Free Republic

The winter vomiting bug norovirus has struck 2.8million people, with health professionals braced for another rise as people return to schools and offices. The virus - which causes projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, mild fevers and headaches - is striking down more than 200,000 a week, according to official estimates. Three hospitals have been placed on red alert, while hundreds of wards up and down the country have been closed to new patients as the number of beds being taken up by bug victims reaches critical levels.

(Former Vice President Al Gore, who previously supported the Defense of Marriage Act and civil unions, was the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Campaign Gala on March 25, 2006, at the Century Plaza Hotel. This is an excerpt of his speech.) Abraham Lincoln once said, "I do good and I feel good. I do bad and I feel bad, and that is my religion." As a Christian, I was taught at an early age that the single most important departure in Christianity from the Judeo-Christian tradition as a whole was embodied in the simple teaching -- God is Love....

A high school student who vomited on his Spanish teacher has been charged with battery against a school official. Prosecutors said the vomiting was intentional, and the teacher, David Young, called the act “outrageous.” “I think a message is being sent by both the school district and the district attorney that this behavior will not be tolerated,” Young said. The student's father said his son told him he did not mean to throw up on the teacher but had been made uncontrollably ill by the stress of final exams.