Syrian refugee among guests for State of Union
WASHINGTON – A Syrian refugee is among those invited to sit in first lady Michelle Obama’s visitor box to watch the State of the Union address on Tuesday.
The Obama administration has invited Refaai Hamo of Troy, Michigan, to exemplify the refugees’ plight.
The White House says a missile tore through the complex Hamo designed and where his family lived in Syria. Seven family members died in the blast. He arrived in Michigan with three daughters and a son in December.
Several veterans, the governor of Connecticut and Microsoft’s chief executive will be among the other guests. One seat representing victims of gun violence will be vacant.
Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates have upped their criticism of accepting more Syrian refugees under the current vetting process.
Terror suspect lived with asylum seekers in Germany
BERLIN - The Islamist extremist who staged a failed attack on a Paris police station last week had been living in a home for asylum seekers in western Germany, police said, deepening fears that militants may be infiltrating Europe disguised as migrants.
Revelations that the assailant - fatally shot by French authorities on Thursday as he approached a police station with a butcher knife and a fake suicide vest - was trying to pass off as an asylum seeker is likely to trigger further debate about the vetting and processing of hundreds of thousands of newcomers seeking sanctuary in Europe from the war-torn Middle East. The man had gone under several aliases, and at one point he claimed to be from Syria, according to German news reports.
Several assailants in the Nov. 13 attacks on Paris that killed 130 people also are thought to have used the same routes being traveled by a record number of asylum seekers and economic migrants. They include at least two attackers who entered Europe posing as Syrian asylum seekers on the Greek island of Leros.
Age of the Supreme Court close to new record high
WASHINGTON – Now that it is an election year, it is time to play perhaps the most macabre game in Washington politics: When will the Supreme Court retire? And to answer that question, we really want to ask: How old are the justices on the Supreme Court?
The thing about time is that it is unrelenting. Five years ago at this point, shortly after Elena Kagan was nominated by President Barack Obama, the average age of Supreme Court justices was just over 64. If you managed to nail down basic arithmetic, you’ll deduce that the average age at this moment is just over 69.
The average age at which justices retire is 78.7. Right at this moment, three justices are over that mark: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.
Since 1789, the average age of the court on the whole has crept upward, although not terribly quickly. It rose, then plummeted right before World War II, then rose again. The highest average age of every justice serving in a year at the end of that year was in 1936 . The second highest was in the 1980s, and the third highest is now. (Or, really, at the end of this year.)But over the past century, the life expectancy of Americans has climbed. That’s for all Americans, mind you; now that women sit on the court with regularity, the court could get older still, since women live longer than men.
Associated Press & Washington Post
