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control of their choice.
• The court meets for a final time Monday to release decisions in its two remaining cases before the justices take off for the summer. The cases involve birth control coverage under President Barack Obama's health law and fees paid to labor unions representing government employees by workers who object to being affiliated with a union.
• Two years after Chief Justice John Roberts cast the pivotal vote that saved the health care law in the midst of Obama's campaign for re-election, the justices are considering a sliver of the law.
• Employers must cover contraception for women at no extra charge among a range of preventive benefits in employee health plans. Dozens of companies, including the arts and crafts chain Hobby Lobby, claim religious objections to covering some or all contraceptives. The methods and devices at issue before the Supreme Court are those that Hobby Lobby and furniture maker Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. say can work after conception, the emergency contraceptives Plan B and ella, as well as intrauterine devices, which can cost up to $1,000.
• The Obama administration says insurance coverage for birth control is important to women's health and reduces the number of unwanted pregnancies, as well as abortions.
• ___
Coup after coup: Clash of values leaves Thailand unable to escape cycle of military takeovers
• BANGKOK (AP) -- Over the past decades, Chalad Worachat has resisted military regimes and dictatorial legislation by staging hunger strikes, five of them. Now the 71-year-old onetime parliamentarian is back on water and honey, despondent that after so many years and so much bloodshed, Thailand has been unable to break out of a cycle of military coups to achieve true democracy.
• "We are not moving toward full democracy. We're going backward to dictatorship," he said on the 25th day of his sixth fast, which he vows to continue until the latest military regime adopts democratic principles. Sallow-faced and dressed in black, he reclined on a mat spread over a curbside across the street from the Parliament building, now empty.
• Chalad has lain there before, sometimes to protest against individuals, at other times to stop moves like a 1983 bill that would have allowed unelected bureaucrats and military officers to become prime minister. But basically he has been fighting the (Continued on page 25)
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