PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) — The U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services says she doesn’t want to intervene in transplant decisions about a dying Pennsylvania girl when other children are just as sick.

Kathleen Sebelius says medical experts should make those decisions.

But relatives of 10-year-old Sarah Murnaghan say they want the policy changed for all children awaiting a lung transplant, not just Sarah.

Sarah’s aunt Sharon Ruddock says older children should be eligible for adult lungs because so few pediatric lungs are available.

She says that would add just 20 children to the 1,600 people on the adult waiting list.

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http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2013/06/04/sebelius-i-cant-step-into-girls-transplant-case/

A group of 101 yeshiva students and their eight accompanying chaperones were asked to remove themselves from an airplane which was scheduled to fly from New York to Atlanta Monday morning, CNN reported.

Southwest Airlines reportedly said the group of "non-compliant passengers" would not remain seated or stop using their mobile devices. According to CNN, once the students failed to comply, they were asked to leave the aircraft. The dispute caused the flight to be delayed 45 minutes, Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins told CNN.

The group from Yeshivah of Flatbush, an Orthodox Jewish high school in Brooklyn, apparently said the flight crew overreacted to the excitement of the students who were looking forward to their school trip which included a day at Six Flags theme park, said CNN.

"It blew out of proportion. It was a mountain out of a molehill," a teacher and chaperone of the school trip Marian Wielgus reportedly told CNN.

According to Wielgus, the students were asked more than once to sit and shut off their mobile telephones, and the requests were adhered to.

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http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/NY-Airline-kicks-101-yeshiva-students-off-airplane-315368

When the Senate voted 99-0 two weeks ago to support Israel if the Jewish State is compelled to take military action in self-defense against Iran's nuclear weapons program, people wondered who the mystery anti-Israel senator was who did not vote.

They were surprised to find out that it was New Jersey Democrat Frank Lautenberg, who would normally have been the first senator to back such a resolution. But he was hospitalized due to the viral pneumonia from which he died Monday at age 89.

Knowing Frank personally, it probably killed him that he missed that vote. I saw his love of Israel first-hand on his frequent visits here in my role as Israel correspondent for the New Jersey Jewish News.

Frank told me more than a decade ago that he had come here more than 80 times. He chaired the United Jewish Appeal, was president of the American Friends of Hebrew University, and donated the central park in a former Rishon Lezion slum 30 years ago that is now a relatively nice neighborhood.

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http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-News/Israel-loses-a-friend-in-Lautenberg-315397

JERUSALEM — Israel has reached an agreement to send thousands of African migrants to an unidentified country, according to a court document obtained Monday, a plan that has elicited criticism over its potential harm to the migrants.

The plan, if implemented, is an attempt to address one of Israel's more pressing issues: what to do with an influx of roughly 60,000 African migrants who have sneaked into Israel from Egypt over the past eight years.

Their arrivals have put Israel in a bind. Many Israelis believe that the Jewish state, founded in part as a refuge for Holocaust survivors after World War II, has a responsibility to help the downtrodden. But others fear that taking in tens of thousands of Africans will threaten the country's Jewish character and question the extent of Israel's moral obligations beyond those of other nations.

Most of the migrants have come from Eritrea or Sudan, some fleeing repressive regimes and others looking for work.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/israel-deportations-migrants-sent-unknown-african-state_n_3377820.html?israel

NOTE: Since there is not one mention of Palestinians in this article, this should not be hidden in the I/P gutter understanding of course that rarely matters.

I will repost if necessary if locked...I'm used to that.

AFP - The small US state of Connecticut became the first to pass legislation requiring food products with genetically modified ingredients to be labeled as such.

But the law, passed on Monday, will not go into effect until a number of other states in the northeastern region where Connecticut is located follow suit with similar legislation.

The legislation was strongly supported in a 134-3 vote in the state House of Representatives, making Connecticut the first of some two dozen states mulling GM foods labeling to pass a measure.

The bill had been passed by the Senate on Saturday.

The state's governor, Dannel Malloy, endorsed the legislation ahead of the vote, saying it "strikes an important balance by ensuring the consumers' right to know what is in their food while shielding our small businesses from liability that could leave them at a competitive disadvantage."

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http://www.france24.com/en/20130604-us-state-moves-regulate-gm-foods

AFP - Baghdad has warned Israel that it would respond to any attempts by the Jewish state to use Iraqi airspace for a strike against Iran's controversial nuclear programme, a top Iraqi minister told AFP.

The remarks from Hussein al-Shahristani, deputy prime minister responsible for energy affairs, mark the first time a senior Iraqi official has publicly warned Israel against entering its airspace -- the most direct route -- to hit targets in Iran.

Shahristani also said that Iraq had received assurances from Washington that the United States would not use its airspace to attack Iran, which Western powers believe is trying to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran has repeatedly denied the claim.

"The (Americans) have assured us that they will never violate Iraqi airspace or Iraqi sovereignty by using our airspace to attack any of our neighbours," Shahristani said in an interview in his office in Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone.

"We have also warned Israel that if they violate Iraqi airspace, they will have to bear the consequences."

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http://www.france24.com/en/20130603-iraq-warns-israel-using-airspace-iran-strike

'IF' israel or the US attack Iran...the lid blows off the 'pressure-cooker' in the middle-east and hang on to your economic asses...

TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie is cashing in donations from top Democratic fundraisers and other traditionally liberal donors across the country, even nabbing the support of a handful of rainmakers aligned with President Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Star-Ledger review of state and federal records shows.

The checks are flying into the Republican governor’s war chest from all sorts of unlikely places — the hedge fund run by liberal billionaire George Soros, for example, and the politically progressive halls of the University of California, Berkeley.

The nascent support from Democratic donors is an early sign of Christie’s fundraising prowess in a potential run for the White House in 2016, experts and Democratic donors said, and dovetails with recent polls showing him gaining popularity nationally among Democrats and independents.

Christie’s partnership with New Jersey Democratic leaders and his warm relationship with Obama after Hurricane Sandy could be enticing donors who don’t often give to GOP candidates, even if they are closer ideologically to Democrat Barbara Buono, Christie’s lesser-known challenger, political scientists and Democratic fundraisers say.

"While I do not agree with his stance on every issue, he is one of the best political leaders I have talked to in a long time," said Ken Rosen, a UC-Berkeley professor who cut a $3,800 check to Christie after chatting with him at two events. "He is willing to take on tough issues such as pension reform, education reform, mental-health issues, even if his views are not politically correct."

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http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/06/major_democratic_donors_flock.html

WASHINGTON - In his first address to an American Jewish audience as secretary of state on Monday, John Kerry made a passionate case for renewed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, calling on both sides to "summon the courage" to negotiate.

"We are running out of time," Kerry said. "We are running out of possibilities."

While reassuring the pro-Israel crowd that America would always support and defend the Jewish State, Kerry warned the American Jewish Committee that the status quo in the region was unsustainable.

"A stalemate today will not remain tomorrow," Kerry said. "In this conflict, the simple fact is tomorrow is not guaranteed to look like today."

"The people who think somehow because there is a fence and because there’s been greater security and fewer people hurt are lulling themselves into a delusion that that somehow can be sustained," Kerry added, in an allusion to what he referred to as "cynics" on the issue.

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http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Kerry-We-are-running-out-of-time-possibilities-for-peace-315352

Source: Miami Hearld/MCCLATCHY

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Israel’s military fumed Monday over the discovery that the U.S. government had revealed details of a top-secret Israeli military installation in published bid requests.

The Obama administration had promised to build Israel a state-of-the-art facility to house a new ballistic-missile defense system, the Arrow 3. As with all Defense Department projects, detailed specifications were made public so that contractors could bid on the $25 million project. The specifications included more than 1,000 pages of details on the facility, ranging from the heating and cooling systems to the thickness of the walls.

"If an enemy of Israel wanted to launch an attack against a facility, this would give him an easy how-to guide. This type of information is closely guarded and its release can jeopardize the entire facility," said an Israeli military official who commented on the publication of the proposal but declined to be named because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the facility. He declined to say whether plans for the facility have been altered as a result of the disclosure.

"This is more than worrying, it is shocking," he said.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Wesley Miller said he couldn’t comment on the specifics of the Arrow 3 base, but he said the United States routinely published the details of its construction plans on a federal business opportunities website so that contractors could estimate the costs of jobs. He said such postings often might be revised after contracts were approved.


Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/03/3431313/us-publishes-details-of-missile.html

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators have proposed that a group of firms that aren't banks be deemed potential threats to the financial system that need stricter government oversight.

American International Group Inc. says it is among the firms. The near-collapse of AIG in 2008 helped trigger the financial crisis and it received a $182 billion federal bailout that it has since repaid.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council on Monday didn't name the firms or say how many it wants to designate as so big and interconnected that their potential troubles could imperil the financial system.

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http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FINANCIAL_OVERHAUL_NONBANK_FIRMS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-06-03-19-30-49