Free Republic

Did you feel it? Small, brief earthquake. A couple movements, pause, then shaking. One cat took notice. The other slept through it.

“And these are the religious people?!” The state Capitol turned into a chaotic scene Thursday as both houses of legislature — and eventually Gov. Cuomo — passed a bill that will end New York’s policy of allowing religious exemptions from vaccine requirements. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, the bill’s sponsor, got cursed out and flat-out threatened at one point by opponents of the legislation after it got passed and sent to the Senate floor. “We’ll be back for you Jeffrey!” shouted one man in Orthodox religious garb, who was fuming in the gallery with others, many of whom had children with them....

Cases of measles have reached a 20-year high in several New York counties amid an outbreak that threatens to reach epidemic proportions, experts say. At least 160 people have been infected by the virus, which typically strikes children, in New York and unusual outbreaks have been reported internationally. The worst affected areas so far are Rockland County - where 105 cases have been reported - and an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, where at least 55 have been infected. Meanwhile, 25 other states have reported outbreaks, with numbers climbing particularly high in Oregon and Washington.

Clerics slow measles fight U.S. shots termed anti-Muslim plot KANO, Nigeria – Accusations by Islamic preachers that vaccines are part of an American anti-Muslim plot are threatening efforts to combat a measles epidemic that has killed hundreds of Nigerian children, health workers say. Government officials play down the anti-vaccine sentiment, but all the measles deaths have been in Nigeria’s north, where authorities had to suspend polio immunizations last year after hard-line clerics fanned similar fears of that vaccine. Nigeria, whose 130 million people make it Africa’s most populous nation, has recorded 20,859 measles cases so far this year. At least...