Supreme Court upholds individual mandate, ObamaCare survives

Published June 28, 2012 | FoxNews.com

The Supreme Court has upheld the centerpiece of President Obama's health care overhaul, in effect allowing the law to survive.

In a 5-4 decision unveiled Thursday, the court ruled as constitutional the so-called individual mandate requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance starting in 2014.

The ruling is a victory for the president, ensuring for now that his signature domestic policy achievement remains mostly intact. It also ensures that the law will play a prominent role in the general election campaign, as Republican candidate Mitt Romney vows to repeal the law if elected.

After the ruling, Obama said the Supreme Court's decision was a victory for the American people.

(CNN 11/08/13) -- More than 100 people were killed in a major Philippine coastal city that took the brunt of Super Typhoon Haiyan, authorities said Saturday.

That death toll in Tacloban was the first significant casualty report in a day when authorities began surveying the devastation of a typhoon that has been described as perhaps the strongest storm ever to make landfall in recorded history.

The airport terminal was "completely destroyed," and shell-shocked Filipinos were gathering around the airport with the anticipation that the military was bringing food, water and medicine, Hancocks said.

Officials told her that the water surge reached the second story of structures, she said. There were at least two bodies at the airport, she added.

Every tree was flattened or snapped in half, and the timber landed on roads, blocking transportation, she said.

"You assume as you go inland you'll find more people who are injured or who have lost their lives," Hancocks said.

From the plane, she said, "you could see a lot of groundwater on the land itself, and pretty much every single tree was damaged.

"That showed the sheer force of the surge and the wind," she said. "On the ocean front, you can see the defenses were damaged."

Residents waded through waist-high water in the streets Saturday. Vehicles were turned over or piled on one another. Fallen utility poles were in the middle of roads.

Philippine officials feared the death toll would grow.

The destruction is expected to be catastrophic. Storm clouds covered the entire Philippines, stretching 1,120 miles -- equal to a distance between Florida and Canada. The deadly wind field, or tropical storm force winds, covered an area the size of Montana or Germany.

The typhoon first roared onto the country's eastern island of Samar at 4:30 a.m. Friday, flooding streets and knocking out power and communications in many areas of the region of Eastern Visayas, and then continued its march, barreling into five other Philippine islands.

Then, predawn Saturday, it headed toward Vietnam.

Haiyan weakened Saturday and was no longer a super typhoon, rather a typhoon with sustained winds of 130 mph. But the storm could return to super typhoon status Saturday. The center of Haiyan will land again Sunday morning near the Vietnamese cities of Da Nang and Hue.

While delivering 195 mph winds with gusts reaching even 235 mph, Haiyan first landed near Dulag and Tacloban, flooding those coastal communities with a surge of water rising 40 to 50 feet, said CNN's Chad Myers.

Tacloban is the largest city in the Eastern Visayan Islands and was an important Allied logistical base during World War II, even serving as a temporary capital of the Philippines. But on Saturday, Tacloban was considered as among the areas worst hit by Haiyan, and authorities and relief agencies had no immediate information about its condition.

For purposes of comparison, Super Typhoon Haiyan packed a wallop on Philippine structures 3.5 times more forceful than the United States's Hurricane Katrina in 2005, which directly or indirectly killed 1,833 people and was the costliest hurricane in U.S. history at $108 billion, Myers said.

The Philippine Coast Guard reported 3,398 people were stranded on multiple watercraft early Saturday morning.

Winds unlike any other

After the storm passed over his family's home in Cebu City, Chris Ducker told CNN by phone Saturday that his family was safe, but "it's been quite a harrowing day to say the least." Part of his roof was ripped off, leaking water, he said.

When Haiyan hit Cebu City on Friday morning, it awakened Ducker.

"I've never experienced winds like this in my entire existence. I've lived in this country for 13 years and I've been through a few earthquakes, I've been through plenty of these storms. We get hit quite regularly with storms, as you probably already know. But, yes, this was something else. The rain, when I looked out of the window, the rain wasn't falling. The rain was being pushed almost at, you know, a 100-degree angle right in front of our house. It was pretty incredible," he added.

The town of Santa Fe in Cebu saw 20% to 30% of its residents losing their houses, but officials weren't able to determine fatalities because roads were washed out and phone service was down, information officer Marvin Camay said on the province's Facebook page.

Now notice the similarity of the history of major water damages and tax revolts with ISON passing near the Earth: