Congressional Budget Office bean counters are taking a fresh look at President Obama’s national health care law, and will have updated figures on key provisions in March, director Doug Elmendorf testified this week in Congress.

Though he stopped short of saying there would be a full re-scoring of the law.

Several factors could make the health care law significantly more costly than advertised at the time of passage in March 2010. For instance, the law was crafted in a way to delay enactment of the major spending provisions until 2014, to make the legislation appear cheaper under the CBO’s 10-year budget window (then 2010 to 2019).  Now, the budget window has moved up to 2022, meaning it takes into account an extra three years of full enactment.

When Elmendorf testified before the House Budget Committee on Wednesday, Rep. John Campbell, R-Calif., asked him out the cost estimates for Medicaid spending and health insurance exchange subsidies would be effected now that CBO’s long-term unemployment forecast has deteriorated. Campbell noted that at the time of its original estimate, CBO was expecting an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent in 2014, but now that’s projected to be 8.7 percent.

“That piece alone would raise the cost of the Affordable Care Act,” Elmendorf said, referring to the formal name for the legislation. “I don’t know by how much.”

Elmendorf said the CBO would update its estimates of the cost of coverage expansions under the health care law.

On Thursday, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., also pressed Elmendorf on health care cost estimates, arguing that the number of employers who would be dumping workers on government-run exchanges and simply paying a fine would be higher than originally projected.

Elmendorf responded that in addition to updating the coverage provisions for March, the CBO was working on a separate analysis that would contain a range of estimates about how the cost of the health care law would be affected if certain assumptions were wrong one way or the other.

The Republican presidential campaign of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney told CNSNews.com today that if elected Romney will rescind in its entirety a regulation finalized last month by the Obama administration that requires all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

The Obama administration’s final version of the regulation effectively exempted only an actual church—such as a Catholic parish—from the regulation, while insisting that it would be fully enforced on individuals, private business owners, non-religious private-sector organizations and insurers.

Romney published an op-ed in the Washington Examiner today in which he said he would eliminate the rule that compels “religious institutions” to purchase health-care plans that cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives. Romney did not say in the op-ed, however, whether he would eliminate the rule insofar as it applies to individuals, private-sector businesses, non-religious private-sector organizations and insurers.

“And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith,” Romney wrote in the Examiner. “Such rules don’t belong in the America that I believe in.”

Through his campaign press office, CNSNews.com asked Romney today via email about this: “Will Mitt Romney, on day one, rescind this mandate in its entirety—as the Catholic Church has urged the current administration to do—so that individuals, employers and insurers who have a ‘moral or religious objection to contraception or sterilization’ will not be forced to violate the tenets of their own faith or act against their consciences?”

Romney campaign spokesman Ryan Williams responded: “Yes–Governor Romney would rescind the mandate in its entirety.”

Some media reports have erroneously said that the U.S. Catholic bishops have simply asked the Obama administration to expand the religious exemption in the regulation so that it would cover religiously affiliated organizations such as Catholic hospitals, universities, and charitable organizations as well as Catholic parishes. In fact, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops informed the administration, in writing, in comments submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services, that the bishops believed the regulation in its entirety violated the First Amendment rights of individuals, employers and insurers and must to be rescinded in its entirety.

“First, we comment on the mandate that all health plans cover prescription contraceptives, sterilization, and related patient education and counseling,” the bishops told HHS. “This mandate, we submit, should be rescinded in its entirety.”

“[A]s applied to individuals and organizations with a religious objection to contraceptives, sterilization, and related counseling and education, the HHS mandate violates various protections under the Religion Clauses and Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (‘RFRA’) and the Administrative Procedure Act (‘APA’),” said the bishops.

“Second, we comment on the regulation’s religious exemption (‘HHS exemption’ or ‘the exemption’),” said the bishops. “The exemption provides no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization, who will experience burdens to conscience under this new mandate. Instead, it provides protection only to employers with similar objections, and even then to a very small subset of religious employers.”

“By failing to protect insurers, individuals, most employers, or any other stakeholders with a religious objection to such items and procedures, the HHS exemption, like the mandate itself, violates the First Amendment and the APA,” said the bishops.

