| | March 26, 2012 | | ARGUMENTS Today’s the day. The Supreme Court justices are poised to hear the first arguments on a challenge to President Obama’s health-care reform on Monday, setting up a high-stakes ruling that could set the agenda for fall’s election. Was it a political misstep for Obama to spend so much political capital? The Daily Beast’s Eric Alterman talks to the people who helped craft the law. TENSE President Obama declared in South Korea Monday that the Koreans are “one people,” even as the country braced itself for a threatened missile test by the North. The president is in South Korea as part of a nuclear-nonproliferation summit. While the North has ignored repeated international urgings to quit its nuclear ambitions, the South warned that it will shoot down any test missiles that come into its airspace. Japan has also prepared missile defense systems in preparation for the planned launch, which North Korean leaders have said is part of preparation for a space program. HEARTBREAK The parents of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, shot by a neighborhood-watch volunteer a month ago, will return to Sanford, Fla., Monday to speak. The slow-simmering case was brought to a boil in part through celebrities’ efforts, and Martin’s parents will be flanked by Baltimore Ravens player Ray Lewis and basketball legend Patrick Ewing when they speak at a city meeting Monday. Civil-rights leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson have also spoken in support of the family, and Jackson said Sunday that “we as a nation have become much too violent.” CHILLING A man was arrested in the San Francisco Monday and booked on murder counts in the investigation of five brutal slayings that police at first thought included a murder-suicide. “This was a complex crime scene,” city Police Chief Greg Suhr said. “We didn’t know what we had.” The 35-year-old suspect, Binh Thai Luc, was taken in by police Sunday. While the exact cause of death in the murders has not yet been determined, police said 40 investigators are working on the case, which began after a woman found the five bodies in a house Friday. VICTIM An Afghan police official said Monday that the U.S. military has charged Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales with killing an unborn baby in the March 11 slayings of Afghan villagers. The fatality count had been reported as either 16 or 17, but the official said that the higher count put forward by the American military is correct, because one of the victims was pregnant. Some Afghan officials still contest the military’s count, and the military has not yet commented on the police official’s statement. | |
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