7 would help alleviate a shortage of nursing faculty. "As baby boomer nurses in education approach retirement, this technology will provide them...

Pharmed food crop approved for growth despite controversy.Rice modified to express proteins often found in breast milk will be planted in Kansas. It's certainly not the first crop designed to produce pharmaceutical proteins given the go-ahead in the United States or elsewhere (see 'Turning plants into protein factories'). But this is among the first food crops containing genes that produce human proteins to gain approval for large-scale planting. Many other pharmaceutical genetically-modified (GM) crops are grown indoors or in inedible plants such as tobacco. The rice strains, made by Ventria Bioscience in Sacramento, California, produce lysozyme, lactoferrin and human serum...

THE way was cleared today for scientists to conduct experiments using hybrid animal-human embryos after the UK Government bowed to a storm of protest from researchers who said a proposed ban could hurt British science. The Department of Health said it would accept a recommendation from the Commons Science and Technology Committee that inter-species embryos could be created for research. Scientists want to use the hybrid embryos to find cures for illnesses such as Parkinson's, stroke and Alzheimer's. In December, the Government had proposed a ban on creating the hybrid embryos, due to what it called "considerable public unease," with...

LONDON, April 27 (UPI) -- Two British couples want to use an embryo selection technique to eradicate a breast cancer gene that runs in their families. Scientists say screening for the defective BCRA1 gene would reduce the likelihood of cancer, The (London) Guardian reported Friday. The London Times said an application to test for the breast cancer gene was submitted Thursday by a doctor at University College Hospital. The newspaper said Britain's Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority has already agreed to it in principle. The application is expected to be approved within four months. The couples will have in vitro...

Women might soon be able to produce sperm in a development that could allow lesbian couples to have their own biological daughters, according to a pioneering study published today. Scientists are seeking ethical permission to produce synthetic sperm cells from a woman's bone marrow tissue after showing that it possible to produce rudimentary sperm cells from male bone-marrow tissue. The researchers said they had already produced early sperm cells from bone-marrow tissue taken from men. They believe the findings show that it may be possible to restore fertility to men who cannot naturally produce their own sperm. But the results...

For the millions of Americans whose vision is slowly ebbing due to degenerative diseases of the eye, the lowly neural progenitor cell may be riding to the rescue. In a study in rats, neural progenitor cells derived from human fetal stem cells have been shown to protect the vision of animals with degenerative eye disease similar to the kinds of diseases that afflict humans. The new study appears today (March 28) in the journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One. The lead author of the study, University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher David Gamm, says the cells - formative brain cells that...

LONDON, February 27, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The British government’s plans to ban the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos are over after a group of 45 scientists, ethicists and politicians published an open letter in January saying that a ban would hold back the advancement of British science.   The Times reports that the government is now dropping plans to ban the experiments and will instead offer funding for a public debate before new legislation is drafted.   The open letter, published in the Times in response to the government’s December 2006 announcement that it planned to draft legislation to ban...

The ad in the back pages of the free Washington, D.C., news weekly was curious enough, warning women that they or their loved ones could suffer from debilitating diseases like Parkinson's or cancer and inviting them to let their eggs "be part of the cure." But it's had reverberations 2,500 miles away where a debate in California is raging over how scientists can acquire the human eggs critical to stem cell research -- specifically, whether it is ethical or even legal to pay women thousands of dollars to provide them. The ad in the Jan. 3 issue of The Washington...

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCERhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/303306_joel12.html Peer into future after car ban -- it isn't prettyMonday, February 12, 2007By JOEL CONNELLYP-I COLUMNISTA longtime friend came up at a party last week, asking what it would take to get me on board the campaign that seeks to tear down the Alaskan Way Viaduct and not replace it.I cited a prediction by Department of Transportation boss Doug MacDonald that the "street option" would mean 12 hours of daily congestion on Interstate 5. "Good!" said my friend, once on the Seattle School Board. "Cars suck," added a woman chiming in on our exchange.Inspired by her persuasive depth,...

