NPR 2009-11-11

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From NPR News in Washington, I'm Carol Van Dam.

Two former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers have been acquitted¹ on all charges of lying to investors² about dealings in mortgage-backed securities at the start of the financial crisis. The jury in the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York reached its verdict this past hour after less than six hours of deliberations. The month-long trial against the two defendants³ was the first trial against high-profile Wall Street executives, stemming from mortgage securities that led to the market’s collapse⁴.

President Obama attended a memorial service this afternoon to pay tribute to 13 people killed by a gunman at Fort Hood⁵ last week. From Killeen Texas, NPR s Jeff Brady reports.

Soldiers in uniform and hundreds of others, many wearing red white and blue ribbons gathered outside the command building near the entrance to Fort Hood. President Obama said / it might be difficult to understand the twisted logic⁶ that led to the tragedy. "No faith justifies⁷ these murderous and craven acts. No just and loving God looks upon them with favor. For what is done we know that the killer⁸ will be met with justice in this world then the next.” Earlier the President and First Lady met with families of those killed, they also talked with some of the 43 wounded who’ve since been released from the hospital. 15 people including the alleged⁹ shooter Nidal Hasan remain in the hospital. Jeff Brady, NPR News, Killeen, Texas.

The FBI is investigating whether it mishandled information early on about Major Nidal Hasan, the man who's accused of killing¹⁰ 13 people and wounding others at Fort Hood. Just under a year ago, terrorism investigators¹¹ conducted what the FBI calls an assessment¹² of Hasan, the agency decided¹³ Hasan did not pose a threat. Hasan will be tried in a military court.

President Obama is now considering four options for a new Afghanistan strategy. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says the President will discuss those options in a meeting tomorrow with his war advisors¹⁵. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly has more.

The White House will not say what the four remaining options are or where they came from, whether these were presented by the top Pentagon brass¹⁶, for example, or by the top commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal. But the detail that the review has now narrowed to four options does suggest that the President and his advisors are making progress. Still the White House is dismissing media reports that the President has made a decision either on troop levels or on the overall strategy for the war. In a statement released late Monday, National Security advisor¹⁴ James Jones dismissed recent press reports as “absolutely false”. A formal announcement of a new Afghanistan strategy is not expected until late next week at the earliest. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.

On Wall Street, just before the close, the Dow Jones Industrial average is up 20 points to 10, 247. The NASDAQ Composite Index is down two points to 2, 151. And the S&P 500 down a fraction.

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Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to die by injection tonight after Virginia Governor Tim Kaine denied his clemency¹⁷ request today. For three weeks in 2002, Muhammad terrorized the Washington metropolitan¹⁸ area in a killing spree that left ten people dead. He was sentenced to death for killing Dean Harold Meyers at a Manassas Virginian gas station. His teenage accomplice¹⁹ Lee Boyd Malvo has been sentenced to life in prison.

A new Justice Department study says thousands of unsolved rapes²⁰ and murders include forensic²¹ evidence that has never been analyzed²² by a crime lab. NPR’s Ari Shapiro reports.

People have known for years that crime labs don’t have the capacity to process all the evidence that police gather. This is the first study that tries to measure the consequences of that gap. The Justice Department found that in the last five years, almost 4, 000 unsolved homicides included forensic evidence that was never sent to a crime lab. The same is true of more than 27, 000 unsolved rapes. It’s not clear that the forensic evidence could solve these cases. Prosecutors²³ said in some cases the forensic evidence doesn’t seem useful, and many law enforcement agencies don’t send evidence to a crime lab unless they have a suspect. But in about a quarter of the cases, people responding to the study said they never sent the evidence to a crime lab, because the lab was slow or underfunded. Ari Shapiro, NPR News.

The Obama administration has selected a 36-year-old doctor and former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation to run the country’s foreign aid agency. Dr. Rajiv Shah will supervise the US Agency for International Development. Shah is currently working at the Department of Agriculture on food security, one of the Obama administration’s top aid priorities. The Senate must still confirm him as head of USAID.

I’m Carol Van Dam, NPR News in Washington.