NPR News 2012-08-07 加文本

NPR News 2012-08-07

From NPR News in Washington, I’m Lakshmi Singh.

Security is tighter in sea communities around the world a day after police say army veteran Wade Michael Page stormed a temple in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburb of Oak Creek and opened fire on worshipers. He killed six people and wounded three others before police shot and killed him. Amar Deep Kaleka tells WTMJ TV that he received a phone call from his mother while she was hiding in a closet with other women.

“She kept everybody as quiet as possible, and she kept everybody, she’s just communicating what they need, to communicate them. That person was still walking around, taking shot.”

Kaleka’s 65-year-old father Satwant Singh Kaleka, the temple’s president, was among those killed. NPR’s Tom Bowman says more details are now emerging about the gunman who authorities say may have had ties to white supremacy groups.

He had a few minor branches with the laws on misdemeanors in the mid-to-late 1990s in Colorado and Texas, driving under the influence of careless driving and criminal mischief. But again, no indications of any extremist behavior while he was in the army.

NPR’s Tom Bowman.

Police say the gunman in the Oak Creek shooting used a nine-millimeter handgun that he purchased legally. The rampage comes just over two weeks after a man opened fire at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. But President Obama says he reaffirms long-standing concerns about gun violence.

“These kinds of terrible, tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not to do some soul-searching and to examine additional ways that we can reduce violence.”

Mr. Obama told reporters today that Americans would recoil at the violence if ethnicity were a factor.

Former Government Mitt Romney has again outraced President Obama on campaign donations. Romney and the Republican National Committee say they pulled in 101 million dollars in July. The Obama camp raised 75 million.

In other news, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in South Africa today on the latest stop in her 11-country Africa tour. NPR’s John Burnett reports she met with anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela.

Clinton had a private lunch at the home with the 94-year-old former president in his village of Qunu in the country’s southeast. The aging Nobel laureate spent 27 years in prison fighting apartheid, and he’s now retired from public life. The secretary is spending three days, the longest portion of her trip in South Africa. Clinton leads a business delegation to three cities in South Africa, which is the leading market in Africa for American goods. On Sunday, the secretary was in Malawi, where she met with President Joyce Banda, only the second female African head of state. Clinton praised Banda’s economic reforms and told her the United States is firmly committed to supporting “this absolutely wonderful country.” John Burnett, NPR News, Nairobi.

Dow is up 22 points.

This is NPR News.

NASA’s most advanced interplanetary rover yet is beaming back photos from Mars and will continue to do so. Over the next several days, to the cheers and of course relief of engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. The robotic rover, known as Curiosity, made a delicate - some say daredevil - landing overnight on the red planet. It settled on the floor of a giant crater to embark on a two-year journey to search for signatures of life on Mars.

Gibson Guitar Corporation has reached a settlement with the Justice Department over its imports of rare wood. Prosecutors say Gibson will pay 300,000 dollars in penalties and turn over 50,000 dollars more to protect trees. NPR’s Carrie Johnson reports the case had attracted wide attention in Washington.

The Justice Department says Gibson knowingly violated the Lacey Act by importing unfinished ebony from Madagascar to make its instruments. It’s a crime to bring endangered plants and wood into the US, if the materials are protected under the laws of other countries. Under the terms of the deal, Gibson promises to beef up its compliance programs. The company had hired Washington lobbyists to fight the investigation, and congressional Republicans had used the case as a way to argue against what they called “over-regulation.” Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.

Well, the defending Olympic champion in the 50K race walk is banned from the London Games after testing positive for doping. The Italian Olympic Committee says Alex Schwazer failed a doping test before he arrived in London.

I’m Lakshmi Singh, NPR News in Washington.