NPR News 2015-03-15 加文本

NPR News 2015-03-15

From NPR News in Washington, I’m Jack Speer.

Police investigating the shootings of two officers in the town of Ferguson, Missouri say they are following dozens of leads. However, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar at a news conference today says he can’t say they are close to determining who’s responsible.

“I cannot tell you at this point that an arrest is imminent. There is certainly nobody in custody. And when we get to the point to what we feel like that we have active leads, if we can do anything through you to have the community assist us, we’ll certainly let you know.”

Belmar says it’s unclear what type of handgun may have been involved and whether the shooter was deliberately aiming at police. The two wounded officers are out of the hospital. The shootings occurred earlier this week during one of the series of protests in the town after last summer’s shooting of a black 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer.

President Obama visited a VA facility in Arizona at the center of last year’s scandal involving long wait times and secret waiting lists. As NPR’s Tamara Keith explains, the president says the agency is chipping away at the problems.

President Obama was blunt in describing the problems that plagued the Phoenix VA facility.

“The kind of cooking the books and unwillingness to face up to the fact that veterans were not being adequately served went on too long.”

Obama made his remarks after meeting with Veterans Affairs Department leaders, members of Congress and representatives from veteran service organizations. As part of his visit, Obama announced a new VA advisory panel. Republican Senator John McCain from Arizona was unimpressed.

“Appointing another committee or a council is not gonna do the job.”

The main complaint of lawmakers is that a VA reform act has not been well implemented. Tamara Keith, NPR News.

A reenactment of the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery concluded today on the steps of the state’s Capitol, where participants were met by Alabama’s Governor Robert Bentley. As Troy Public Radio’s Kyle Gassiott reports, rain forced the scheduled rally indoors to the church where Martin Luther King Jr. served as pastor.

The sanctuary of the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church echoed with shouts and applause as names of those who participated in the 1965 march were called. Standing in the same place where King stood, speakers like US Representative Terri Sewell from Selma spoke passionately about the need to restore portions of the Voting Rights Act, which have been removed by the Supreme Court.

“It’s not enough that 100 members of Congress - Republican and Democrat - gathered in Selma on one day. We must go back to the halls of Congress and restore the Voting Rights Act.”

Members of the KKK protested the five-day march by distributing thousands of recruitment flyers across Selma and Montgomery. For NPR News, I’m Kyle Gassiott in Montgomery.

Well, it’s been an up and down week on Wall Street. It ended with stocks settling on the down side. The Dow dropped 153 points today. You’re listening to NPR.

France announced today it has realigned its military efforts to some extent to deal with the fight against the Islamist militant group Boko Haram, including providing military intelligence to some of the African countries that are battling the group. France says it is continuing to support in offensive led by Chad in cooperation with Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria. Around 30 French troops are deployed near the Nigerian border and French jets have also overflown the area.

This year’s winners of the National Book Critics Circle Awards may still be basking in the recognition. NPR’s Lynn Neary says that wedged between the glitzier National Book Awards and the more prominent Pulitzer. The NBCC awards announced last night give some 700 reviewers and editors their chance to anoint the best books of the year.

To anyone who paid attention to the books that came out last year, the names of the NBCC winners were familiar. They’d already been nominated for or won some well-known literary awards. Marilynne Robinson walked away with a fiction award for her novel Lila, the last book in her trilogy that began with Gilead, which won the same critics award in 2005. Roz Chast won in the autobiography category for her graphic memoir Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant. The award for non-fiction went to David Brion Davis for The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation. John Lahr won for his biography of Tennessee Williams. And Poet Claudia Rankine won for Citizen: An American Lyric. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.

A new study by the International Energy Agency is finding that global carbon emissions were stable last year, even though the world economy grew. According to the Paris-based group, the energy sector last year produced more than 32 billion tons of carbon dioxide - about the same as in 2013.

I’m Jack Speer, NPR News in Washington.