“In sum,” they said, we urge HHS to rescind the mandate in its entirety.”

The Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity has reversed its decision to halt fundingof breast-screening grants to Planned Parenthood, the organization announced Friday.

In a statement, Komen for the Cure Founder and CEO Nancy Brinker apologized for “recent decisions” and said the organization would continue to fund Planned Parenthood. Brinker’s full statement is below, via the Dallas Morning News, which first broke the story:

We want to apologize to the American public for recent decisions that cast doubt upon our commitment to our mission of saving women’s lives.

The events of this week have been deeply unsettling for our supporters, partners and friends and all of us at Susan G. Komen. We have been distressed at the presumption that the changes made to our funding criteria were done for political reasons or to specifically penalize Planned Parenthood. They were not.

Our original desire was to fulfill our fiduciary duty to our donors by not funding grant applications made by organizations under investigation. We will amend the criteria to make clear that disqualifying investigations must be criminal and conclusive in nature and not political. That is what is right and fair.

Our only goal for our granting process is to support women and families in the fight against breast cancer. Amending our criteria will ensure that politics has no place in our grant process. We will continue to fund existing grants, including those of Planned Parenthood, and preserve their eligibility to apply for future grants, while maintaining the ability of our affiliates to make funding decisions that meet the needs of their communities.

It is our hope and we believe it is time for everyone involved to pause, slow down and reflect on how grants can most effectively and directly be administered without controversies that hurt the cause of women. We urge everyone who has participated in this conversation across the country over the last few days to help us move past this issue. We do not want our mission marred or affected by politics – anyone’s politics.

Starting this afternoon, we will have calls with our network and key supporters to refocus our attention on our mission and get back to doing our work. We ask for the public’s understanding and patience as we gather our Komen affiliates from around the country to determine how to move forward in the best interests of the women and people we serve.

We extend our deepest thanks for the outpouring of support we have received from so many in the past few days and we sincerely hope that these changes will be welcomed by those who have expressed their concern.

The reversal comes after days of intense backlash over Komen’s initial decision Tuesday. As The Blaze previously reported, the charity was accused of caving to anti-abortion activists opposed to funding Planned Parenthood because of the abortion services it provides.

According to the Associated Press, the grants that Planned Parenthood affiliates used for breast exams and related services totaled $680,000 last year. At least one top Komen official quit over the decision to halt funding, and 26 U.S. senators signed a letter urging the charity to reconsider.

The council for Baltimore County, Md., is working on a plan that would prevent “discrimination” cases that primarily involve men who dress as women and portray themselves as being female.

The idea gained notoriety as the “coed shower” plan when it was adopted several years ago in Montgomery County, Md., because of provisions that would allow men who dress as women to access women’s locker rooms, showers and restrooms.

Critics continue to call the formal adoption of such policies dangerous.

Bill 3-12 in Baltimore County, introduced and sponsored by four of the seven council members, takes aim at preventing discrimination against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression.

According to the bill, “gender identity or expression means a gender-related identity or appearance of an individual regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.”

Ruth Jacobs, president of Maryland Citizens for a Responsible Government, which maintains detailed information on the issue at notmyshower.com, says the bill’s definition amounts to “gender identity theft.”

“Many people believe that transgender people have had surgery to change their sex, but in most cases they haven’t,” she told WND. “I call them a fake female.”

According to the MCRG website, such bills “legally protect cross-dressers and transvestite behavior by forbidding discrimination against men who self-identify as women.”

“This dangerous Peeping Tom bill will allow cross-dressing men to enter women’s bathrooms and dressing rooms even if they are sexually attracted to women.”

MCRG says that a similar bill in the city of Baltimore at least has exemptions for “religious, educational and toilet facility settings,” but the Baltimore County bill it has dubbed the “Dangerous Peeping Tom Law” does not.

WND left messages with Baltimore County officials without response.

MCRG noted that since Montgomery County, Md., adopted the change, women have been raped in the restrooms at Montgomery Community College, Asbury nursing home, Pelican restaurant and the Bethesda Hyatt.

