Bush signs anti-Semitism bill into law

US president George Bush on Saturday signed a controversial bill passed by Congress that provides for the world-wide monitoring of anti-Semitism by a special office in the US State Department. The signing ceremony was set shortly before the president departed for an election campaign visit to Florida, which has a large Jewish population. At a rally, Bush later said the United States would make sure that "the ancient impulse of anti-Semitism never finds a home in the modern world". As he arrived in Florida, his challenger John Kerry accused Bush of standing by while "genocide" raged in the Darfur region of Sudan: "The Bush administration has done nothing effective to halt this genocide. Words without deeds are meaningless especially when people are dying every day."