NPR 2010-04-03

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From NPR News in Washington, I’m Lakshmi Singh.

President Obama says jobs market is beginning to turn the corner, encouraged by the Labor¹ Department’s March report out today showing 162,000 jobs added to the economy. That’s biggest gain in three years. But the president told workers in Charlotte, North Carolina that an unemployment rate of 9.7% is still too high.

“We shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties we face as a country or the hardships that confront millions of our fellow citizens—some of your friends, some of your neighbors, some of your relatives.”

The additional jobs include people hired temporarily for the US Census². But senior economist³ Hugh Johnson says the overall uptick in jobs is a good sign.

“If you sort of take away the census workers and look at what the economy really hired during the month of March, you see 114,000 on the plus side. That’s a really solid number and it’s very encouraging.”

The gains were the largest since the recession began in 2007.

Good Friday service is in St. Peter’s Basilica. Choiring helps observe an important moment for Christians⁴ this Easter weekend. This while the Roman Catholic Church still wrangles⁵ with another string of sex abuse allegations. Today, Pope Benedict XVI’s personal preacher said attacks on the pontiff are comparable to the most shameful⁶ anti-Semitism and “collective violence” suffered by Jews through the centuries. NPR’s Sylvia Poggioli has this from Rome.

In his Good Friday homily in St. Peter’s Basilica, Father Raniero Cantalamessa said the proximity⁷ of the Jewish Passover and Easter this year prompted him to think about Jews and draw comparisons with current attacks on the church. Reading from a letter from a Jewish friend, the preacher said he was following “with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful of the whole world”. In the presence of weary Pope Benedict, Cantalamessa said: “The use of stereotypes⁸, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt⁹ to a collective guilt remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.” This year’s Holy Week has been marred¹⁰ by accusations¹¹ at the church and the pope himself covered up cases of clerical sex abuse of minors¹². The Vatican lashed¹³ back, accusing the media of trying to smear¹⁴ the pope at all costs. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.

The Israeli military’s confirming another string of missile attacks against Palestinian militants¹⁵. Warplanes pounded the Gaza Strip overnight after the Jewish state came under a cross-border rocket attack. No casualties have been reported. The Associated Press reports Hamas leaders in Gaza have contacted armed factions¹⁶ in an apparent attempt to curb¹⁷ strikes.

Thousands of rescuers in China working feverishly¹⁸ to free more than 150 miners who’ve been trapped underground for more than five days, today there was some hope, some signs of life.

This is NPR News.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano’s announcing new airport security guidelines for travelers heading to the United States. Those guidelines replace procedures that singled out all travelers from 14 mostly Muslim nations for additional screening. We have more details now from NPR’s Brian Naylor.

Administration officials say the new security screening is based on threats and intelligence rather than nationality. For instance, if a traveler’s known to have spent time in a certain country and meets other characteristics, such as age, she may be subject to additional screening before being allowed to board a flight to the US. The new procedures replace those that were put into effect immediately after the Christmas Day incident when a Nigerian man flying to Detroit tried to set off a bomb hidden in his underwear. Travelers from 14 nations were then subject to pat-downs and additional screening. Napolitano says the new procedures will apply to all passengers traveling to the US. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.

The FBI’s investigating threatening letters sent to more than 30 governors by an anti-government group. In the letters, the governors are told to leave office or they would be removed. Authorities say while there was no direct threat of violence in the letters, they're concerned the messages might prompt others to act violently.

Actor John Forsythe whose long career spanned film, stage and television has died after a battle with cancer. Forsythe is perhaps best remembered for television roles such as Charles Townsend in Charlie’s Angels.

“I took them away from all that and now they work for me. My name is Charlie.”

John Forsythe was 92 years old.