DRUG ADS...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pharmaceutical executives on Thursday will face scrutiny from lawmakers concerned their industry sometimes misleads consumers by overstating the benefits of drugs in TV commercials.
 
Executives from Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Merck and Schering Plough's joint venture are scheduled to testify Thursday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Each of the companies have recently discontinued advertisements for blockbuster medications that were criticized as being potentially misleading.

The pharmaceutical industry's main trade group recently issued advertising guidelines designed to make sure company promotions are accurate and balanced. The group says television advertisements give patients important information about diseases and treatments.

Television marketing has become a cornerstone of the pharmaceutical business since regulators first allowed the practice a decade ago. Companies spent $3.5 billion on spots last year.

But some lawmakers and consumer advocates say the advertisements often gloss over drug risks and encourage overprescribing of medications. Last year Democrats tried unsuccessfully to pass a law that would ban consumer-directed advertisements during the first three years after a drug's approval. They are expected to make a similar push later this year.

Wednesday's 10 a.m. EDT hearing will focus on three advertisements that have drawn negative scrutiny from the committee's chairman, John Dingell, D-Mich.

Earlier this year Pfizer discontinued its signature ads for Lipitor, the best-selling drug in the world, after Dingell raised questions about the credentials of spokesman Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart.

Dingell said that Jarvik was unqualified to give medical device since he is not a licensed physician. While he did earn a medical degree, Jarvik acknowledges he never completed the certification tests needed to practice medicine.

Dingell's committee is also probing whether Merck & Co. Inc. and Schering-Plough Corp. oversold the benefits of their drug Vytorin in television advertisements. Both companies' stocks have slumped since January when they revealed Vytorin was no better at stopping fatty plaque build-up than a low-cost generic. Sales of Vytorin grew to over $5 billion last year with the help of heavy television advertising.

Lawmakers will also focus on an advertisement for Johnson & Johnson's anemia drug Procrit which Dingell says may have overstated the medicine's benefits.

Representatives from the American Medical Association and Kaiser Family Foundation are scheduled to testify on the effect advertisements have on doctors and patients.

WATER TAX...
TRENTON, NJ (AP) - Do New Jerseyans want to tax their water to preserve open spaces?

A Senate committee will consider the question today as it reviews a proposed constitutional amendment.

The tax would charge 40 cents per 1,000 gallons of water used. Supporters say that would cost the average household about $32 per year.

Some $150 million would be dedicated annually to farmland and open space preservation.

Voters would decide whether to approve the amendment during the November election if three-fifths of both legislative houses pass it.

Voters in November approved borrowing $200 million for farmland and open space preservation, but that money is set to run out in 2010.

IRAQ FUNDING/CONGRESS...
WASHINGTON (AP) - Protests from moderate Democrats and a revolt by opposition Republicans prompted House Democratic leaders Wednesday night to delay a planned vote on a $195 billion measure to pay for the war in Iraq and provide education help to veterans as well as relief for the jobless.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., promised to deal with the concerns of some of her more conservative members, who were upset that the war funding bill is carrying new benefit programs - especially a boost in GI education benefits - without paying for them with offsetting cuts to other programs.

At the same time, Republicans are up in arms that they have been excluded from opportunities to participate in the crafting of the measure, and in response they have forced dozens of procedural votes over the past three days in protest. A vote on the funding bill had initially been planned for Thursday.

``They bypassed the (Appropriations) committee. They refused to allow us to have any amendments,'' said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. ``And so the voices of half the American people are not allowed to be heard on the House floor.''

Pelosi told reporters that the huge war funding bill would be changed to bring so-called Blue Dog Democrats on board.

``Their concerns are very legitimate,'' Pelosi told reporters Wednesday. ``They must be addressed.''

Amid the tumult, Republicans acknowledged that Pelosi had devised a strategy to try to jam the bill past Republicans and President Bush in a form that he might have to sign.

Pelosi's strategy relies on keeping the measure free of many domestic add-ons that have provoked Bush veto threats - except for a politically popular extension of unemployment benefits and an even more popular increase in education benefits for troops returning from Iraq.

