NPR 2011-03-27

Libyan rebels say coalition 1 air strikes are helping 2 them. They credit the allied 3 action with enabling them to retake the eastern city of Ajdabiya. President Obama says the US-led military campaign in Libya is succeeding. He made the comments in his weekly address today. As NPR’s Allison Keyes reports, they’re aimed at critics who say the US mission in Libya is unfocused.

The president, who’s set to address the nation about Libya on Monday, says the role of American forces there is limited. And though president Obama says the US cannot intervene every time there’s a crisis somewhere in the world, he says it’s in America’s national interest to act with the international community as prepared to come together, to save many thousands of lives.

“Our military mission in Libya is clear and focused. Along with our allies and partners, we’re enforcing the mandate 5 of the United Nations Security Council.”

The Republicans used their weekly address to criticize the year old health care overhaul 6 law, calling it a burden for states and businesses. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.

Geraldine Ferraro, the country’s first female vice 7 presidential candidate on a major party ticket, has died. She was 75. NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates has more.

A spokesperson for Ferraro’s family says the former congresswoman died at Massachusettes General Hospital this morning around 10:00 am eastern time. Ferraro had been battling blood cancer for several years. An obscure congresswoman from a blue-collar district in Queens, Ferraro became national news when Walter Mondale picked her as his running mate in 1984 against the Republican ticket of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. At the Democratic National Convention, Ferraro told an ecstatic crowd that her selection meant “America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us”. The Ferraro-Mondale ticket lost in one of the biggest landslides 9 in election history, but Geraldine Ferraro would remain an advocate for women in American politics until she died. She once said she’d like to live long enough to see America’s first woman president elected. Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is calling for new elections May 2nd. He says voters now have to choose either a stable government or a reckless coalition.

“We need to ensure that our government is stable, national and wholly committed to the unity 4 of our country.”

Harper’s conservative government lost a no-confidence vote yesterday.

Japanese authorities are confirming a sharp elevation 10 of radioactive contamination in seawater near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. The President of the Institution for Energy and Environmental Research Arjun Makhijani says iodine 11 released into the air by the plant is traveling.

“A lot of it has blown over the ocean. That ’s why you’re finding contaminated ocean water, and then some of it also overland. So, water and food and vegetables are contaminated. It’s a very, very difficult situation.”

Makhijani spoke 8 on NBC’s Today Show.

This is NPR.

Swiss police have rescued all but one of eleven skiers who were swept away by an avalanche 12 earlier today. From Geneva, Lisa Schlein reports the accident occurred near Switzerland’s border with Italy.

Swiss police report one of the eleven skiers buried in the snow was able to free himself and raise the alarm. Rescuers eventually managed to recover all but one person. The incident happened on Mont Velan, a towering 12,200-feet peak that straddles the Swiss-Italian border. Switzerland’s National Avalanche Center had issued warnings of considerable risk of snowslides in the region. No one knows what triggered the accident, but very often people ignore avalanche warnings, and they get into trouble. Avalanche is the most common in spring, when the snow begins to melt. For NPR News, I’m Lisa Schlein in Geneva.

Tens of thousands of protesters in Germany took to the streets today to protest nuclear power. They want the government to shut down the nation’s reactors 13 in light of events in Japan.

An estimated 250,000 angry demonstrators in London today protested sharp cuts in government funding. The government is cutting nearly $140 billion for civil service jobs and public programs. Union leader Brendan Barber says today’s march is the first of many.

“That we’re strong, and that we’re united, that we’ll fight that savage 14 cuts, and that we will not let them destroy people’s services, people’s jobs and people’s lives.”

The government says the cuts are necessary to get the country out of debt.