In The News: Truce Broken - Gaza Rocket Slams Southern Israel

After Months Of Calm, Rocket Slams Into Ashkelon

A rocket was fired from the Gaza Strip at Ashkelon early Tuesday morning, breaking months of quiet between Israel and the Palestinian enclave.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for firing the rocket later Tuesday, saying it was retaliation for Palestinian prisoner Arafat Jaradat’s death in an Israeli prison on Saturday. The terrorist group, associated with Fatah, had published a leaflet on Monday urging a harsh response against Israel for Jaradat’s death.

The rocket hit a road in an industrial area in the south of the city around 7 a.m., according to Channel 10 news. There were no injuries, although the road was damaged.

Residents of the southern city reported hearing two blasts and authorities are checking to see if two missiles were in fact fired at the city. There were no warning sirens sounded to alert people in the area.

The rocket was reportedly fired from Rafah in the southern strip, and was the same type used by Hamas in November in attempts to hit Jerusalem, according to Army Radio.

According to the report, Hamas tightly controls the border city of Rafah, which is home to several smugglign tunnels into Egypt, indicating the rocket fire was done with the Strip’s rulers knowledge.

The UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, said on Tuesday that he was “deeply troubled” by “resumed indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza.”

The resuming fire from the strip is “totally unacceptable,” he said in a press release.

Gaza Rocket Slams South For First Time Since Truce

Strong Earthquake Jolts Tokyo

A strong earth quake with a magnitude of 6.2 in the Richter scale hit the Japanese capital Tokyo, Monday, causing the buildings to sway for more than 30 seconds, national broadcaster NHK reported. The broadcaster said there was no alert issued for tsunami.

"An earthquake occurred at about 4:23 p.m. today," an AFP report quoting the Japan Meteorological Agency reported. "Its focus was in the north of Tochigi prefecture. Its depth is about 10 kilometers and its magnitude is estimated at 6.2," it added.

A few minutes later, a 4.7-magnitude aftershock was recorded, The Daily Yomiuri reported. There were no immediate reports of casualties and injuries.

Wall Street Getting Nervous?

Why are some of the biggest names in the corporate world unloading stock like there is no tomorrow, and why are some of the most prominent investors on Wall Street loudly warning about the possibility of a market crash?  Should we be alarmed that the big dogs on Wall Street are starting to get very nervous?  In aprevious article, I got very excited about a report that indicated that corporate insiders were selling nine times more of their own shares than they were buying.  Well, according to a brand new Bloomberg article, insider sales of stock have outnumbered insider purchases of stock by a ratio of twelve to one over the past three months.  That is highly unusual.  And right now some of the most respected investors in the financial world are ringing the alarm bells.  Dennis Gartman says that it is time to "rush to the sidelines", Seth Klarman is warning about "the un-abating risks of collapse", and Doug Kass is proclaiming that "we're headed for a sharp fall".  So does all of this mean that a market crash is definitely on the way?  No, but when you combine all of this with the weak economic data constantly coming out of the U.S. and Europe, it certainly does not paint a pretty picture.

So why are all of these very prominent executives cashing out all of a sudden?

That is a very good question.

Meanwhile, some of the most respected names on Wall Street are warning that it is time to get out of the market.

For example, investor Dennis Gartman recently wrote that the game is "changing" and that it is time to "rush to the sidelines"...

Clouds Of Crisis Return To Europe

Europe’s brief respite from political and financial turmoil has come to an abrupt halt in the wake of a nerve-rattling Italian election, Britain’s loss of its cherished triple-A credit rating and troubling developments on other fronts.

The upshot is renewed unease about Europe’s still unresolved debt crisis that is once again casting dark shadows over stock, bond and currency markets.

EU officials have to be dismayed by the electoral muscle displayed by anti-austerity parties in Italy on the right and left, reflecting continuing public outrage over deficit-reducing measures imposed by the emergency caretaker government of economist and political neophyte Mario Monti. The moves, including higher taxes and public service cuts, appeased Italy’s euro zone partners and global bond investors, reducing government borrowing costs and helping to stabilize the common currency. But the economy fell into a deepening hole, incomes plunged, unemployment worsened and voters took out their anger at the polls. Mr. Monti’s centrist civic movement won only about 10 per cent of the vote.

Life is no better in a large swath of the broader EU. In Britain, Moody’s cited the continuing economic weakness and the resulting risks to the government’s tight fiscal policy for its rating cut. In Bulgaria, where the government fell last week and the economy is in a shambles, rightists who joined mass demonstrations across the country burned a European Union flag and waved anti-EU banners. Other austerity-minded governments in the EU face similar murky political futures.

U.S. Dept. Of Justice To Federal Judge: We Can Force Your Wife To Violate Her Religion

While presenting an oral argument in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia last fall, a lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge that the Obama administration believed it could force the judge’s own wife—a physician—to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice.

The assertion came in the case of Tyndale House Publishers v. Sebelius, a challenge to the Obama administration’s regulation requiring health-care plans to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

Tyndale is a for-profit corporation that publishes Bibles, biblical commentaries and other religious works. Tyndale House Foundation, a religious non-profit organization, owns 96.5 percent of the corporation’s stock and receives 96.5 percent of its profits. The foundation’s mission is “to minister to the spiritual needs of people, primarily through grants to other religious charities.”

As a matter of religious principle, the foundation believes that human life begins at conception and that abortion is wrong.

The corporation self-insures, providing its employees with a generous health-care plan. But, in keeping with its religious faith, it does not in any way provide abortions. For this reason, Tyndale sued the Obama administration, arguing that the Obamacare regulation that would force it to provide abortion-inducing drugs and IUDs in its health-care plan violated its right to the free-exercise of religion.

“Consistent with the religious beliefs of Tyndale and its owners, Tyndale’s self-insured plan does not and has never covered abortions or abortifacient drugs or devices such as emergency contraception and intrauterine devices,” Tyndale said in its legal complaint, prepared by the Alliance Defending Freedom.

When Tyndale sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the administration from enforcing the regulation on the company before the federal courts could determine the issue on its merits, Benjamin Berwick, a lawyer for the Civil Division of the Justice Department presented the administration's argument for why Tyndale should be forced to act against the religious faith of its owners. The oral argument over the preliminary injunction occurred Nov. 9 in Judge Walton’s court.

Berwick argued here--as the administration has argued in other cases where private businesses are challenging the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate--that once people form a corporation to conduct business they lose their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion insofar as their business is concerned.

In the face of this argument, Judge Walton asked an interesting question. His wife, a graduate of Georgetown Medical School, is a physician. She has incorporated her medical practice. Does that mean, according to the Obama administration’s argument, that the federal government can force her to act against her religious faith in the conduct of her medical practice?

Berwick effectively answered: Yes.

Here, from the official court transcript, is the verbatim exchange between this Obama administration lawyer and Judge Walton: