NPR 2010-02-18

From NPR News in Washington, I’m Barbara Klein.

The supreme 1 leader of Iran has accused Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of spreading lies about Iran on her trip to the Persian Gulf 2 earlier this week. NPR’s Mike Shuster has details.

Iranian state television quoted supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying the Americans dispatched their saleswoman to the Persian Gulf to spread lies. Earlier this week on stops in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Clinton said Iran was becoming a military dictatorship, as it sought to acquire nuclear weapons. She appealed to both states to join the US in its effort to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons through tougher sanctions in the UN Security Council. The Iranian government has reacted sharply to Clinton’s visit to the Gulf. Yesterday, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said if more sanctions are imposed on Iran, those who sought them would regret it. Khamenei also accused the US of turning the Gulf into an arms depot 3. In January, the US acknowledged it intends to deploy 4 land- and sea-based missile defense 5 systems to counter Iran’s ballistic missile program. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Dubai.

President Obama today marked the one-year anniversary of the 787-billion-dollar economic Recovery Act, saying it created two million jobs and rescued the economy. "It is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second depression is no longer a possibility. It’s one of the main reasons the economy has gone from shrinking by 6% to growing at about 6%." Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve predicts unemployment will remain high for the next two years. In minutes released from their last meeting, the Fed says Americans have been scarred by the recession and are likely to remain cautious. Still, Fed policymakers project unemployment will slowly decline to between 6.5% and 7.5% by 2012.

The nation’s largest drugstore chain is getting bigger. Walgreen Company is buying New York’s Duane Reade stores in a deal valued at over a billion dollars. NPR’s David Schaper has details.

While suburban 6 Chicago-based Walgreen has been expanding rapidly across the country in recent years to more than 7,000 stores, it has struggled to gain a significant foothold in the New York metropolitan 7 market. Walgreen officials say acquiring the Duane Reade chain and its 257 stores allows Walgreen to do all at once what would have taken years to do by growing more organically in New York. The billion-dollar-plus deal will more than quadruple the number of stores Walgreen has in the New York area and give the nation’s largest drugstore chain considerable strength in Manhattan where most of the Duane Reade stores are concentrated. However, the Duane Reade stores will keep their name after the sale closes, as Walgreen officials say they will take some time to decide how to best integrate the two brands. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.

On Wall Street an hour before the close, the Dow is up 34 points at 10, 303; the NASDAQ is up seven at 2, 221.

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A New York Times business reporter has resigned after the newspaper acknowledged instances in which he allegedly plagiarized 8 from other news organizations. NPR’s David Folkenflik has the story.

Zachery Kouwe joined the New York Times in October, 2008 after stints 9 as a business reporter of the New York Post and Dow Jones Newswires. He wrote frequently for the Times’s business section and its popular DealBook website about such topics as the Bernard Madoff investigation 10 and bonuses at Goldman Sachs. But Robert Thompson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, pointed 11 out a recent article by Kouwe that contained nearly verbatim elements of a Journal story. On Monday, the Times acknowledged that Kouwe had copied passages from other articles as well. The Journal’s complaint comes amid an aggressive effort to challenge the Times as the nation’s leading general interest newspaper. Kouwe expressed contrition 12 to the New York Observer, though he said the copying was inadvertent. He told NPR he could not currently comment under an agreement with the Times which also declined to comment. David Folkenflik, NPR News, New York.

Ukraine’s highest court has suspended the result of the country’s recent presidential election. It’s waiting to rule on a legal challenge from Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who claimed the ballot 13 was rigged. She lost to pro-Russian opposition 14 leader Viktor Yanukovich.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy arrived in Haiti today, the first French president ever to visit its former enslaved colony. France is promising 15 400 million dollars to help Haiti reemerge from the ravages 16 of last month’s earthquake. Haiti fought a bloody 17 war for independence from France in 1804. Afterward 18, it endured an international embargo 19 imposed to discourage slave revolts elsewhere in the world.

I’m Barbara Klein, NPR News.