“I've said time and again: Send me the DREAM Act; I will sign it right away. And I’m still waiting to work with anyone from either party who is committed to real reform.”

 

Last week, the president announced an initiative to give around a million younger undocumented immigrants who’d grown up here a chance to avoid deportation. A couple hours before President Obama spoke, Florida Senator Marco Rubio took the stage in an impassioned speech. He railed against what he described as efforts to politicize the immigration issue.

 

“I was accused of supporting apartheid. I was accused of supporting a DREAM Act without a dream. Of course, a few months later the president takes a similar idea and implements it through executive action, and now it's the greatest idea in the world.”

 

Rubio has been widely reported to be a possible running mate for the GOP's presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, who seemed to get a cooler reception than Obama from NALEO yesterday. 

 

Former UN chief Kofi Annan is turning to Iran for help. He says the Islamic republic should be part of the solution of the Syrian crisis where thousands of people have died in a more than year-old uprising. 

 

“It's time for countries of influence to raise the level of pressure on the parties on the ground and to persuade them that it is in their interest to stop the killing.”

 

But the US is strongly opposed to involvement by Iran which it accused of fomenting violence and remaining a nuclear threat. 

 

A French and German-backed proposal to start taxing financial transactions throughout the entire European Union is dead. Teri Schultz reports opposition was too strong from some countries, including the US that feels such a move would be bad for business.

 

Even leadership from EU powerhouse Germany couldn't win over the majority of states to the idea of charging banks a small fee on sales of products such as stocks and bonds. Britain claimed that would drive investors to go elsewhere. The EU estimated such a tax could bring in more than 60 billion dollars a year. Taxation commissioner Algirdas Semeta regrets it didn't get support from all 27 governments.

 

“We cannot reach unanimity unfortunately. But at the same time, there is a strong  group of member states so, which want to introduce this tax.”

 

Some EU governments now plan to band together and implement such a levy amongst themselves to fund possible future bank bailouts without taxpayer money. Supporters call it the “Robin Hood tax.” For NPR News, I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels.  

 

Dow’s up 77 points. 

 

This is NPR.

 

A Roman Catholic Church official convicted of child endangerment in a clergy abuse trial in Philadelphia reportedly has been taken to prison. Monsignor William Lynn is the first US church official convicted of a crime for how he handled sex abuse accusations. He was convicted of one count of endangerment. Lynn was acquitted of another endangerment count and a conspiracy charge. However, the jury could not agree on a verdict for Lynn's codefendant, the Rev. James Brennan, who is accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy. 

 

Rangers with Mount Rainier National Park are trying to recover one of their own who had fallen yesterday more than 3,000 feet to his death during a rescue operation. More details from Sara Lerner of member satiation KUOW.

 

Nick Hall was helping rescue four injured climbers. They have traveled to Washington from Texas to climb Rainier and did successfully summit the mountain's 14,400-foot peak. But on the way down, two fell on a glacier. During the rescue, Hall fell as well and died. He slid more than 3,000 feet down the side of the mountain. A storm was on the way at the time of the incident, but three of the climbers were able to be rescued with helicopters borrowed from a nearby military base. A fourth had to stay overnight with help from park rangers. For NPR News, I'm Sara Lerner in Seattle.

 

The Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled the state's execution law is unconstitutional and cited with ten death row inmates who argued that only the legislature can set execution policy. Three years ago, legislators voted to give that power to the Department of Correction. 

 

Before the close on Wall Street, the Dow was up more than 70 points, more than 0.5%, at 12,645.