“Women are easily victimized and ladies’ bathrooms can be risky places when men have access,” Jacobs noted.

She also pointed out the outrage when a 48-year-old man went into a women’s locker room and was changing his clothes with little girls present.

Proponents of the Baltimore County bill appeared at a public hearing recently to affirm that men who portray themselves as women need protections regarding housing, employment, education, public accommodation and financing.

Ann Miller, a concerned citizen who attended the meeting and wrote several editorials on the topic, says that opponents to the bill expressed concerns over safety and privacy, and argued that “gender” is already a class protected from discrimination.

“The new bill creating a ‘gender identity’ class of people could potentially endanger one group (women) while seeking to protect another group,” Miller wrote.

Jacobs told WND that women “are extremely vulnerable under this proposed law.”

“Law enforcement will not be able to keep men out of changing rooms,” she said. “I can see women in a bathroom thinking, ‘There’s someone in here with a big Adam’s apple and hairy legs, and I’m scared. But if I say something, they’ll call me a bigot.’”

Another concerned citizen, Anita Shatz, told WND she fears that the bill is “open to interpretation.”

She said that supporters of the bill have tried to tell her that the it is mostly meant to protect cross-dressing on the job.

“I’ve called all the council members. One of them tried to win me over, by persuading me that transgender people are ‘very nurturing people,’” she said. “She actually told me I should be glad my granddaughters will be alone in the bathroom with these ‘nurturing’ people.’

“Nurturing sounds like a nice word, but if you look up the definition, it means educate, influence, win-over,” Shatz said.

WND reported in the Montgomery County, Md., case that the county’s policies now include a statement regarding gender that reads: “Gender identity means an individual’s actual or perceived gender including a person’s gender-related appearance, expression, image, identity or behavior, whether or not those gender-related characteristics differ from the characteristics customarily associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.”

The amended laws initiated a backlash because they allowed individuals with alleged “identity issues” the choice of whether to use men’s or women’s public facilities such as lockers and bathrooms, regardless of their gender. That means a woman who thinks she’s a man could use the men’s public restroom and vice versa.

MCRG also opposed that bill and wanted voters to have a say. It attempted to get the issue on a ballot through a petition drive.

As WND reported, the petition drive fell short when Maryland’s highest court allowed officials to raise the required number of petition signatures for a ballot issue – after the deadline for submitting names had passed – from 25,001 to 27,001.

Jacobs told WND, “We’re always told that we can’t discriminate. The bill in Baltimore County is one huge discrimination against women, against children, and against employers.

“Transgender persons need compassion and treatment, not laws sanctioning their illness.”

The website notmyshower.com says, “Gender Identity Disorder is a treatable mental illness.”

The Baltimore County Council has another public meeting regarding the bill Feb. 14, and then the council votes on it a week later. If it passes, it will become law 45 days later.

Opponents are already concerned that a similar bill will be pushed through the Maryland legislature this year.

Shatz told WND that the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Foundation held a conference in Baltimore last weekend called “Creating Change.”

The website claims that it is the nation’s premier organizing and skills building event for the lesbian, “gay,” bi-sexual and transgender community.

MCRG urges lawmakers to use caution when creating transgender laws.

“They open the door to teaching our children that gender is all in the mind, and depends on one’s perception,” MCRG states.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, adult stem cells — undifferentiated cells found in every human body that can transform into specialized cells with the medial potential to repair certain areas of the body damaged by disease or injury — fall under its jurisdiction for regulation as a drug.

The FDA states on its website:

Stem cells, like other medical products that are intended to treat, cure or prevent disease, generally require FDA approval before they can be marketed. At this time, there are no licensed stem cell treatments.

The Alliance for Natural Health states that the FDA has claimed in a legal conflict with a Colorado medical clinic, Centeno-Schultz, that a treatment it conducts using adult stem cells is under its regulatory jurisdiction. Centeno-Schultz’s Regenexx-SD is a non-surgical procedure to treat joint pain with adult stem cells by removing the stem cells from the patient’s blood and re-inserting them into the area needing treatment. No outside drugs are involved.

