Free Republic

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A federal judge Thursday refused to stop enforcement of a new Florida law requiring doctors to notify parents 48 hours before performing an abortion on a patient under 18. U.S. District Judge William Stafford, rejecting a temporary injunction against the parental notification law, said opponents failed to show they had a good chance of winning a constitutional challenge. The lawsuit challenging the law - filed last month by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Planned Parenthood Federation of America - will be argued later. "We'll live to fight another day," said Janet Crepps, an attorney...

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba's communist government has jailed 13 more political opponents this year, most on charges of "dangerousness," a veteran rights activist reported Tuesday. The report released Tuesday by the Havana-based Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation said the total number of political prisoners as of June 30 was 306. The charges against those jailed highlight the government's practice of making ambiguous accusations against its opponents, said Elizardo Sanchez, the activist who runs the non-governmental commission, which releases reports every six months.

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba increased the salaries of its teachers, doctors and nurses Thursday, highlighting the importance the nation's communist government puts on its health and education sectors. Workers in these fields will receive an average of 40 to 50 additional Cuban pesos a month, or the equivalent of about US$2. The increase was to take affect July 1. "It's very modest, and can be improved upon," President Fidel Castro said in a live televised address to announce the news. The average Cuban worker earns 300 pesos a month, or the equivalent of about US$12. Salary figures can be misleading,...

IT is one of the widespread assumptions of the war on terrorism that the Muslim religious schools known as madrassas, catering to families that are often poor, are graduating students who become terrorists. Last year, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell denounced madrassas in Pakistan and several other countries as breeding grounds for "fundamentalists and terrorists." A year earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld had queried in a leaked memorandum, "Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" Skip to next...