20 Swine flu deaths
The Arkansas Health Department says 20 people in the state are now dead because of the swine flu.  The health department is releasing any other details on this.  However the health department says additional vaccine supplies are arriving in the state and that more is on the way.  The health department is planning on a second round of flu shot clinics for the days after Thanksgiving.
 

Health care rally
Right now opponents of the senate health care bill are rallying in hot springs village trying to get Arkansans to convince Senators Lincoln and Pryor to vote against it.  A series of rallies started in Little Rock at noon Thursday with former Clinton aide Dick Morris as the featured speaker.

Morris is now a conservative commentator and he told us he thinks the bill will hurt seniors by cutting millions from Medicare programs.  "It's a terrible bill.  We all agree that the uninsured should be covered, but you've got to expand the number of doctors and nurses first.  If you attempt to cover 35 million more people, without any extra doctors, we're gonna create scarcity that's going to cause rationing that's going to hurt the elderly," Morris said.

The rallies continue across Arkansas through Saturday starting at 8:30 Friday morning in Heber Springs.


Great American Smoke Out
Thursday is the Great American Smokeout.  It's an event by the American Cancer Society to get people to stop smoking.  Thursday smokers lit birthday candles instead of cigarettes at an event.  They say quitting smoking is one of the most important steps to having fewer cancer cases and more birthdays.  The American Cancer Society says a third of all cancer deaths are due to tobacco use.