NPR 2011-10-14

 President Obama says he's working with America's international allies to hold Iran accountable for allegedly plotting to assassinate 3 a Saudi diplomat 4. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports the president called the conspiracy 5 part of a pattern of dangerous behavior by the Iranian government.

 
President Obama would not say whether he believes Iran's leader was aware of the assassination 6 plot. He did say the alleged 2 conspiracy violates the basic principles of how international diplomats 7 have been treated for centuries.
 
"Even if at the highest levels there was not detailed 8 operational knowledge, there has to be accountability with respect to anybody in the Iranian government engaging in this kind of activity."
 
Two men with ties to Iran were arrested in the US and charged with plotting to kill Saudi Arabia's US ambassador. President Obama spoke 9 at a news conference with the visiting leader of South Korea. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, the White House.
 
Company officials say Blackberry services are back to normal after a three-day outage that affected 10 millions of customers around the world. But Research In Motion says it is now on the process of flushing through stalled messages. Mike Lazaridis is the founder 11 and co-CEO of the company.
 
"I apologize for the service outages this week. We've let many of you down. But let me assure you that we're working around the clock to fix this."
 
The company says the problem originated Monday with a failed link in its European network and then the backup failed. Lazaridis says the company is now looking into ways of winning back consumer trust.
 
The Labor 12 Department says the number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment benefits dropped slightly last week. They fell to 404,000. Danielle Karson says economists 14 say the job market remains 15 stagnant 16.
 
New claims were steadily 17 falling [at] the beginning of the year but have hovered 18 around 400,000 since April. Analysts 19 say the level is too high to suggest much job growth. Chris Christopher, an economist 13 at IHS Global Insight, says the problem is that businesses and consumers are stuck in a catch-22 situation.
 
"Businesses are sort of saying "Hey, growth is very bad and consumers are not spending so I'm not gonna hire." And then consumers are saying "Hey, I'm not gonna spend too much because firms are not hiring so I'm gonna hold back a little."
 
The labor market showed some signs of life last month, with employers adding 103,000 jobs in September. But the economy needs to add double that number each month to make a dent 1 in the jobless rate. For NPR News, I'm Danielle Karson in Washington.
 
Foreclosure activity is apparently 20 picking up, suggesting banks are becoming more aggressive against borrowers in default. RealtyTrac says the number of foreclosure filings in the third quarter edged up less than 1%, reversing a trend of three straight quarters of declines.
 
On Wall Street just before the close, the markets were mixed. The Dow was down 41; the NASDAQ up 15; the S&P was down four.
 
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Former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is no longer under investigation 21 by French authorities. The Paris prosecutor's office today dropped the probe into a writer's claim that Strauss-Kahn tried to rape 22 her, and they cited lack of sufficient proof. Prosecutors 23 say Strauss-Kahn did admit to a lesser 24 charge of sexual assault. It is the second legal victory for Strauss-Kahn, who faced rape charges in New York but saw them dropped when prosecutors questioned the victim's credibility.
 
In Afghanistan, two NATO soldiers have died in separate incidents. Also, NPR's Quil Lawrence reports a US military investigation has cleared commanders of any wrongdoing in an August helicopter crash that killed 30 US soldiers.
 
NATO said improvised 25 bombs killed soldiers in the south and east of the country but did not provide further details. A US army investigation concluded that the shootdown of a Chinook helicopter in August was not due to [a] strategic error. Commanders had crowded 30 soldiers into one airship in order to get them quickly to a target in Wardak province, just west of Kabul. A group of Taliban fighters were able to shoot down the Chinook by firing several rocket-propelled grenades from the top of a building. One of them hit a rotor blade. It was the deadliest incident of the war for US troops. American officials say they later killed the Taliban commander responsible. Quil Lawrence, NPR News, Kandahar.
 
There are likely plenty of prayers at the Washington National Cathedral today as a crane removed parts of a pinnacle 26 from the structure's central tower. Engineers used a crane to remove three pieces weighing two tons from the tower. The stonework was damaged by the August earthquake that hit the East Coast.