NPR NEWS 2008-02-13

From NPR News in Washington, I am Carl Kasell.

Voters in Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia are next up to have their say in the presidential nomination 1 race. They go to the polls today. NPR's Audie Cornish reports.

While Washington D.C. residents do not have voting representation in Congress, they can't cast ballots 2 in the presidential primaries. Both Maryland and D.C hold close primaries, so voters can only vote in the contest of the party they are registered with. But Virginia's primaries are open, and voters can choose to cast the ballots in either the Republican or the Democratic race. Altogether, the primaries represent a potential a hundred and sixteen delegates for Republicans Mike Huckabee and John McCain, while a hundred and sixty-eight pledged delegates are at stake in the Democrat's nomination race between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Audie Cornish, NPR News.

Three men scheduled to testify at tomorrow's congressional hearing on steroids in baseball will not appear after all. That puts all the focus on the two major witnesses who will appear. Star pitcher 4 Roger Clemens and his former personal trainer Brian McNamee. They're waging a bitter public dispute over whether McNamee gave banned drug to Clemens. NPR's Tom Goldman reports.

Last night, the House Committee holding tomorrow's hearing released a statement saying pitcher Andy Pettitte, former player Chunk 5 Knoblauch, and convicted drug distributor Kirk Radomski were being dropped from the witness list. Pettitte and Clemens are long-time friends, both trained with Brian McNamee. In the recent Mitchell report on doping in baseball, McNamee said he injected Pettitte with human growth hormone 6 and injected Clemens with HGH anabolic steroids. Pettitte acknowledged his injections; Clemens angrily denied McNamee's claims. The New York Times reports Pettitte didn't wanna have to testify in public against Clemens. Pettitte already gave a sworn deposition 7 to the House Committee, so did Clemens. One of his lawyers said last night that Clemens will say in Congress what he said all along--he didn't use banned drugs. Tom Goldman, NPR News, Washington.

Two CBS journalists have been kidnapped in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. Radical 8 Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's office today condemned 9 the kidnapping while Iraqi police said an intensive search is underway for the two. Iraqi police and witnesses said the kidnapping occurred Sunday morning. Basra is Iraq's second largest city. It has seen fierce fighting between rival Shiite militias 10 as part of a power struggle in the oil-rich south. CBS did not identify the journalists but said all efforts are underway to find them. It requested that others do not speculate on the identities of those involved until more information is available.

Japanese stock prices remain virtually unchanged today. The Nikkei Average rose by 4 points, oil prices fell back in Asian trading, U.S. light crude for March delivery fell by 55 cents to $93.04 a barrel in electronic trading.

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There was a major service disruption yesterday for users of wireless 11 hand-held Blackberries in North America. NPR's Elaine Korry reports.

Millions of people who rely on their Blackberries for wireless email access were left stranded 12 for several hours. A critical service outage struck at about 3:30 PM Eastern Time. Blackberry maker 13 Research in Motion reported that access was intermittent 14 and said the problem with an email server was later fixed 15, however, not all service was restored immediately. Shares of RIM 3 which had traded up more than five percent were off one percent in after-hours trading. The shares have more than doubled in the last twelve months. This has been the second major Blackberry outage in a year. Last April, a software malfunction 16 shut off Internet access across North America for hours. Elaine Korry, NPR News.

The Associated Press is reporting that more than a half the veterans who committed suicide after coming home from Afghanistan and Iraq were members of the National Guard and Reserves. The AP is quoting an analysis made by The Department of Veterans Affairs of death among veterans of both wars. It found that Guard or Reserve members were 53% of the veteran suicides from 2001 through the end of 2005. Military leaders have leaned heavily on Guard and Reserve troops in the wars. Veterans' advocates say Guard and Reserve troops need more help as they transition back into the civilian 17 world. President Bush signed a bill last year that directed the VA to improve its mental health training for the staff and do a better job of screening and treating vets 18.

I am Carl Kasell, NPR News in Washington.