TOLLWAY giant Transurban is looking to expand its e-tag system to give customers cashless entry into Sydney car parks. Transurban will roll out an electronic tag toll system in Sydney similar to its Melbourne operation if it succeeds in its $1.26 billion takeover bid for Sydney Roads Group. The deal would leave Transurban in control of most of Sydney's roads, adding the M1 Eastern Distributor, the M4 and M5 to the M2 and M7 motorways it already operates. The acquisition would make Transurban the country's dominant toll road operator. It would use this base to deliver thousands of its e-tag...

A team of world-leading neuroscientists has developed a powerful technique that allows them to look deep inside a person's brain and read their intentions before they act. The team used high-resolution brain scans to identify patterns of activity before translating them into meaningful thoughts, revealing what a person planned to do in the near future. It is the first time scientists have succeeded in reading intentions in this way. ~snip~ The use of brain scanners to judge whether people are likely to commit crimes is a contentious issue that society should tackle now, according to Prof Haynes. "We see the...

OLYMPIA, Wash. - An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled. Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld Washington's ban on same-sex marriage. Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their...

The Justice Department is completing rules to allow the collection of DNA from most people arrested or detained by federal authorities, a vast expansion of DNA gathering that will include hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, by far the largest group affected. The new forensic DNA sampling was authorized by Congress in a little-noticed amendment to a January 2006 renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, which provides protections and assistance for victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by federal authorities, and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents. Over the...

No need for a father figure for IVF babies? The need for a child to have a father should be removed from the law governing fertility treatment, a government White Paper said today.  Clinics must still consider the welfare of any child born as a result of IVF or other fertility treatment but whether a father figure is present will no longer be necessary, under government proposals. Do children need a father figure? Tell us in reader comments belowThe move would make it easier for single women and lesbian couples to have children using donor sperm.  The Review of...

Gunshots ring out in a neighborhood, and law enforcement's first move is to pull up a computer screen to see whether the sound came from areas equipped with electronic devices that track the source of gunfire. Then a public safety employee keys up another monitor and uses Global Positioning System technology to identify the locations of the city's worst-known violent offenders -- to determine whether any of them are in the spot where the shots were fired. Such a brave new world is coming to Oakland -- and it seems likely that it will become a reality elsewhere in California...

State of Missouri General Election  - November 2006 - General Election Tuesday, November 07, 2006 Click here for a printer friendly version  Ballot Issue Name Votes    % Of Votes  Constitutional Amendment No. 2 - 2006    Precincts Reporting 3672 of 3734    Stem Cell Initiative Yes 1,059,202  51.1%   No 1,013,850  48.9% Total Votes

Stem-cell researchers have applied to produce an embryo using an animal’s egg and a human cell British scientists are to submit plans to create a hybrid embryo — part human, part cow. They are to develop a way of creating stem cells that does not require human eggs, but the application seems likely to be met with controversy. The team, from the University of Newcastle, would take a cow’s egg and remove the nucleus. They would then replace it with the nucleus of a cell taken from an adult human, such as a skin cell. The hybrid would be overwhelmingly...

A young woman has put her eggs for sale on the internet to pay off £15,000 of credit card debts. Alexandra Saunders posted her details on an American website after reading about the huge amount that can be made in a woman's magazine. The 26-year-old, who already has three jobs to try and pay off her debts, thought it would be an easy way to make money. It is illegal for a woman to sell her eggs within the UK but egg donation is big business in the US where childless couples pay up to £20,000 in exchange the...

Anand: Mark and Darcy Cornwall have come all the way from California because they couldn't afford not to. They've been trying to have a baby for the past five years and their last attempt ended in a miscarriage. On their first trip to India, they have found the woman who has agreed to carry their baby - a surrogate mother. 33-years-old and with three grown children, she knows the joys of motherhood. She also understands the pain of poverty. For her attempt to carry the Cornwalls' baby to maturity, she will be paid $5,000. Just like her there are so...