Midday Roundup: Obama finally agrees to meet Pastor Saeed's family

In person. After trying for two years to get an audience with President Barack Obama, Nagmeh Abedini and her two children will meet with him today in their hometown of Boise, Idaho. Abedini’s husband, Iranian-American Pastor Saeed Abedini, has been imprisoned for his faith in Iran since 2012. The meeting comes after more than 100,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to meet with Abedini during his prescheduled trip to Boise. After learning of the meeting, Abedini said in a statement, “I have tried over the last two years to meet with the president or even get a phone call from him without success. It is truly an answer to prayer that he is coming to Boise, and it is a miracle that he is meeting with us.”

Embellished facts. The president seems to have exaggerated his claim Tuesday night in the State of the Union address that the United States has “risen from recession.” The job growth the president pointed to is mostly in part-time and low-wage work, according to fact checking by The Associated Press. And median household income in the United States is still 4.5 percent lower than when the recession officially began in December 2007. Obama also repackaged the facts about his conservation efforts to make his administration look greener. It’s true he has set aside more public land and water than any president in history, but only just recently. Until he expanded the Pacific Remote Islands National Monument—most of which covers the ocean— from 87,000 to 490,000 square miles last year, Obama was far behind his predecessors, including President George W. Bush.

Cheaters gonna cheat? The New England Patriots did use underinflated footballs when they crushed the Indianapolis Colts 45-7 in Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, ESPN reports. Letting some of the air out of the footballs would have allowed the Patriots to more easily grip and throw them. Each NFL team provides and uses its own footballs when it is on the offense. Officials inspect the balls two hours before game time, but that still leaves time to tamper with them. The Patriots will still play in the Super Bowl on Feb. 1, and many sports fans agree they could have beaten the Colts without the advantage of lighter footballs. But this latest incident has critics of the Patriots and the National Football League crying, “See! See!” and The Washington Post explains how the Patriots became the NFL’s least-trusted team.

Hospital shooting. A man entered Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the world-renowned hospital partner of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, and shot a cardiac surgeon to death before killing himself yesterday. The shooter, Stephen Pasceri, was not a patient of Dr. Michael J. Davidson, director of endovascular cardiac surgery. Police are not sure what led Pasceri to seek out and kill Davidson. Boston Police Commissioner William Evans said the investigation was “leading us to believe there was something in the past that upset this guy, that made him go in and look for this particular doctor.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.