NPR 2010-10-08

Several European countries are stepping up water testing after poisonous red sludge from a Hungarian aluminum 1 plant reached the Danube River today. The BBC's Nick Thorpe reports on the heightened alerts around Europe's second largest river.

Attention is shifting away now from the immediate 2 cleanup operation to the threat to the River Danube. For days, the Hungarian authorities have been dumping clay and other materials into the small rivers which flow from Kolontar just to the foot of the Hill Bakony towards the Danube. Those efforts have won them rare praise from environmentalists. Tests show that the first alkaline traces have now entered the river. It's not yet clear how serious the pollution will become, but the first dead fish have been spotted 3.

The BBC's Nick Thorpe reporting.

The death toll 5 is rising from a double suicide blast at a Sufi shrine 6 in Karachi, Pakistan today. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports at least eight people are dead; dozens more are injured.

Pakistani television channels showed pools of blood and heaps of clothes on the floor of the Abdullah Shah Ghazi shrine. Police cordoned 7 off the area as ambulances ferried the injured to hospitals. Thursday night is when hundreds of devotees normally throng 8 the Sufi shrine. Sunni and Shia Muslims alike come to the shrine to listen to Qawali devotional music, make wishes and lay flowers at the tomb of the 8th century saint. Islamic fundamentalists consider saints and shrines 9 to be idolatrous. In July, suicide bombers 10 killed more than 40 devotees in an attack on Data Ganj Baksh, a shrine of the patron saint of Lahore. Thursday night, gatherings 11 at Sufi shrines have since been scaled back and security beefed up. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Islamabad.

New York's Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg are proposing that sweetened drinks be banned from foods allowed in the Food Stamp Program. NPR's Margot Adler reports health commissioners 12 argue that tens of millions of dollars spent on sugary drinks through the Food Stamp Program are really a federal subsidy 13 to the industry.

The ban only for New York City residents would be temporary over two years, so the effects could be studied. An attempt to ban junk food in Maine failed two years ago. The USDA said it would violate the program's definition of food and create confusion. Some people say it goes too far like painter Peter Bottigliero.

"Well, we just stop. What if they determine that you can't buy chicken thighs 14 with them 'cause they're too fatty, you can only buy the breast meat.

The ban would not affect milk products or food juices without added sugar. It would affect sweetened drinks that have more than ten calories in eight ounces. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.

First time, unemployment claims dropped last week, a sign that companies are hiring. The Labor 15 Department found applications fell by 11,000 to 445,000.

The Dow was down 20 points at last check. This is NPR.

Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa is the newest winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote more than 30 novels, plays and works of nonfiction. Today, Vargas Llosa expressed emotional thanks.

"Well, I am very pleased, talking seriously, very grateful to the Swedish Academy. It is totally unexpected, a real surprise."

Vargas Llosa's the first South American author to win the $1.5 million prize since Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1982.

A magazine in Britain today published a previously 16 unseen poem by Ted 4 Hughes. NPR's Philip Reeves says the poem's causing a sensation in the literary world as it's about the suicide of his wife, the American poet Sylvia Plath.

The poem's in the New Statesman magazine and comes from archives of Ted Hughes's work held by the British Library. It's called Last Letter and focuses on the three days leading up to Plath's suicide in 1963. Hughes and Plath were among the finest English language poets of the 20th century. There's been controversy 17 over her death for decades. She suffered from depression, but Hughes was often blamed particularly by feminists 18 for triggering her suicide by leaving her for another woman. That woman later killed herself and their four-year-old daughter. Plath's death haunted Hughes throughout his life. The novelist Melvyn Bragg, the New Statesman's guest editor this week, says the poem's a missing keystone from Hughes's greatest work Birthday Letters. Philip Reeves, NPR News, London.

We've been seeing moderate movement in US stocks as investors 19 await the results of a monthly unemployment report due out tomorrow. The Dow was down 20 points at 10,949.