NPR 2011-10-05

 President Obama's pitching his multi-billion-dollar jobs creation plan in Texas this day, challenging Congress's Republican leaders to put the whole package to a vote rather than focusing on sections of the legislation. He's firing back at House Republican Leader Eric Cantor, who said that as the bill stands, he won't even let it get to a vote in the House. Meanwhile, the chamber 1 is voting on a resolution to extend funding to keep the government operating for the next six weeks.

 
New Jersey 2 Governor Chris Christie is not running for president. NPR's Mara Liasson reports that Christie, who made the announcement just a short time ago, was literally 3 begged by many Republicans to get into the race.
 
Governor Christie said he got entreaties 4 from all over the country to run for president. But in the end, he decided 5 that now was not his time to make a bid for the White House.
 
"In the end, the factor, the deciding factor, was it did not feel right to me in my gut 6 to leave now when the job here is not finished, and I could never get by that."
 
Christie denied that any other considerations made a difference. But despite the hunger in the GOP for an alternative to the current field of presidential candidates, Christie may have had a hard time getting into the race so late, and his moderate views on immigration and global warming may have been a hard sell to conservative Republican primary voters. Mara Liasson, NPR News.
 
Orders of factories by businesses in the US have declined 0.2%, those numbers from August. That's according to the Commerce Department. But as Danielle Karson reports, other categories show manufacturing activity is holding steady. 
 
The headline number dropped because orders for cars and auto 7 parts fell. But dig deeper, and the report shows businesses putting orders for more capital goods like industrial machinery 8, communications equipment and computers. That's important because it shows companies are sticking with their expansion plans. Aaron Smith is an economist 9 with Moody's Analytics.
 
"The numbers pretty much seal the deal. The data points to an economy that is growing not strongly. But the data should ease concern that the economy is slipping into a recession."
 
Given the well gyrations in the stock market, economists 10 say investors 11 seem to be ignoring the positive data. One cautions "if we're not careful, we're going to talk ourselves into a recession." For NPR News, I'm Danielle Karson in Washington.
 
A tentative contract reached between Ford 12 and the United Auto Workers union this morning calls for more than 5,700 new jobs at the automaker and nearly five billion dollars in factory investments. Today, the company's Vice 13 President of Manufacturing John Fleming did not say where people would be hired, but most of them are expected to earn entry-level pay. 
 
At last check on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 116 points, more than 1%, at 10,540.
 
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The discovery that the universe's expansion is accelerating has earned three scientists the Nobel Prize in Physics. They are Saul Perlmutter, Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess. Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley says he actually found out he was a Nobel laureate from a Swedish reporter who called before dawn this morning. Looking for reaction to the news, he and his fellow recipients 14 will share a prize of 1.5 million dollars.
 
Drinking and driving leads to about 11,000 deaths per year. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the problem of adults driving after drinking too much is going down. NPR's Allison Aubrey reports there's been a 30% drop since 2006. 
 
Young men, aged 15 18 to 34, make up only about 11% of the population. But when it comes to drinking and driving, they are behind the wheel and about 1/3 of the cases, and the CDC says drunk drivers have usually had more than a few drinks. Eighty-five percent of the time, there're binge drinkers who've had four or more drinks in a night. In recent years, some states have stepped up sobriety checking points, designated driver programs and increased enforcement of the zero-tolerance laws. Another strategy: in-car breathalyzers mandated 16 for drivers who've been convicted of drunk driving. The CDC says these initiatives have helped to deter 17 drunk driving, though they say with 112 million episodes last year were still at risk on the roads. Allison Aubrey, NPR News, Washington.