Slatest
In an interview with the New Yorker‘s Jeffrey Toobin, Justice John Paul Stevens revealed that he will leave the nation’s highest court before Obama’s first term comes to an end. And he may retire at the end of the court’s current term in June, but he won’t decide that until early next month. “Stevens, at 89 the court’s oldest justice, told the magazine that he has his ‘options open,’” Bloomberg reported. “Although he has hired only one law clerk for the nine-month term that will start in October, Stevens said three former clerks had agreed to work for him again should he decide to stay on the court.” As the Supreme Court’s senior associate justice, it is Stevens’ job to determine who will write the opinion when liberals are the majority vote. Now a liberal icon, Stevens was appointed by Republican President Gerald Ford and told Toobin at the time that he had always considered himself to be of the same party. While he wouldn’t say it mattered to him which president picked his replacement, on Obama, Stevens told the New Yorker: “I have a great admiration for him, and certainly think he’s capable of picking successfully, you know, doing a good job of filling vacancies. You can say I will retire within the next three years. I’m sure of that.”
Source: The New Yorker
Donna Simpson, 42, of Old Bridge, New Jersey, eats 12,000 calories a day. No, she isn’t an athlete of Olympic proportions, she just loves eating. That, and she wants to weigh a nice, round 1,000 pounds. She’s only at 602 right now. “Simpson claims she is normal and healthy, and she has a right to eat what she wants and weigh what she wants,” Fox News reported. But does she? Her decidedly unhealthy decision — already she can’t walk more than 20 feet at a time — will cost you, the American taxpayer, a lot of money. Simpson might love to eat and she’s very likely will reach her goal weight — if she doesn’t kill herself first — but she’s also likely to put a face on one of the liveliest debates surrounding health care. “The baseline cost for someone to go to the emergency room is $993 for one visit,” Daniel Emmer, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield’s public relations manager, told Fox News. “Obesity causes a minimum $1,429 increase, or 42 percent in medical costs.” Perhaps Simpson won’t cost taxpayers anything. Perhaps she has great health insurance or is wealthy enough to cover the inevitable medical bills that are coming her way — she makes her living by appearing in a bikini on a Web site where visitors pay to watch her eat and show off. But, like it or not, she has made herself the overweight face of preventable conditions that are causing health care costs to climb to unmanageable heights.
Source: Fox News
Thousands of “red shirts,” anti-goverment supporters of Thailand’s former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have been protesting in the streets of Bangkok for days. The United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD) is demanding that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva step down and dissolve parliament. “Abhisit has repeatedly said he will listen to the protesters but will not accede to their demands,” CNN reported. The red shirts’ next planned move is to dump 1,000 liters of blood on the ministers’ offices; they started a drive on Tuesday to collect samples. If parliament is not dissolved after the demonstration, the protesters have vowed to collect another 1,000 liters to cover the headquarters of the ruling party and then another 1,000 liters to cover the prime minister’s residence. “The nation’s tourism minister estimated the demonstrations might have resulted in a 20 percent drop in tourists,” CNN reported. “The impact on Chinese visitors appears to have been greater, with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce reporting a 50 percent cancellation rate.”
Source: CNN
The members of the Federal Reserve, which is chaired by Ben Bernanke, will meet Tuesday to debate what they should do about interest rates. More specifically, they’re concerned about the language they’re using when it comes to interest rates. Even the simplest change of terms will send signals and spark action. Interest rates have been held at a record low — near zero – since December of 2008, but they will need to be raised eventually to avoid inflation. “It will be a challenging maneuver,” the Associated Press reported. “Fed officials will want to signal a move to higher rates in advance for borrowers and investors aren’t jarred. And they will need to send a signal that isn’t confusing.” Official language being used by the Fed right now is that record low rates will be in place for an “extended period,” which economists assume is at least six months. At least one Fed member wants to change that language to “some time” to give the Fed more flexibility. “Policy accomodative” is another option. “The Fed could start boosting rates as early as June — if economic growth accelerated,” the Associated Press reported. “A more likely time is this fall, economists say.”
