Court prepares to take on health-care law

Court prepares to take on health-care law

WASHINGTON

Supreme Court justices appear poised to thrust themselves and the Obama administration’s signature health-care law smack into the middle of the 2012 election.

As early as Monday, after a closed-door session last week, the justices will reveal whether they will consider one or more challenges to the law. If they do, as every court watcher expects, the program that opponents call “Obamacare” will dominate both the legal and political docket throughout the election year.

“This decision could come right in the middle of everything,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of politics and international relations at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

Arab League votes to suspend Syria

CAIRO

In a surprisingly sharp move, the Arab League voted Saturday to suspend Syria over the country’s bloody crackdown on an eight-month uprising and stepped up calls on the army to stop killing civilians.

The decision was a humiliating blow to a regime that prides itself as a bastion of Arab nationalism, but it was unlikely to immediately end a wave of violence that the U.N. estimates has killed more than 3,500 people since mid-March.

“Syria is a dear country for all of us, and it pains us to make this decision,” Qatar’s Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim told reporters. “We hope there will be a brave move from Syria to stop the violence and begin a real dialogue toward real reform.”

Deaths at protests put pressure on movement

OAKLAND, Calif.

Oakland officials twice have issued eviction notices to an anti-Wall Street encampment, and officials elsewhere urged an end to similar gatherings as pressures against Occupy protest sites mounted in the wake of three deaths in different cities, including two by gunfire.

For the second time in as many days, Oakland city officials warned protesters Saturday that they do not have the right to camp in the plaza overnight and face immediate arrest and the removal of their tents, stoves, sleeping bags and other belongings.

Police and a city official did not respond to requests to comment on whether police were preparing to forcibly clear the camp.

The city issued the same eviction notice a day earlier after first pleading with protesters to leave the encampment, where a man was shot and killed Thursday.

The Oakland shooting occurred the same day a 35-year-old military veteran apparently shot himself to death in a tent at a Burlington, Vt., Occupy encampment.

Iran exile group claims blast hit missile base

WASHINGTON

An explosion at a Revolutionary Guard ammunition depot west of Tehran on Saturday killed at least 17 soldiers, including a senior commander of the powerful military force, Iranian officials said.

Guard spokesman Gen. Ramazan Sharif said the blast occurred as the result of an accident during the transport of munitions at the base. The site is located outside Bidganeh village, 25 miles southwest of the capital. An exiled Iranian dissident group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq or MEK, meanwhile claimed that the blast hit a missile base run by the Revolutionary guard rather than an ammunition depot.

Combined dispatches