Thursday Morning News

Al Jazeera

Deadly blast damages Baghdad bridge

A suicide bomber has detonated a truck bomb on a bridge in Baghdad, killing at least 10 people and injuring 26 others, according to hospital officials.

Thursday's blast partially destroyed the bridge, plunging several cars into the Tigris river below, police in the Iraqi capital said.

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Senate passes stem-cell funding bill     CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Senate approved a measure that would roll back President Bush's 2001 limits on embryonic stem-cell research Wednesday afternoon, but the margin was short of the two-thirds needed to override a promised veto.

Bush used the only veto of his presidency to date to kill a 2006 effort to loosen his policy on stem-cell research, which bars the use of federal funding for work that would destroy human embryos.

In a statement issued after Wednesday's 63-34 vote, he said he would veto the new bill as well, saying it "crosses a moral line that I and many others find troubling."

"I believe this will encourage taxpayer money to be spent on the destruction or endangerment of living human embryos -- raising serious moral concerns for millions of Americans," he said.

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Senators Push for Answers on Pensions in New Jersey

NYTIMES

TRENTON, April 11 — State senators from both political parties said at a hearing on Wednesday that they had been shocked to learn that they had voted again and again in recent years for measures that had left the state pension in great distress, and they faulted the state treasury for failing to explain to them the risks of what they were doing.

“I had no idea we were in the company of some of the same corporations that I have condemned for not funding their pensions,” said Senator Shirley K. Turner, a Democrat from Mercer County. “And now, it seems, we’re in the same boat, and sinking.”

The hearing, by the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, was called in response to a report in The New York Times last week that described how New Jersey has diverted hundreds of millions of dollars that should have gone into its pension fund, using unorthodox steps authorized by governors from both parties over a number of years.

 

Tags: Baghdad Iraq New Jersey stem-cells funding Bush