SAFED CHIEF RABBI CALLS ON STATE TO EXACT 'REVENGE' AGAINST ARABS
March 26, 2008 Ha`aretz reported: "The chief rabbi of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, is calling on the government to carry out "state- sanctioned revenge" against Arabs in order to, in his words, restore Israel's deterrence. The Musawa Center for Arab Rights in Israel said it planned to urge the Attorney General to censure Eliyahu over the comments and punish him "at the fullest severity of the law." In a piece penned for this upcoming weekend's edition of the newsletter "Eretz Yisrael Shelanu," Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu wrote: "It's time to call the child by its name: Revenge, revenge, revenge. We mustn't forget. We have to take horrible revenge for the terrorist attack at Mercaz Harav yeshiva," referring to the incident in which eight students were killed earlier this month. "I'm not talking about individual people in particular, I'm talking about the state," Eliyahu wrote. "[The state] has to pain them to the point where they scream 'Enough,' to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream 'help.' Not for the sake of satisfying the need for revenge but for the purposes of deterrence." In the newsletter, which was distributed to synagogues around the country, Eliyahu proposes "hanging the children of the terrorist who carried out the attack in the Mercaz Harav yeshiva from a tree." "Two weeks have passed since the attack and we haven't heard of any retaliatory operations by Israel," the Safed chief rabbi wrote. "Something is amiss among the decision makers at the top. At one time, this was a basic component of Israel's policy. Every operation by the 'fedayeen' - the prior name used to describe terrorists - would bring a painful response. Today, they have forgotten the meaning of 'deterrence force'. The IDF's capacity for deterrence is gone."

MUSLIMS 'TO OUTNUMBER TRADITIONAL CHURCHGOERS'
March 26, 2008 The London Daily Telegraph reported: "The increasing influence of Islam on British culture is disclosed in research today that shows the number of Muslims worshipping at mosques in England and Wales will outstrip the numbers of Roman Catholics going to church in little more than a decade. Projections to be published next month estimate that, if trends continue, the number of Catholic worshippers at Sunday Mass will fall to 679,000 by 2020. By that time, statisticians predict, the number of Muslims praying in mosques on Fridays will have increased to 683,000. The Christian Research figures also suggest that, over the same period, the number of Muslims at mosques will overtake Church of England members at Sunday services. Church spokesmen point out, however, that a growing number of Anglicans worship at other times of the week. The projections show that, if the Churches do not reverse their historical decline, there will be more active Muslims than Christians in Sunday services across Britain before the middle of the century. The figures, based on Government and academic sources and the latest edition of Christian Research's Religious Trends, come amid growing tensions over the place of Muslims in British society... Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, provoked criticism by saying the introduction of some aspects of sharia into British society was "unavoidable". The Bishop of Rochester, the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, faced death threats after writing in The Sunday Telegraph that Islamic extremism was turning some communities into "no-go" areas "where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability". Peter Brierley, a former Government statistician who edited the latest Religious Trends, said that the continuing growth of the Muslim population since the 2001 census would have significant implications for society." SUPERBUGS 'CAUSE 10,000 HOSPITAL DEATHS EVERY YEAR' March 25, 2008 The London Daily Telegraph reported: "Two superbugs are causing the deaths of more than 10,000 hospital patients every year, an expert has disclosed. The number of deaths from MRSA and clostridium difficile is being underestimated by about 20 per cent, one of the country's leading authorities on superbugs has said. Official figures put the number of deaths from the two infections at about 8,000 a year. Mark Enright, a professor of molecular epidemiology at London's Imperial College, said the number of deaths from MRSA and c.diff was significantly higher. "I think it is at least 10,000 a year," he said. "A lot of people are never tested for these infections and their deaths are put down to something else." Nearly 10 people are dying every day from c.diff, according to official figures, with even more dying from MRSA. In 2006, c.diff was recorded as the underlying cause of death for 3,490 people - a 69 per cent increase on the previous year. The leap followed a Department of Health order that doctors must note healthcare-acquired infections on death certificates. The edict followed numerous cases in which coroners found that doctors did not record superbugs as the cause of death on death certificates. Hugh Pennington, professor emeritus of microbiology at Aberdeen University, said Prof Enright was right to say that figures based on death certificates still underestimated the problem. He said: "They are very inaccurate evidence at the best of times. They are an underestimate of the problem; they are certainly not an overestimate." He said there was a "reluctance" to mention MRSA or c.diff because of the pressure to hit targets for reducing hospital-acquired infections, and to avoid potentially costly legal actions."

SARKOZY CALLS ON BRITAIN TO PLAY GREATER ROLE IN EUROPE
March 27, 2008 The EU Observer reported: "On the first day of his state visit to Britain, French president Nicolas Sarkozy called for closer Franco-British ties and for the UK to take its full place in Europe in order to bring along necessary changes to the bloc. In a speech on Wednesday (26 March) to the joint houses of UK parliament, the French president said he wanted to "write a new page of our common history, that of Franco-British fraternity, a fraternity for the 21st century." "I have always believed that Europe needed the UK. I have never reduced France's European policies simply to our relations with the Germans. The Paris-Berlin axis is at the essence, but it is not enough, and I have never ceased wanting to work in close cooperation with London," he later told BBC radio. In addition, as the president of a state which rejected the draft European Constitution in 2005, Mr Sarkozy said he had understood the main message of the French and more generally the European citizens at that time - that they wanted a "different Europe". But in order to make this happen, London should take its full place in Europe, he said. "So, I want to say to the British: help us build this different Europe. But for this Europe to be different, you must be part of it," he said. "Who could imagine that we can build a Europe of the future without Britain and who could imagine that Britain could live, survive alone, outside of Europe? One cannot succeed alone, we need others," he added. In particular, the French president noted, joint efforts are needed to keep the European economy competitive, to boost a common defence policy, as well as to tackle immigration. Mr Sarkozy, who is seen as the most Anglophile French president in the country's modern history, will today meet UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to also discuss cooperation on nuclear power development and climate change. In addition, both leaders are expected to make a call on financial markets to be more transparent, following the recent global credit crisis."

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