Since the stem cells are, as it says in FDA’s statement above, being used as a treatment, they are subject to regulation. ANH states that the FDA claims the authority to regulate because of interstate commerce:

The clinic is engaging in interstate commerce and is therefore subject to FDA regulation because any part of the machine or procedure that originates outside Colorado becomes interstate commerce once it enters the state. Moreover, interstate commerce is substantially affected because individuals traveling to Colorado to have the Regenexx procedure would “depress the market for out-of-state drugs that are approved by FDA.”

In its call for a summary judgement, the FDA expounds upon how under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) and the Commerce Clause it should be able to exert its regulatory authority over Centeno-Schultz’s procedure, which ANH reports it has been battling on this issue for several years. Here are a few snippets of the FDA’s argument from the case documents:

As we show below, the FDCA contains no “practice of medicine” exception that excuses Defendants’ conduct, and FDA’s exercise of jurisdiction over Defendants’ conduct is a permissible exercise of federal power under the Commerce Clause. Defendants’ remaining arguments are likewise without merit.

[...]

The Constitution grants Congress broad power to “regulate Commerce . . . among the several States,” U.S. Const., art. I, § 8, cl. 3. Congress may “regulate the channels of interstate commerce”; it may “regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, and persons or things in interstate commerce”; and it may “regulate activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”

[...]

In Raich, the Court sustained Congress’s authority to prohibit the possession of home-grown marijuana intended solely for personal use. 545 U.S. at 32-33. It was sufficient that the Controlled Substances Act “regulates the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities for which there is an established, and lucrative, interstate market.”

[...]

United States v. 9/1 Kg. Containers, 854 F.2d 173, 176 (7th Cir. 1988) (“Congress gave the FDA comprehensive powers to license the manufacture of drugs and limit their sales. To regulate drugs is to be ‘involved’ in the ‘practice of the healing arts.’”

SlashGear states that the next step is for the court to decide “whether or not something that resides in every human being can be subject to government intervention.”

As well as the tragedy for the individual and their families, suicides on the Tube can create hours of chaos and disruption for millions of other passengers.

So to try to get the transport network up and running as soon as possible bodies are often moved to a secure room within the station until they can be taken away by an undertaker.

The shocking revelation was made by London Underground staff on a new documentary about the Tube.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, several workers expressed their disgust at the practice.

One male member of the Tube’s Emergency Response Unit said leaving bodies in cupboards was very disrespectful.

He told Channel 4’s Confessions from the Underground: “As far as I understand it, London Ambulance services have limited resources and a few years back they stopped taking anybody who’s deceased into their ambulances back to hospitals.

“Sometimes there’s a delay, it might be half an hour, maybe even two hours and then we’re left with a body on the platform and disturbingly for us we have to find a place to put a body. “Unfortunately, we had to use, at Stratford, a bin store outside in the car park, you know the big, massive, industrial bins. Putting someone’s body in there, not in the bin, in with the bins, it’s not really respectful.

“However, do I keep the station shut until the coroner and his guys gets there and inconvenience the rest of London?”

Another female worker said many staff found it deeply distressing to know that bodies had been hidden from the public in cupboards.

She explained: “I know that we’ve got a store cupboard that we put the bodies in and there is one station supervisor who will not go in that cupboard at all.”

Another worker added: “We’ve even heard of situations where cleaners come down to get a mop or a bucket or whatever and there’s some poor unfortunate person’s body in there.”

A spokesman for London Underground explained workers were offered support and counselling should they need it.

The spokesman said: “Following agreed procedures, a body may be moved to a secure room within the station to await collection by undertakers. We believe our staff do a fantastic job in responding to such difficult circumstances and they are offered counselling support, if necessary.”

According to Italian press reports, based on interviews with prosecutors, she said she had fallen deeply for the skipper – despite him having a wife and a teenage daughter.

“I love him, and it’s not right to destroy his reputation,” Ms Cemortan allegedly told investigators. “Everyone is hammering him.”

Passengers have claimed they saw the Moldovan being wined and dined by Capt Schettino, 52, shortly before the accident happened at around 9.40pm on Jan 13.

Ms Cemortan confirmed to prosecutors that the captain had invited her up onto the bridge as his guest, to see the ship perform a ‘salute’ of the island of Giglio. “I was on the bridge,” she reportedly said.

