CNN is reporting an outbreak of Enterovirus 71 (or EV71), that has affected more than 3700 children and killed over 20, is creating concern for the visitors and athletes expected for the Beijing Olympics in August. The virus can cause “poliolike paralysis” according to the article.

Not only can you get your dose of fascism, but your kids can get polio!

BOB OWENS:

Fifty-four shootings in two weekends. Shot-up bodies recovered in groups of three and five. Is this Ramadi? Basra? No.

Welcome to Chicago.

Note the fruits of gun control. Plus this on the Chicago P.D.’s up-armament: “If the department arms 10,000 of their officers with M4s, the police will have 9,900 more assault rifles in Chicago than the U.S. Marines presently have in Fallujah, Iraq.”

A ROUNDUP ON FUSION POWER RESEARCH from Alan Boyle. And some more information here, focusing on the Bussard Polywell fusion project.

While fusion is not free energy, it is pretty close.

The battle lines have been drawn in the race for the Elmira school board.

People who attack the elderly in New York can now expect to spend as much as seven years in prison.

Ok, so young people now are the only sanctioned group to beat on? Good, I guess, as they heal faster.

A LOOK AT THE BRITISH ELECTIONS:

U.K. voters resoundingly rejected the Labour Party in local elections last week. It was no capricious shift, but a citizen revolt against trendy carbon and nanny-state taxes that empower only bad government.

For Labour, it was the worst election in 40 years. In a massive turnout, the Conservative Party took 256 seats in parliament, along with control of 12 town councils and 44% of the vote. Labour and moderate Liberal Democrats got to split the remains, and even the Liberal Democrats ,with 25%, won more than Labour.

Britain is ripe for change, it seems to me, though it’s not clear how much actual change the Tories will deliver.

KATIE GRANJU ON the value of a few skinned knees.

The Clemens Center will wrap up a very unusual season today, during which it somehow tripled the number of performances it hosted while in the midst of a $17 million renovation project.

The performing arts complex in downtown Elmira will conclude its 2007-08 season today with two performances of an off-Broadway play, starring actor and comedian Robert Dubac, titled “The Male Intellect: An Oymoron?”

Like most of the Clemens Center’s offerings this season, the play will be staged in Mandeville Hall, a 160-seat black box theater.

The Clemens Center’s main hall – the cavernous 1,600-seat Powers Theatre – has been shut down for months while undergoing an extensive facelift. The project is moving along nicely, and Powers Theatre is expected to re-open this fall as a new season gets under way, said the not-for-profit facility’s campaign director, Danielle Farnbaugh.

When it reopens, Powers Theatre will boast…