Source: The Associated Press
Michael Sidibe, the head of UNAIDS, blames laws that criminalize certain practices for keeping most individuals infected with HIV from receiving proper treatment. Globally, HIV infection rates are climbing for drug users, homosexuals and prostitutes. Sidibe says that “‘it is unacceptable’ that 85 countries still have laws criminalizing same sex relations among adults, including seven that impose the death penalty for homosexual practices,” the Associated Press reported. These laws keep those infected with HIV from seeking professional medical help. At a luncheon with journalists hosted by the United Nations Foundation, Sidibe noted that “in the Caribbean where most countries don’t have repressive laws, only between 3 and 6 percent of HIV infections are in male homosexuals,” the Associated Press reported. By contrast, about one-third of new HIV infections in countries such as China, Kenya and Malawi are in homosexual men. For whatever reason, the United States is the exception. The U.S. is without laws that are restrictive as those in China, but more than half of new HIV infections in the U.S. last year were in homosexuals. “‘It seems like we have come full circle’ in the United States, he said. ‘After almost no cases a few years ago we are seeing again this new peak among people who are not having access to all the information, the protection that is needed.’”
Source: The Associated Press
As the river continues to rise, officials in Fargo, North Dakota, have urged more people to help out. “More would be better, because it’s going to be crunch time,” Chad Martin told the Grand Forks Herald. “I don’t see this as insurmountable yet, but it’s nice to have this all in the bag.” Literally. Volunteers are needed to help fill and distribute sandbags around the city to avoid the kind of damage that was sustained last year. “In Fargo, high school students will be bused from schools to dike-building sites and middle school students will be bused to ‘Sandbag Central’ to fill sandbags,” the Grand Forks Herald reported. Last year, dozens of homes were damaged and thousands evacuated from the area “after the Red River rose above the flood stage for a record 61 days and crested twice,” the Associated Press reported. “Officials say they are better prepared this year for flooding thanks to early stockpiling of sandbags and the building of stronger levees across the region.”
Source: The Grand Forks Herald
Michael Jackson, even in death, has broken another record. The late pop star’s estate “has signed the biggest deal ever in music — worth up to $250 million with a guarantee of $200 million,” TMZ reported. John Branca and John McClain, the executors of Jackson’s estate, inked the deal with Sony Music Entertainment, giving the label all rights for 10 projects over the next seven years. “One album will debut in November, which contains never-before released recordings. We’re told Jackson left enough for at least three albums of fresh material,” TMZ reported. “A source tells TMZ the royalty rate on foreign sales is the key to the deal — and 2/3 of the sales of MJ records traditionally have been outside the U.S.” Sony will also keep the exclusive rights to Jackson’s catalog through 2017.
Source: TMZ
After being nominated seven times, Iggy Pop’s the Stooges have finally been accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Introducing the group, Billie Joe Armstrong, the frontman of Green Day, described Pop, 62, as “the most confrontational singer we will ever see.” The Stooges were not the only group to enter the Hall of Fame on Monday night. Joining them were “Swedish pop group ABBA, the reggae songwriter Jimmy Cliff and two English bands, Genesis and the Hollies,” the New York Times reported. “All but ABBA, which coalesced in the early 1970s, have careers dating back to the 1960s.” Members of popular groups aren’t the only ones in the music industry that are honored; songwriters and executives can be inducted into the Hall as well. The 25th annual induction ceremony saw the addition of songwriters Jesse Stone, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, Otis Blackwell, Mort Shuman, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil as well as David Geffen, founder of Dreamworks Records.
Source: The New York Times
Cyclone Tomas, producing gusts of up to 175 mph, is relentless. Tomas has been battering Fiji as a Category 4 storm all day and isn’t expected to be downgraded to a Category 3 until late Tuesday. “Fiji declared a state of emergency Tuesday and ordered troops to launch relief operations in northern regions,” the Associated Press reported. The cyclone has killed at least one and cut power over wide swaths of land, forcing thousands of individuals to flee their homes. “[T]he scope of destruction was not clear because communications were cut to the outer islands and to northern areas of Vanua Levu, the group’s second-biggest island, that were hardest hit, officials said.” Troops will begin deploying relief, including water, food and other basic supplies, immediately. The state of emergency will remain in effect for 30 days.