Republicans acknowledged privately that Pelosi's plan to send Bush a bill clean of too many Democratic add-ons - and ultimately shorn of language setting a nonbinding timeline to remove combat troops from Iraq - would be difficult for Bush to stop.

``That's going to be really hard for the White House to push back on,'' said a former White House aide.

Meanwhile, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., and fellow Democrats on the panel revealed a far more ambitious list of domestic add-ons to the war funding measure.

The additional money in the $205 billion Senate bill includes
$8.7 billion for continuing recovery efforts from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There's also $490 million in crime-fighting grants to state and local governments, $451 million to repair roads and bridges damaged by natural disasters, $450 million to combat western wildfires and $400 million for rural counties suffering from cutbacks in timber-related revenues.

Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., touted an additional $1.3 billion in international food aid, while Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, obtained $400 million more for National Institutes of Health research programs.

The Senate bill contains $9 billion more than the House in non-war add-ons and they would run squarely into a Bush veto threat and are likely to be rejected by Pelosi as well.

Pelosi's plan is to advance the war funding bill in an unusual process where it is broken into three separate pieces for votes in the House and Senate: war funding, anti-war policy provisions and domestic funding.

The idea is to allow anti-war Democrats to vote against the war funding - which Republicans will provide the votes to pass - while still ensuring the money goes out to support troops overseas. Democrats get to vote for restrictions on the war, but the provisions would never make it through the Senate to face a veto.

In a closed-door meeting Wednesday at the White House, Bush tried to rally support among House Republicans in his opposition to the Democratic war bill.

According to an official who attended, but was not authorized to speak on the record on the meeting, Bush said extending unemployment insurance at a time when unemployment was low was unprecedented. He also said he is open to expanding college aid for military veterans but preferred to deal with it in a separate bill.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told House Republicans that he would stand strong against any spending in the supplemental unrelated to the troops. ``If you stick with us, we'll stick with you,'' he told the group.

But Democrats say Republicans would be foolish to support so much money for an unpopular war without addressing economic troubles at home.

``The American people are puzzled, perplexed and I think angry'' that money is going toward Iraq when there are still emergencies inside the United States, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., told reporters.

ISRAEL AT 60...
JERUSALEM (AP) - A Jewish astronaut greets Israel from space. Revelers try to set a record for the most people singing a national anthem. To celebrate turning 60, Israel is staging fireworks, air force flyovers and a birthday bash for anyone born on the day the Jewish state was founded.

Israel is marking its 60th Independence Day, which began at sundown Wednesday, with a great sense of pride but also uncertainty about its future and doubts about prospects for peace with the Palestinians. Six decades after rising from the ashes of the Holocaust, the Jewish state is still plagued by threats from abroad and an identity crisis at home.

Israel at 60 is a paradox of exuberance and despair - a country enduring near daily rocket attacks from militants while producing scientists who have pioneered Wi-Fi and instant messaging.

Its 41-year occupation of Palestinian territories has invited international condemnation. Yet Israel is a thriving democracy that has provided a haven for the world's Jews.

This Independence Day is marred by a fresh criminal inquiry of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose legal woes are calling his political survival into question just as he is moving to forge a peace deal with the moderate Palestinian leadership in the West Bank.

However, Israelis are putting aside their frustration with politics for what is expected to be one of the most joyous birthday celebrations since the first on May 14, 1948 _ a date marked each year in Israel by the Hebrew calendar.

Independence Day began just as Memorial Day for fallen soldiers ended - a jarring contrast between solemnity and joy that underlined the link between the military and the existence of Israel.

Events marking Israel's 60th include plays, concerts, sports tournaments, Holocaust memorials and inauguration of a footpath around the Sea of Galilee.

NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman, the first Jewish crew member on the international space station, sent a greeting from space to the people of Israel.

``Every time the station flies over the state of Israel, I try to find a window, and it never fails to move me when I see the familiar outline of Israel coming toward us from over the horizon,'' said the American-born astronaut.

Also Wednesday, Jewish communities worldwide joined Israelis in a rendition of the Israeli anthem - Hatikva, or ``The Hope.'' Their goal: to enter the Guinness World Records for the most people singing a national anthem at the same time.