NPR 2008-04-27

Election officials in Zimbabwe announced today partial results of a recount in parliamentary elections. They said the party of President Robert Mugabe failed to win control of the parliament. The opposition 1 party has the majority for the first time in 28 years.

 A 14-year-old Palestinian girl was killed today during clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen in a town in northern Gaza. The Israeli army reports its forces raided the town to pursue members of Hamas who’ve been firing rockets into Israeli border towns.

 Syria’s ambassador to the United States says the CIA fabricated evidence to justify 2 the Israeli bombing of a Syrian building last September. Imad Moustapha said the building was empty, and not a covert 3 nuclear site as US intelligence officials claim. “An allegedly strategic site in Syria without a single military checkpoint around it, without barbed wire around it, without anti-aircraft missiles around it, without any sort of security surrounding it.” Moustapha says the Bush administration’s explanation of the Israeli attack will fall apart when the facts come out.

 A tractor-trailer slammed into a bus shelter at a train station in Chicago yesterday. Officials say two people died, at least 21 others were hurt. Eleven of those injured are in critical condition. Witness David de Ryan said the truck didn’t appear to slow down. “It looked like it was coming kind of fast, so you like,started to, to kind of move out of the way, not really thinking much of it and then it just, it just kind of kept coming. I, I, I have to say it looked like it was coming like 45 to 50 miles an hour, it was coming really fast.” The driver of the truck was taken to a hospital but was later released. Police say he has not been placed under arrest.

 Part of a church floor collapsed 4 during a Christian 5 rock concert near Vancouver, British Columbia last night. Officials say at least three people were injured. More than 1,000 people had attended the sold-out concert. It featured Starfield, a contemporary Christian rock band.

 House and Senate negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on a new five-year farm bill. NPR’s Brian Naylor reports.

 The measure would spend some 296 billion dollars over five years. Most of the money goes to food stamps and nutrition programs which will see a ten-billion-dollar increase from current levels. For the first time, there is also money in the bill to help farmers who grow fruits and vegetables. But so-called “direct payments” to farmers who grow crops like corn, wheat and rice will continue despite record prices for those crops and higher food prices at the grocery store. And Congress has created a new subsidy 6, a so-called “permanent disaster fund”. The tentative deal must be signed off by all the lawmakers involved in the negotiations 7 before going to the full House and Senate. Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.

 You are listening to NPR News from Washington.

 Both Democratic presidential contenders will campaign in Indiana today, the site of the next contest in the race for the nomination 8. Hillary Clinton will attend a rally in Fort Wayne. Barack Obama will hold a town hall meeting at a high school in Marion.

 Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio is holding commencement today. The college, founded 156 years ago, may be graduating its last students. Aileen LeBlanc reports from Yellow Springs.

 Antioch College is under the umbrella of Antioch University, and the university seeing years of financial troubles with the college decided 9 to suspend operations as of June 30th. A passionate 10 group of alumni has desperately 11 tried to save the school and they've raised millions of dollars toward that end. One alumnus, Eric Bates, is working toward negotiations to get control of the college. “The college is very sustainable, it’s really clear at this point that alumni, they’re really ready to pour all kinds of support into the college, in a word, to become independent.” The university has agreed to resume negotiations after commencement, so there's still hope for the 160 staff and professors whose jobs are now scheduled to be terminated and for the historic free-thinking left-leaning liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio. For NPR News, I’m Aileen LeBlanc.

 An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.7 struck Reno, Nevada late last night. An aftershock of 3.5 came early this morning. There are no immediate 12 reports of injuries or serious damage. They hit the same area where more than 100 quakes were reported over a 24-hour period beginning Thursday. Nevada is the third most quake-prone state behind California and Alaska.