Source: The Associated Press
The wait is over. John McCain’s former running mate, Sarah Palin, will be joining the Arizona Senator in his home state next week to help draw attention to his reelection campaign. “The former Republican presidential candidate is facing the toughest re-election battle of his Senate career,” the Associated Press reported. “Former Arizona Congressman and talk-radio host JD Hayworth is challenging McCain in the Republican primary.” McCain and Palin will appear together are a rally in Tucson on March 26 and at a rally in Mesa, a suburb of Phoenix, on March 27.
Source: The Associated Press
A small plane making an emergency landing hit and killed a man who was walking or jogging on the beach outside of Hilton Head. The single-engine plane “experienced trouble over the water about an hour and a half after leaving Orlando Executive Airport in Florida, bound for Norfolk, Va.,” the Hilton Head Island Packet reported. “The aircraft was flying at about 13,000 feet when air traffic controllers told the pilot to land at Hilton Head Airport.” Before the two men in the plane could reach the airport the propeller came off, forcing an emergency landing on the beach, but an oil leak was blocking their field of vision. The pilot and passenger were not injured and no other injuries have been reported; the deceased man has not been identified. “The NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] will lead the investigation and determined the probable cause of the crash,” the Island Packet reported. It is unclear whether anyone will face charges.
Source: The Hilton Head Island Packet
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PRESIDENT OBAMA’S Middle East diplomacy failed in his first year in part because he chose to engage in an unnecessary and unwinnable public confrontation with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Over the past six months Mr. Obama’s envoys gingerly retreated from that fight and worked to build better relations with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Last week the administration finally managed to strike a deal for the launching ofindirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. So it has been startling — and a little puzzling — to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state.
True, this U.S.-Israel crisis began with a provocation from Jerusalem: the announcement by the Interior Ministry of plans for 1,600 more Jewish homes beyond Israel’s 1967 border. Vice President Biden, who was visiting when the news broke, was embarrassed; he quickly responded with a statement of condemnation. He then appeared to accept the public apology of Mr. Netanyahu, who said he, too, had been surprised by the announcement.
The dispute’s dramatic escalation since then seems to have come at the direct impetus of Mr. Obama. Officials said he outlined points for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to make in a searing, 45-minute phone call to Mr. Netanyahu on Friday. On Sunday senior Obama adviser David Axelrod heaped on more vitriol, saying in a television appearance that the settlement announcement had been an “affront” and an “insult” that had “undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region.”
Mr. Obama and his advisers appear determined to prove that they will not be pushed around by Israel. The public scoldings also send a message to Palestinian and Arab leaders who have been demanding assurances that the United States will use its leverage in the new peace negotiations. And the administration hopes to extract immediate concessions from Mr. Netanyahu: It has demanded that he reverse the Jerusalem settlement decision, release Palestinian prisoners, agree to cover sensitive “final status” issues in the indirect talks and investigate the errant settlement announcement.
Mr. Netanyahu already has conceded the last point and may give way on others; he is facing harsh domestic criticism. But Mr. Obama risks repeating his previous error. American chastising of Israel invariably prompts still harsher rhetoric, and elevated demands, from Palestinian and other Arab leaders. Rather than join peace talks, Palestinians will now wait to see what unilateral Israeli steps Washington forces. Mr. Netanyahu already has made a couple of concessions in the past year, including declaring a partial moratorium on settlements. But on the question of Jerusalem, he is likely to dig in his heels — as would any other Israeli government. If the White House insists on a reversal of the settlement decision, or allows Palestinians to do so, it might land in the same corner from which it just extricated itself.
A larger question concerns Mr. Obama’s quickness to bludgeon the Israeli government. He is not the first president to do so; in fact, he is not even the first to be hard on Mr. Netanyahu. But tough tactics don’t always work: Last year Israelis rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu, while Mr. Obama’s poll ratings in Israel plunged to the single digits. The president is perceived by many Israelis as making unprecedented demands on their government while overlooking the intransigence of Palestinian and Arab leaders. If this episode reinforces that image, Mr. Obama will accomplish the opposite of what he intends.
