Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Protester interrupts Obama speech
SAN FRANCISCO
A deportation protester confronted President Barack Obama, saying his family has been separated for 19 years and urged him to use executive powers to help immigrants living illegally in the United States.
The young man was standing behind Obama during the president’s speech Monday, part of a selected audience that served as the backdrop to the San Francisco event. The president renewed his call for Congress to overhaul immigration laws.
The protester and another heckler yelled, “Stop deportations!”
Obama countered that he must obey existing laws and cannot change them on his own. He said the easy way out is to yell and pretend that he can do something by violating current law.
Obama told his security detail to leave the protester and the heckler alone.
High court weighs health law dispute
WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama’s health care law is headed for a new Supreme Court showdown over companies’ religious objections to the law’s birth-control mandate.
Amid the troubled rollout of the health law, and 17 months after the justices upheld it, the Obama administration is defending a provision that requires most employers that offer health insurance to their workers to provide a range of preventive health benefits, including contraception.
Roughly 40 for-profit companies have sued, arguing they should not be forced to cover some or all forms of birth control because doing so would violate their religious beliefs.
Both sides want the justices to settle an issue that has divided lower courts. The high court could announce its decision whether to take up the topic as early as today, after its closed-door meeting.
Possible hoax shuts down Yale campus
NEW HAVEN, Conn.
Yale University was locked down for nearly six hours Monday as authorities investigated a phone call saying an armed man was heading to shoot up the school, a warning they later said was likely a hoax.
SWAT teams searching the Ivy League campus did not find a gunman after a room-by-room search, and the lockdown was lifted Monday afternoon. No one was injured, police said.
Berlusconi fights to keep office
ROME
Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi begged his fellow senators on Monday not to kick him out of Parliament, claiming new evidence proves he didn’t commit the tax fraud that has threatened his political future.
In a last-ditch bid to stave off a Senate vote that could keep him out of public office for years, Berlusconi claimed that new affidavits from 12 witnesses and 15,000 pages of documentation from Hong Kong prove he is innocent.
The claim is legally moot: Berlusconi’s conviction for tax fraud has been upheld by Italy’s highest court, and such rulings are final.
Head of Fla. GOP calls for resignation
MIAMI
The chairman of the Republican Party of Florida is calling for U.S. Rep. Trey Radel to step down after his recent cocaine conviction.
Chairman Lenny Curry said Radel should resign and devote his time to rehabilitation and his family.
Radel pleaded guilty to cocaine possession last week. On Oct. 29, Radel attempted to buy $250 worth of cocaine from an undercover police officer in a Washington, D.C., neighborhood.
Associated Press