Obama’s Tangled History With Supreme Court Sets Stage for Nominee Fight

WASHINGTON — The first time President Obama sat down to pick a new Supreme Court justice, surprised aides discovered that he had gone beyond the briefing memos to read the leading candidate’s past judicial rulings. The president, a onetime constitutional law teacher, was in his element, a “legal nerd,” as one aide called him, putting theory into practice.

But if nothing else, the last seven years have made clear to Mr. Obama that the Supreme Court is anything but a nerdy, academic exercise. His currentstandoff with the Senate over replacing Justice Antonin Scalia culminates a profoundly consequential struggle over not just the law, but power, politics and his legacy.

Ted Cruz Fights in Texas, Hoping It Won’t Be His Alamo

HOUSTON — Senator Ted Cruz cannot stop talking about the Alamo.

He is always eager to twang, delivering his best stump-speech impression of a West Texas farmer. He boasted recently that he knew how to “shoot me a bird.”

“I cannot wait to get home,” he told voters in Nevada, unsubtly, after a disappointing third-place finish in the caucuses there, “to the great state of Texas.”

Torture Questions Stalk Sheikh Who Would Lead World Soccer

ZURICH — Nothing rocked international soccer quite like the waves of arrests across several continents last year, as the United States announced bribery and corruption charges against the men running the world’s biggest and richest sport. But as the organization that governs global soccer gathers this week to choose a new president, the leading contender risks stoking another source of controversy for the sport: human rights.

The election is here on Friday, and Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim al-Khalifa, a member of the ruling family of Bahrain and the president of the governing body for soccer in Asia, might already have the support of a commanding number of voting countries, making him the favorite to replace Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA.

Apple Sees Value in Its Stand to Protect Security

SAN FRANCISCO — It took six years for Apple to persuade China’s largest wireless carrier, China Mobile, to sell the iPhone. Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, made repeated trips to China to meet with top government officials and executives to woo them personally.

The persistence paid off. In 2013,China Mobile relented, a moment Mr. Cook later described as “a watershed day” for Apple.