Palestinians shell settlement in Gaza

Palestinians shellsettlement in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Palestinian militants shelled the Gaza Strip settlement of Neve Dekalim today, killing a woman and wounding another, the army said.
In response, Israeli tanks opened fire on the nearby Palestinian town of Khan Younis, wounding two residents, witnesses said. The army said it was targeting the source of the mortar fire.
The violence comes as Israeli forces went on a high alert ahead of the Jewish Yom Kippur holy day.
Two mortars were fired at the Jewish settlement and one of them scored a direct hit on a house. The women were evacuated to a hospital in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba for treatment, but one died of her wounds. The second woman was lightly wounded.
While the Palestinians have fired hundreds of mortars and homemade rockets at Neve Dekalim and nearby settlements during the four years of violence, this was the first fatality in the settlements from such attacks.
Tax-cut package passed
WASHINGTON -- Legislation extending three popular middle-class tax cuts for the rest of the decade sailed through Congress by lopsided votes in both the House and Senate, giving President Bush a major legislative victory on his signature economic issue, tax relief.
Many Democrats complained during debate Thursday that the majority Republicans who control Congress should have offset the lost revenue to keep the nation's soaring deficits from getting worse.
But in the end, large numbers of Democrats supported the package, something that Republican tax-cut proponents had counted on occurring with a congressional election only 40 days away.
The $145.9 billion tax cut package was approved in the House by a 339-65 vote, with 125 Democrats joining 213 Republicans and one independent in voting for the proposal. In the Senate, the measure passed by a 92-3 vote.
While no House Republicans voted against the tax cuts, the three senators objecting included two Republicans, Sens. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Olympia Snowe of Maine, who joined Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., in voting "no." All three have been critical of the government's inability to get soaring deficits under control.
"I for one am very reluctant to saddle future generations with the bill for this fiscally ruinous policy," Chafee said.
Protecting the pledge
WASHINGTON -- In a vote with election-year consequences, the House sought to assure that God's 50-year place in the Pledge of Allegiance will be safe from federal court challenges.
The bill, approved on a 247-173 vote Thursday, would prevent federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from ruling on whether the words under God should be stricken from the pledge.
The legislation drew strong protests from Democrats who said they want under God to remain but viewed the measure as an unconstitutional attack on the judicial branch. They said it was meant mainly to force them into a controversial vote just six weeks before the election.
The bill has virtually no chance of clearing the Senate this year, but the issue was important to conservatives intent on getting lawmakers on the record on topical social issues such as gay marriage and flag burning.
In a similar vote in July, the House voted to prevent federal courts from ordering states to recognize same-sex unions sanctioned in other states.
Prescription drug imports
WASHINGTON -- Peter Rost, a drug industry executive and the most controversial advocate of importing cheaper prescription drugs from foreign countries, joined fellow supporters in Congress on Thursday to call for a Senate vote on making the practice legal.
The vice president of marketing at Pfizer Inc., Rost recently turned heads when he became the drug industry's first executive to dispute the industry's long-standing argument that importing prescription drugs was unsafe.
On Thursday, Rost met with Capitol Hill lawmakers from both parties who share his view. Among them were Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, who are sponsoring legislation to legalize importation from Canada and other industrialized nations where drugs are 30 percent to 70 percent cheaper. The bill would cover imports both of drugs made overseas and those that are manufactured in the United States and then exported to other countries, where they're sold for less than in America.
A similar measure overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last year. But Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn, has resisted pressure to bring any drug-import bill to a floor vote. Recently, Frist, who's a medical doctor, said it was unlikely that an import bill would be voted on before the November elections.
Combined dispatches