The captain misjudged the manoeuvre, sailing to within 150 yards of the shore and smashing into a rocky shoal, ripping a huge gash in the hull.

He then grounded the 950ft-long vessel on a different part of Giglio’s coast and belatedly ordered the evacuation of its 4,200 passengers and crew.

The death toll stands at 17, with 15 people still missing, presumed dead.

Francesco Verusio, the chief prosecutor in the case, said Ms Cemortan’s testimony would be key in establishing exactly what happened on the bridge that night and whether the captain was distracted – as claimed by some of his officers.

“There are many witnesses and each one will offer their point of view,” Mr Verusio said. “We’re comparing all the different versions to see how they fit together.” Electronic data recovered from the ship’s black box would also be vital, he said.

Ms Cemortan is not accused of any offence. Capt Schettino is under house arrest at his home in Meta di Sorrento, near Naples, and faces charges of manslaughter and abandoning his ship ahead of passengers and crew members.

He could face at least 12 years in prison.

Passengers claim to have seen and photographed a young blonde woman resembling Ms Cemortan eating dinner and sharing a decanter of red wine with him less than 40 minutes before the collision happened.

Ms Cemortan had worked for Costa Cruises as a dancer and passenger rep, but she was on the week-long cruise as a guest.

It has been reported that she did not have her own cabin. La Repubblica newspaper offered an explanation for the unusual arrangement when it claimed that some of the former dancer’s belongings were found in Capt Schettino’s cabin, suggesting that they were sharing.

Investigators have meanwhile identified a mystery woman who turned up on Giglio on the morning after the disaster and spirited Capt Schettino away from television cameras.

She is a lawyer for Costa Cruises and will be questioned by prosecutors in coming days.

The woman was photographed with the captain in the lobby of the Hotel Bahamas, in Giglio’s main port, where he briefly took refuge before being arrested by police.

There were fresh concerns over the stability of the stricken ship, which lies on its side in shallow water, after it shifted three inches in seven hours on Wednesday.

Rough seas buffeted the wreck, again delaying the operation to start removing the 500,000 gallons of diesel and heavy oil in its fuel tanks.

A large gap opened up between two glass panels that formed part of the vessel’s roof, raising fears that the bad weather is weakening the structure of the luxury liner.

Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.

The technique reported in PLoS Biology relies on gathering electrical signals directly from patients’ brains.

Based on signals from listening patients, a computer model was used to reconstruct the sounds of words that patients were thinking of.

The method may in future help comatose and locked-in patients communicate.

Several approaches have in recent years suggested that scientists are closing in on methods to tap into our very thoughts; the current study achieved its result by implanting electrodes directly into a part of participants’ brains.

In a 2011 study, participants with electrodes in direct brain contact were able to move a cursor on a screen by simply thinking of vowel sounds.

A technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging to track blood flow in the brain has shown promise for identifying which words or ideas someone may be thinking about.

By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant’s group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of - recreating “movies in the mind”.

All in the mind

Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that “stimulus reconstruction” work one step further.

“This is inspired by a lot of Jack’s work,” Dr Pasley said. “One question was… how far can we get in the auditory system by taking a very similar modelling approach?”

The team focused on an area of the brain called the superior temporal gyrus, or STG.

This broad region is not just part of the hearing apparatus but one of the “higher-order” brain regions that help us make linguistic sense of the sounds we hear.

The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences.

The trick is disentangling the chaos of electrical signals that the audio brought about in the patients’ STG regions.

To do that, the team employed a computer model that helped map out which parts of the brain were firing at what rate, when different frequencies of sound were played.

With the help of that model, when patients were presented with words to think about, the team was able to guess which word the participants had chosen.

They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.

“There’s a two-pronged nature of this work – one is the basic science of how the brain does things,” said Robert Knight of UC Berkeley, senior author of the study.

“From a prosthetic view, people who have speech disorders… could possibly have a prosthetic device when they can’t speak but they can imagine what they want to say,” Prof Knight explained.

“The patients are giving us this data, so it’d be nice if we gave something back to them eventually.”

