NPR News 2012-10-25 加文本

NPR News 2012-10-25

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

Mitt Romney is trying to win hearts and minds this hour in Nevada, a battleground state still recovering from one of the worst foreclosure and unemployment rates in the nation. His running mate Paul Ryan was in Ohio, where he promised a new White House would bring better days.

Mitt Romney and I believe in true compassion and upward mobility, and we are offering a vision based on real reforms for lifting people out of poverty. 

Also in Ohio, a state crucial to President Obama's reelection bid, Vice President Joe Biden is courting the women's vote.

One of our central missions is to make sure my daughter, his daughters, my four granddaughters have every single opportunity my sons have.

The Democrats are seizing on the latest political gaffe involving Republican Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. He said God intended pregnancies that resultfrom rape, a statement he later thought to clarify. The Romney campaign has said it disagrees with Mourdock, but it is still supporting his senate bid.

Federal Health officials the risk of meningitis will decline over the next 16 days among people who have received injections of a potentially contaminated steroid. NPR's Richard Knox reports no patient should have received the tainted drug since October 26th.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people who received it before then have no more than a one in five chance of developing meningitis now. That goes down with time, by November 8th, six weeks after the recall, the risk will fall to no more than 1/100. These are maximum risks, the CDC says. Most patients' risk will be much lower. The CDC says nobody should get anti-fungal drugs if they don't have symptoms of infection. One exception, people would elevate it by blood cells in their spinal fluid. Doctors might consider treating them to lower their risk of stroke. Richard Knox, NPR News.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Feds Policy Making Federal Open Market committee, has concluded two days of meetings in Washington. Steve Beckner of Market News International reports that the group is holding off on injecting any further monetary stimulus into the economy for now.

Bernanke concedes there is only so much even an aggressive central bank like the Fed can do. So the Fed is taking a wait-and-see approach just over a month after launching a third round of bond buying to lower long-term interest rates and further delaying short term rate hikes. But the Fed is leaving the door open for more quantitative easing, calling unemployment elevated and predicting inflation will stay low. It reaffirms plans to buy $40 billion of mortgage-back securities per month till it sees substantial job market improvement and says it could buy more. It vows again to hold rates down even after the economic recovery strengthens. For NPR News, I'm Steve Beckner, in Washington.

At last check on Wall Street, the Dow was down six points at 13,097.

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Some big companies posted stronger profits. Boeing has risen nearly 2% after reporting better than expected profits because of a jumping commercial plane deliveries. Shares of the social network site Facebook were lifted as well by news that it grew its mobile advertising revenue in the third quarter. The market has also reacted to upbeat economic indicators from China. But as we are saying the Dow is down 17 points at 13,72; Nasdaq off five points at 2,985; and the S&P 500 down slightly at 1,410;

Another news, the Justice Department has filed the lawsuit accusing Mississippi of violating the due process rights of juveniles. The Federal government says officials in the state operate a school-to-prison pipeline. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports the state system mostly hurts children who are African-American or disabled.

Civil rights lawyers at the Justice Department say too many children in Mississippi are handcuffed and arrested at school without any probable cause. Other kids can wait more than two days for hearing or are never informed of their rights to a lawyer. Justice says this violates the children's fourth, fifth and fourteenth amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution. Federal authorities started investigating in December 2011. They say they sued because they couldn't reach an agreement with state and local agencies in Mississippi to cure the problems. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.

Authorities say the so-called millennium bomber has been sentenced to 37 years in prison for plotting to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. The Algerian native Ahmed Ressam was arrested in December of 1999.

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