BOCA RATON, Fla.

Obama touts tax-the-rich plan in speech to students

President Obama on Tuesday renewed his public push for the Buffett Rule, hoping that the proposal to raise taxes on millionaires will deepen distinctions with his political rivals in an election year, even if it has little chance to become law.

Appearing before thousands of students at Florida Atlantic University, Obama urged the Senate to approve the Paying a Fair Share Act, which would require anyone earning at least $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of his income in taxes.

“It’s wonderful when people are successful. That’s part of the American dream,” Obama told the enthusiastic crowd.

“But we have to understand the share of our national income going to the top 1 percent has climbed to levels we have not seen since the 1920s. The folks benefiting from this are paying taxes at the lowest rates in 50 years. That’s wrong. That’s not fair.”

The Senate is slated to vote Monday on the proposal, inspired by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who has said it is unfair that he is able to use tax loopholes to pay a lower effective rate than his secretary.

Although Obama did not mention his prospective GOP challenger, Mitt Romney, by name in his remarks Tuesday, the Obama campaign has been eager to  cast Romney, who earned a personal fortune as manager of a private equity firm, as out of touch with ordinary Americans.

Gail Gitcho, communications director for Romney’s campaign, said in a statement that Obama “has already raised taxes on millions of Americans, but he won’t stop there. He wants to raise taxes on millions more by taxing small businesses and job creators.”

NEW YORK

New England has lowest teen birth rates, report says

A new report finds that the New England states have some of the lowest teen birth rates in the nation.
Nearly every state in the nation saw a decline in teen births from 2007 to 2010.

The authors of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Tuesday said the teen declines have been attributed to pregnancy prevention efforts. They noted that a recent government survey showed more use of contraception by teenagers.

The lowest 2010 rate was in New Hampshire, which had 15.7 births per 1,000 teenage girls. Maine, with 21.4 births per 1,000 teenage girls, was 45th in the nation.

Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island were also in the bottom seven. Rhode Island, the highest of the New England states, had 22.3 births per 1,000 teenage girls.

The highest rate in the country is in Mississippi, which had 55 births per 1,000 teenage girls in 2010.

The CDC previously reported that U.S. births by mothers of all ages had dropped in 2010 for the third straight year.

LONDON

Court supports extradition of terror suspects to U.S.

A fiery Muslim cleric who celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks in sermons and allegedly tried to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon can be extradited to the United States from Britain, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Tuesday.

The court said Abu Hamza Masri and four other terrorism suspects could be sent to face trial in the U.S. without fear that they’d face “inhuman and degrading” conditions in a maximum-security prison if convicted.

The men had argued that they could be subject to solitary confinement for the rest of their lives in a so-called “supermax” prison in Colorado where many terrorism convicts are serving time.

The case is considered an important one for U.S.-Europe relations, because a ruling against extradition would have been tantamount to a denunciation of the American judicial and corrections system and could have dealt a blow to anti-terrorism cooperation across the Atlantic.
 

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