The authors caution that the thought-translation idea is still to be vastly improved before such prosthetics become a reality.

But the benefits of such devices could be transformative, said Mindy McCumber, a speech-language pathologist at Florida Hospital in Orlando.

“As a therapist, I can see potential implications for the restoration of communication for a wide range of disorders,” she told BBC News.

“The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise ‘augmentative and alternative communication’, and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is defending four Michigan high-school football players who ignored a referee and allegedly assaulted the opposing team’s quarterback, saying the resulting charges against the four are based solely on their race.

It was during an Oct. 21 football game between Star Academy and Westland Lutheran High School in Dearborn Heights when the quarterback for Westland planned to take a knee to end the game with a 48-6 victory.

Referees reportedly instructed players not to have contact after the snap. While the quarterback, P.J. Kruse, was taking his knee, Star players burst through the unprepared offensive line and threw him to the ground.

He suffered a concussion in the melee.

Following a three-month investigation, the Wayne County prosecutor filed aggravated assault charges against Star Academy seniors Mohamed Ahmed, Fanar Al-Alsady, Hadee Attia and Ali Bajjey.

But the attorney for the players, Nabih Ayad, said the charges were based solely on the players’ race. CAIR-Michigan, the Arab Civil Rights League and the NAACP have sent the prosecutors a letter asking for all of the charges to be dismissed.

In a recent news conference, CAIR said there was new video that showed the incident was “greatly exaggerated: and that no charges would have been filed if the players had been any other religion.” But the video has not been released.

CAIR spokesman Dawud Walid said, “We believe that from the very beginning that, if these young men may have been of a different ethnicity, of a different religion, different skin color, that Dearborn Heights police officer most likely would not have been so aggressive in the means in which he carried out his investigation.”

Ayad said, “Had their names been John or Bill, Randy or Jason, I don’t think these charges would be standing here today. Because of the Arab ethnicity, I think these charges were brought with the racial animus behind it.”

He went on to describe the events that resulted in the opposing quarterback’s concussion simply as a post-play “skirmish” that frequently happens in football games.

But Kym Worthy, the Wayne County prosecutor, said neither race nor ethnicity played any role in the charges.

“Our investigation in this case includes a videotape which captured the incident. After a review of the evidence, we have charged the people involved in this incident with the appropriate charges,” Worthy said.

Robert Spencer with Jihad Watch said Ayad’s statement trivializing what happened was incredible.

“Really? Players commonly give their opponents concussions in non-game situations?”

Spencer pointed out that if non-Muslims had assaulted a Muslim, CAIR would be demanding the players face hate crime charges.

“In this case, they’re trying to portray some thuggish Muslim footballers as victims, both to advance their Muslim victimhood narrative, and to try to intimidate law enforcement officials into being afraid to charge Muslims with anything, for fear of being charged with racial or ethnic or religious bias,” he said.

CAIR’s reaction to the incident follows on the heels of similar incidents where the group has tried to play the victim card.

During a recent series of firebombings in Queens, New York, CAIR quickly claimed that the attacks were caused by Islamophobia.

While a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the door of the Al-Khoei Islamic Foundation, which houses one of the most prominent Shi’ite mosques in New York, the assailant also firebombed a house of a black Christian couple as well as another house which served as a Hindu place of worship.

Following the attacks CAIR called for police to increase patrols around mosques. However, leaders did not call for similar patrols around houses of worship for other faiths.

Spencer said CAIR’s reaction reveals that the group will not hesitate to use any event to their advantage to portray Muslims as victims in this country.

“CAIR did not mention anything about the Hindus or Christians when they issued their release. This just shows how self-serving their claims of victimhood really are,” Spencer said. “They called for increased police patrols against mosques, but they didn’t say anything about calling for protection for Hindu or Christian places of worship.”

The charges against the four players are even more noteworthy when one considers the location. Dearborn Heights is located just outside of Dearborn, which was recently featured in the television series “All-American Muslim.”

The show, which suffered from low ratings, had more than 65 sponsors stop advertising during its run on TLC. During the show’s run, Lowe’s was singled out by CAIR and others for choosing to stop advertising on the show.

