Link: http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/TPV3/Voices.php/2010/03/19/why-we-reform-1

One way or another, the fate of health care reform is going to be decided in the next few days. If House Democratic leaders find 216 votes, reform will almost immediately become the law of the land. If they don’t, reform may well be put off for many years — possibly a decade or more.

Link: http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=courierpostonline&sParam=33053469.story

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Wednesday took to the Fox News Channel, derided by his White House as a wing of the Republican Party, to sell his embattled health care overhaul in an interview punctuated with interruptions from the host and chiding from the guest.

Link: http://www.afp.com/afpcom/en/taglibrary/thematic/economy

US President Barack Obama signs the HIRE Act, a 17.6 billion dollar jobs bill that encourages businesses to hire workers, alongside lawmakers during a ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, DC on Thursday. The legislation includes tax breaks for businesses that hire new workers and infrastructure investments.

Link: http://www.seattlepi.com/business/1310ap_us_immigration.html?source=mypi

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, facing criticism from advocates of immigration reform, pledged Thursday "to do everything in my power" to get immigration legislation moving in Congress this year.

Link: http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/chinese-asking-us-look-other-way

The Chinese government is fiercely resisting U.S. and international pressure to allow its currency to appreciate to a market-based level, launching an offensive on multiple fronts to try and discredit the allegations, garner international sympathy and lobby behind the scenes to prevent any action from being taken.

Link: http://www.economyincrisis.org/

“Joint venture agreements that allow American jobs to be outsourced in the midst of attempting to recover from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression cannot be allowed. Now is not the time to make it easier to ship jobs overseas,” Rep. Tim Bishop said.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/business/19toyota.html?ref=us

Federal safety regulators investigating the crash of a Toyota Prius in suburban New York said Thursday that the car’s computer showed no evidence of braking by the driver at the time of the crash.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/us/19jane.html?ref=us

The Pennsylvania woman accused of recruiting men on the Internet to wage jihad in southern Asia and Europe pleaded not guilty Thursday to all counts in federal court in Philadelphia.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2010/mar2010/illi-m18.shtml

As the budget crisis in Illinois deepens, the state government is more openly seeking to use its deficits to push through long-planned attacks on the working class. Many of the measures being planned will severely impact students and youth, as well as teachers and educational workers, both active and retired.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/03/20103181762775614.html

Barack Obama, the US president, has postponed his trip to Indonesia and Australia in an attempt to push his historic healthcare reform bill through Congress.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/03/2010318153714888868.html

Russia and the United States have made "substantial progress" in negotiating a new nuclear arms disarmament deal, the US secretary of state has said.

Link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2010-03-16-military-drugs_N.htm

WASHINGTON — The military is trying to curb the volume of narcotics given to troops as the number of prescriptions for painkillers and instances of drug abuse continue to soar, according to Pentagon data and recent congressional testimony.

Link: http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=courierpostonline&sParam=33046397.story

WASHINGTON — The growing front in the war on terrorism may be no farther than Main Street. The terror cases that have emerged in the past week have one common characteristic: The suspects are all Americans. One is a woman who looked after the elderly in suburban Pennsylvania. Another a security guard from New Jersey.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7066109.ece

An Ivy League university set among gorges is battling a reputation as a “suicide school” after a spate of student deaths. Six students have died in suspected suicides so far this academic year at Cornell University in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.