NPR 2008-12-09

President Bush today said any plan designed to bail 1 out the nation's domestic automakers must be examined to ensure they can survive over the long term and the taxpayer 2 dollars get paid back. In an interview with ABC, Mr. Bush says all aspects of the companies need to be reexamined. President's remarks followed a word of a tentative agreement between Congress and the White House to move on a 15-billion-dollar financial rescue plan for the industry, a plan that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says won't come without accountability. "If they don't meet the conditions of restructuring and the rest, there is not going to be an endless flow of money, to this industry to continue, left to their own devices, the practices they have been engaged in." The proposed measure will still have to be voted on by Congress and would demand the industry restructure itself but also place an overseer appointed by the president in charge of monitoring the effort.

Five private security guards have been charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting deaths of 14 Iraqi civilians 3 in Baghdad last year. The Justice Department unsealed the indictment 5 today after the accused men surrendered in Utah. From Salt Lake City, NPR's Howard Berkes reports.

The Justice Department says the five Blackwater guards fired a grenade into a girl school, shot an unarmed civilian 4 point-blank as he held his hands high and used machine guns on bystanders. None were armed or insurgents 6, prosecutors 7 say, so the five faced 35 counts of voluntary manslaughter and other charges. A sixth Blackwater guard has already pleaded guilty. The incident occurred last year in a busy Baghdad intersection 8. The guards who surrendered in Salt Lake City are trying to get the case moved to Utah where they think they will find sympathetic jurors. They say they were attacked before they opened fire. The Justice Department says the shooting was unjustified and unprovoked. A key issue in the case is whether the guards were under military jurisdiction 9 since they worked under contract for the State Department. Howard Berkes NPR News, Salt Lake City.

President-elect Barack Obama is being encouraged to do more to prevent genocide and mass atrocities 10. He's getting the advice from former Cabinet Secretary who has some experience in the Balkans and Rwanda. NPR's Michele Kelemen has more.

Former Defense 11 Secretary William Perry says preventing genocide is not only a moral issue, but an issue of national security. "What we hope to do is to have the president of United States embrace the thing, this is a matter of national importance to us, and then we have a secretary of defense who will then give direction to the military to say, that this is something that we have to prepare for and train for." Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says the report recommends that Mr. Obama set up a team in the White House to focus on these issues and to set aside 250 million dollars a year to help prevent conflicts. Michele Keleman, NPR News, Washington.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 298 points, ending the session at 8, 934. The NASDAQ was up 62 points. The S&P 500 rose 33 points today.

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Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich today ordered all of the state agencies to stop doing business with Bank of American. The governor's order came in response to a sit-in at a Chicago plant by workers from the Republic Windows and Doors. The workers launched the sit-in in the company Friday demanding assurances they will receive severance 12 and vocation 13 pay. Union officials said they were told by the company it was forced to close the plant after Bank of American withdrew financing. The move by the Illinois governor is under pressure. Bank of America which, like other financial firms, has received government bailout money to help the business.

Women with the most serious kind of heart attack die more often than men. That's a conclusion of a new study involving more than 78, 000 patients. NPR's Richard Knox reports.

Women hospitalized with the most dangerous kind of heart attacks die 12% more often than men after taking into account age, weight, race, blood pressure, and a variety of other risk factors. The findings appear in Circulation, a journal published by the American Heart Association. Study authors found that women were much less likely to receive clot-busting drugs following the most life-threatening kind of heart attacks. Women were also less likely to have angioplasty to clear blocked arteries 14 or to receive recommended drugs. And when they did get the right treatment it was often delayed. One reason the authors say is that women and their doctors are not as quick to recognize there are heart attack symptoms. Richard Knox, NPR News.

Speaking today at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia, President Bush said the US will continue to face a terrorist threat. The president said the best way to counter that is to keep the pressure on constantly. Mr. Bush thanked employees of the center outside Washington which served as a primary hub but now serves for foreign intelligence.