The Ohio Statehouse will be allowed to continue displaying its motto, "With God all things are possible," but they are not allowed to quote the Biblical verse from which it comes. This was decided in a lawsuit in U.S. District Court. The judge ruled the phrase does not state a uniquely Christian principle, but is instead generally theistic, and therefore acceptable. The American Civil Liberties Union dued in July 1997 saying the motto violated the separation of church and state as required by the Constitution. The Attorney General said this ruling shows that "general references to a higher power" do not violate the First Amendment. The attorney for the ACLU thought he had presented compelling arguments that a quote from Jesus Christ from the New Testament was not an appropriate model for the state, but the ruling seems to say that as long as the state doesn't tell anybody that it's a quote of Jesus Christ, then it's alright.

In the September 1998 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, researchers presented information that suggests a protein known as peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, or PPAR, may be the switch that triggers dietary fats to promote colorectal cancer. This raises concerns about the long-term safety of taking the diabetes drug troglitazone, which interacts with PPAR, mimicing some of the effects of a high-fat diet. Mice that were predisposed to develop intestinal tumors were dosed with troglitazone, and they developed significantly greater number of colon polyps. PPAR is believed to be a key regulator in fat breakdown and storage in the body. A similar mouse study in France agreed with these results, but a third French study suggested that PPAR could be used to help suppress the growth of colon cancer cells. The contradiction may stem from the difference in models used to study PPAR.

Although the study was conducted on mice, the molecular basis for colon cancer in humans and mice is similar. Diabetics being treated with troglitazone or similar drugs, and who have a family history of colon cancer, may be at increased risk. Normal mice who were not predisposed to colon cancer were not affected, which led researchers to say troglitazone is not carcenogenic, but appears to cooperate with other genes in tumor formation. They called for further evaluation of the effects of troglitazone and other PPAR activators on humans. Troglitazone, sold under the trade name Rezulin, was launched in March 1997, as a new treatment for type II diabetes. It is widely prescribed in the U.S., but the drug has been associated with at least 26 deaths from liver failure.

The release of the hit movie "Titanic" on video has people flocking to their video stores to own a copy for themselves. For most people, this film is 3 hours and 14 minutes. This film won 11 Academy Awards. In American Fork, Utah, you don't get the whole thing. At a family video store for a $5 charge, the owner is deleting almost two minutes of the movie, including a brief scene showing a nude Kate Winslet. Customers have streamed into the shop, leaving their movies behind for processing. The store owner discovered that many of his neighbors wanted a cleaned-up version of the film when a nearby theater packed the house in July by editing out the nudity and a steamy love scene -- until Paramount Pictures revoked their permission to show the movie and took back the print. The editing doesn't completely pasteurize the film: a sketch of the nude Winslet remains, some profanity is scattered throughout, and then there's the violent deaths and icy corpses.

The owner expects that Paramount will react but does not expect anything of substance. His attitude is that these are people's personal copies and this is not illegal. The owner himself plans to own an uncensored version in his home. "I understand people's concerns, but I didn't have any objection to those scenes at all," he said. "My copy will be uncut."