CAIR called the move by Lowe’s to pull advertising “anti-Muslim bigotry.”

California state Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, went further by threatening Lowe’s with legal action if the company did not reinstate the ads and apologize to Muslims.

In a letter sent to Lowe’s chief executive officer, Robert Niblock, Lieu said, “Lowe’s action is bigoted, shameful, and un-American. I call on Lowe’s to rescind its action and apologize to Americans who are Muslim. If Lowe’s continues its religious bigotry, I will encourage boycotts of Lowe’s and look into legislative remedies.”

CAIR did not respond to WND requests for comment.

But in 2010, police arrested David Wood, Nabeel Qureshi, Paul Rezkalla and 18-year-old Negeen Mayel for talking to Muslims at the annual Dearborn Arab international Festival in Dearborn.

The four Christians were talking to people who approached and engaged them in conversation. Police arrested the Christians for disturbing the peace but they eventually were acquitted of charges.

The year before, George Saieg, a Sudanese Christian pastor, was threatened with arrest by Dearborn police if he handed out information on Christianity near the festival.

WND recently reported how the city was ordered to pay over $100,000 in legal fees over its handling of the incident.

Federal regulators Monday approved the first drug for people with advanced forms of basal cell carcinoma, the most common kind of skin cancer, as well as the most common cancer in general in the United States.

The drug, made by South San Francisco’s Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, is designed for patients whose basal cell cancer has spread either locally or to other parts of the body.

Basal cell carcinoma, which forms in the lower part of the outer layer of the skin or epidermis, affects some 2 million Americans each year. While basal cell carcinoma is rarely fatal and is generally considered curable, in a small percentage of patients it can spread and in some cases cannot be treated with surgery or other methods.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, which is called Erivedge, after an expedited six-month review in advance of the March 8 approval deadline.

“For patients with disease that has metastasized, these patients have no other treatment option,” said Dr. Jennifer Low, global development leader for the drug. “This disease can be very devastating and in some cases life threatening.”

More than 100 patients worldwide were involved in the trial, which was conducted at about 40 centers around the world including UCSF Medical Center and Stanford University Medical Center.

Promising results

The trial found that 30 percent of patients with metastasized disease – meaning that it had spread elsewhere in the body – experienced a partial response to the drug, or shrinkage of their tumors, and 43 percent of those with locally advanced disease – meaning that it had invaded surrounding tissue – had a complete or partial response, according to the FDA.

Researchers identified a pathway that is critical for the growth of basal cell carcinoma, and the drug works to inhibit that pathway.

“This approach is becoming more common and will potentially allow cancer drugs to be developed more quickly,” said Dr. Richard Pazur, director of the office of hematology and oncology products for the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, in a statement.

Dr. Jean Tang, a Stanford dermatologist who specializes in skin cancer, said the disease can be devastating for patients who have been disfigured and are unable to participate fully in life due to multiple surgeries.

“If you’re the one person who has terrible (basal cell carcinoma) that has metastasized and is so aggressive that nobody can cut it out or you’re that patient who has 100 tumors, that’s a terrible place to be in,” Tang said. “I can say, as a physician, this drug is going to change lives for patients.”

A patient’s story

Mitch Rolin, 48, of Alameda was one of those patients. Rolin, a fair-skinned man who does not know his family history because he was adopted, has had more than 100 surgeries to remove basal cell cancers since he was diagnosed in his late teens.

He became the first patient to enroll in UCSF’s trial for the drug in June 2009 and described the results as a miracle.

“Within months, there was just dramatic change. It was just absolutely amazing,” said Rolin, who had developed lesions around his left eye that doctors were unable to remove surgically.

Rolin said he does experience some side effects with the drug, including hair loss, changes in how things taste and frequent muscle spasms that range from sharp and painful to just annoying. But he said the benefit of the drug has been worth these complications.

He said he’s looking forward to getting back involved in the things he used to enjoy. “When I realized it was going to work, it was like here was this incredible, miraculous second chance,” he said.

The drug is taken orally once a day. Erivedge will cost an estimated $7,500 a month and will be available within two weeks, according to Genentech officials.

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