NPR 2008-06-26

The Supreme 1 Court today has struck down a law allowing the execution of individuals convicted of child rape 2. The high court, in a 5-4 vote, said a Louisiana law permitting the death penalty to be imposed in such cases violates a constitution ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The case involved a man convicted for the rape of his eight-year-old stepdaughter. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child.

Exxon Mobile will be forced to pay punitive 3 damages for the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. However, the Supreme Court today slashed 4 those damages to about 500 million dollars, far less than fishermen, land owners and native Alaskans had hoped for. NPR’s Frank Langfitt reports.

This is Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Exxon Valdez in March 1989. “We've fetched up hard ground, evidently leaking some oil.” That leak of “some oil” became 11 million gallons, the largest spill on record in North America. A lower court had ordered the company to pay 2.5 billion dollars in punitive damages. But today, the Supreme Court found that amount excessive. The court said that under federal maritime 5 law, punitive damages shouldn’t be bigger than the compensatory damages the company had already been ordered to pay. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington.

The Fed wrapped up a two-day meeting in Washington today, leaving a key overnight bank lending rate unchanged at two percent. Stuart Hoffman is chief economist 6 with PNC Financial Services Group. He’s in the camp that believes the Fed is likely to stay on hold in terms of interest rates for the time being with consumer loan rates following suit. “It tells me the drop in rates has gone about as far as it’s gonna go and both savers and borrowers are gonna see the rates today they face now pretty much there for the next few months at least.” PNC economist Stuart Hoffman.

Even with persistent 7 high oil prices, global energy demand won’t let up. That’s according to new projections 8 from the Energy Department. NPR’s Debbie Elliott reports.

The Energy Information Administration forecast global energy demand will grow by 50% over the next two decades. And the agency predicts the amount of carbon dioxide resulting from energy use will also grow by about that same amount without mandatory 9 actions to reduce global warming. Despite increases in renewable energy from wind and bio-fuels, the government says fossil fuels, mostly oil and coal, will continue to supply most of the world’s energy needs. The growth in energy demand is most dramatic in China and other developing countries. It says oil-consuming nations will rely even more on OPEC for supply. As for prices, the report says they’ll stay high. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Washington.

On Wall Street, the Dow was up four points. This is NPR.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee 10 John McCain said today if elected, he would seek to break US reliance on foreign oil by 2025. Speaking in Las Vegas, McCain said he would do that through a combination of increased off-shore drilling, stepped-up reliance on nuclear power and conservation. Aides to the Arizona Senator said the aim would be to have a US economy where oil is no longer the primary fuel, lessening 11 dependence 12 on cartels, like OPEC. McCain made the pledge during a speech at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Critics have claimed McCain’s proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors 13 will generate waste that will have to be disposed of.

 The Vatican has described as “sensationalist” Italian media reports linking the late Archbishop Paul Marcinkus to the alleged 14 muder of a teenage daughter of a Vatican employee 25 years ago. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome.

 Twenty-five years after the mysterious disappearance 15 of Emanuela Orlandi, posters of the teenager have reappeared all over Rome. And Italian dailies are filled with alleged claims by the girlfriend of a slain 16 mobster that the late archbishop who died two years ago had hired hitmen to kidnap and murder Orlandi in 1983. A Vatican statement said the accusations 17 are defamatory and baseless and chided the media for publishing the charges without any checks. At the time Orlandi disappeared, Marcinkus was the head of the Vatican Bank embroiled 18 in a financial scandal. Italian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Marcinkus on suspicion of involvement in the fraudulent bankruptcy 19 of the Banco Ambrosiano. The director of that bank, Roberto Calvi, was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982. An Italian court has ruled he was probably murdered by the Mafia. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.