The case stems from a malpractice and wrongful death lawsuit filed by Jeremy Stodghill in the 2006 death of his seven-month pregnant wife Lori at a Catholic hospital in Canon City, Colorado. Her twin fetuses also died.

Stodghill filed the suit against Colorado-based Catholic Health Initiatives, which operates hospitals in 14 states, claiming physicians made no effort to save the fetuses by performing a cesarean section.

In its defense, counsel for the hospital said that under Colorado law, a fetus is not a person and that the twins likely would not have survived even with an emergency C-section. In a letter, Denver Archbishop Samuel Aquila, Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan and Pueblo Bishop Fernando Isern said that Catholic institutions had "a duty to protect and foster human life", which they said begins at conception.

"No Catholic institution may legitimately work to undermine fundamental human dignity," the statement said.

The court found that the Senate was not truly in recess, for the purpose of a recess appointment, when Obama in January 2012 installed three nominees to the National Labor Relations Board. The nominees were facing stiff Republican opposition, and the appointments caused an uproar at the time.

Republicans argued that Obama undercut the Senate's power to confirm nominees because although most of its members were out of town, the Senate had not formally adjourned. In a surprisingly broad ruling, the three-judge panel rejected not only the NLRB appointments but any made while the Senate is in session but on a break. That could limit recess appointments to only a few weeks a year.

"If the decision stands, it would be a significant reduction of the president's recess power," said John Elwood, a Washington lawyer who was deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 through 2009. "This is a big, big decision for executive power," Elwood said. "It is one of the most important decisions in decades."

These remarks are disgusting, but they are neither shocking nor new. As a child growing up in a Muslim family, I constantly heard my mother, other relatives, and neighbors wish for the death of Jews, who were considered our darkest enemy. Our religious tutors and the preachers in our mosques set aside extra time to pray for the destruction of Jews.

For far too long the pervasive Middle Eastern qualification of Jews as murderers and bloodsuckers was dismissed in the West as an extreme view expressed by radical fringe groups. But it is not.

As the Islamists spread their influence through civil institutions, young people were nursed on hatred. In the wake of the Arab Spring, as the people take a chance on democracy, they and their new leadership want to see their ideals turned into policy. For too many of those who fought for their own liberation, one of those ideals is the end of peace with Israel. The United States must make clear to Morsi that this is not an option.

So many explanations have been offered for the failure of successive US administrations to achieve that peace, but the answer is in Morsi’s words. Why would one make peace with bloodsuckers and descendants of apes and monkeys?

Fresh data from the Bundesbank show that Anglo-German trade in goods and services soared to €153 billion in the first nine months of 2012, with both exports and imports booming at double-digit rates. David Marsh from the financial group OMFIF said the trade swing underlines a “sobering truth” that Germany’s fundamental interests are shifting away from the eurozone core as Berlin embraces the wider world.

Although rarely acclaimed, British suppliers and manufacturers are deeply integrated into the German industrial machine and enjoy the follow-through benefits of German exports to the rest of the world.

Mrs Merkel has quietly supported fellow conservative David Cameron, stepping in to prevent British isolation at EU summits. The two leaders have broadly similar views on open global trade, EU competition policy, and budget restraint. “It is clear that Merkel is going out on a limb to try to keep Britain in the EU,” said Holger Schmieding from Berenberg Bank.

The Cheesecake Factory's Bistro Shrimp Pasta, made with a butter and cream sauce and topped with battered, fried shrimp, has 3,120 calories and 89 grams of saturated fat and 1,090 milligrams of sodium, said CSPI, which said it confirmed nutritional data with companies on the list.

More than one-third of Americans are obese, and about 10 percent of the nation's healthcare bill is tied to obesity-related diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Barely into 2013, Mali and Algeria are new sites of hot war and chilling fear. Where the tumult that began in the Arab Spring will end is still as unclear as when it erupted — far from Davos — two years ago.

The challenge posed by the free flow of information in China went to the New Year streets in Guangzhou. Washington’s feuding politicians walked up to the brink before resolving not to jump off the so-called fiscal cliff. Europe seems to have averted a collapse of the euro, but even in Germany, growth is anaemic.

Crisis, in short, is the new normal.

The hope is that by reducing the incidence of obesity, the many health problems associated with it, such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes, will also become less common, thereby reducing healthcare costs — a major concern in an era in which governments either heavily subsidize or fully operate their nations’ healthcare systems.

“Obesity is the new global warming,” Wesley J Smith declared in a 2011 issue of the Weekly Standard. With the alleged threat of global warming increasingly being viewed with skepticism by the general public, he wrote, it seems clear that modern liberalism has devised a new strategy for imposing policies that it can’t attain through ordinary politicking.

• First, identify a crisis ostensibly caused by modern lifestyles and/or capitalism.

• Next, launch a multifaceted international response to prevent allegedly looming catastrophe.

• Third, act as if the desired policies are objective, scientific solutions.

• Fund it all by imposing onerous taxes on an expanding list of villainous enterprises, et voilà: Liberalism rides to the rescue.

And if the strategy fails on one front, as it appears to have with global warming, find another crisis and start again.

In order to emphasise his point he quoted from the Economist’s annual publication “The World in 2012” which was saying that: “If you were sitting down with a blank sheet of paper, you would advise the euro zone to complement its one-size-fits-all monetary policy by pooling sovereignty and creating new institutions. You would set up a European mini-IMF with enough funds to assist troubled countries that adjust their economies.

A pan-European banking regulator and a bail-out fund could ensure that large European banks were not at the mercy of their vulnerable sovereign borrowers. And, to stop governments from exploiting these mechanisms, euro-zone countries would agree to submit their fiscal policies to the say-so of everyone else. It amounts to a blueprint for the United States of Europe. And it is utterly beyond reach.”

Draghi stressed that during 2012, all of the issues mentioned in the article were addressed. For that reason, ECB’s Italian President said that the ambition [for the United States of Europe] is not utterly beyond reach and for that reason he used the words of Walter Hallstein, the first President of the European Commission, who once said: that “anyone who does not believe in miracles in European matters is not a realist.”

As usual, and in keeping with the high-minded tone of his speech, there were few policy specifics (the Washington Post's Brad Plumer has a good rundown of what might be feasible in the president's second term). What was interesting was how he framed the issue: not just as one of responsibility to future generations, but as one of responsibility to God. Here's what he said:

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms.

The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries — we must claim its promise. That is how we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure — our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That's what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared”.

If Obama were just paying lip service to climate change to please his backers on the left — as he has sometimes been accused of doing — the reference to "science" would have been quite sufficient. By bringing in God, he's attempting to reframe the issue as one that transcends not only partisanship but the divide between those who believe in science and those who doubt science but believe in God. Left or right, atheist or creationist — either way, Obama is saying, we've got to do something.