NPR 2008-05-09

It’s feared the death toll 1 from Saturday’s storm in Myanmar will climb to as many as 100,000 people. And the country’s military government says there could be one million homeless from the cyclone 2 that hit five days ago. The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok, and he reports that the World Food Program is having limited success in efforts to fly in relief supplies to Myanmar.

 They’ve had a total of at least four aircraft that they thought they had permission to get into Burma today. As far as we know, only one of those aircraft, an Italian one, has landed. Er, the others may well come in later today. But they’ve been massively delayed and they are carrying, er, what they call “high energy biscuits”, which (are) about the only food that many of the people at delta 3 can eat, given they have no cooking utensils 4, not even anything they can carry drinking water in, and they have no food and water. So, that’s a disastrous 5 delay. Even a day’s delay could cost many, many lives. The BBC’s Jonathan Head in Bangkok. Meanwhile, the US is still waiting for approval from  Myanmar’s generals to start military aid flights. US ambassador Eric John says that US and Thai authorities had earlier believed they had permission, but now he says Myanmar officials later made it clear that was not the case.

 Hillary Clinton says she’s not about to quit the Democratic presidential race. “We have to figure out who would be the stronger candidate, because at the end of the day, that is what matters most.” Barack Obama’s big win in North Carolina and Clinton’s slim victory in Indiana this week widened Obama’s advantage. Clinton has lent her campaign another 6.4 million dollars.

 Michigan Democrats 6 are offering a new solution to the dispute over the state’s delegates to the Democratic National Convention. They want to give 69 delegates to Hillary Clinton and 59 to Barack Obama. Clinton won Michigan’s primary back in January, but Michigan and Florida were stripped of their delegates for going against party rules by holding their contests too early.

 The man overseeing the investigation 7 into Special Counsel Scott Bloch is not your typical prosecutor 8. He has a prominent background in journalism 9, as NPR’s Ari Shapiro reports.

 FBI agents showed up unannounced at the Special Counsel’s home and his office Tuesday morning. They carried subpoenas 10, and the signature at the bottom belonged to James Mitzelfeld. Mitzelfeld used to be a reporter in Detroit. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his stories on abuses at Michigan’s House Fiscal 11 Agency. Then he went to a law school and became a federal prosecutor in Michigan. He recently arrived in Washington, and now he’s leading one of the biggest government corruption 12 cases of the day. Special Counsel Scott Bloch has not been charged with a crime. But among other things, employees accused him of retaliating 13 against enemies by threatening to send them to a field office in Detroit, the same city where prosecutor Mitzelfeld won his Pulitzer. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.

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 Ongoing battles between Iraqi and US forces and Shiite fighters are forcing hundreds of Iraqis to flee the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City. US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out daily air and ground strikes there. Humanitarian 14 groups, such as the Red Crescent, are working in the area and say there are shortages of food, water and medicine.

 Sprint Nextel plans to merge 15 its wireless 16 broadband division with Clearwire Corporation to form a new company racing 17 to develop a high-speed wireless Internet service. Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports.

 Sprint Nextel, the nation’s third largest mobile service provider, has staked its future on being first to the market with Wimax Technology, which, if it's all it's cracked up to be, will offer reasonably-priced Internet access from almost anywhere at speeds people are used to in their homes and offices. The company formed from the merger 18, which will keep the name “Clearwire”, hopes to roll out the service in a couple of years and attract at least 120 million customers by the end of 2010. A group led by Google, Comcast and Time Warner Cable is sinking over three billion dollars into the venture. If federal regulators and Clearwire investors 19 sign off on the deal, it should be finished by the end of this year. For NPR News, I’m Frank Morris in Kansas City.

 Lawmakers in Russia have confirmed former Russian President Vladimir Putin as the country’s new prime minister. As expected, lawmakers overwhelmingly confirmed Putin today, just a day after he handed the presidency 20 to Dmitry Medvedev. The switch comes after months of political maneuvering 21 by Putin to maintain a role in ruling Russia after being forced to step down by constitutional term limits.