NPR 2009-01-03（在线收听）

President Bush has released his first public comment on the fighting in Gaza. Issuing in advanced recording of a Saturday radio address, Mr. Bush reiterates his call for a sustainable ceasefire. “United States is leading diplomatic efforts to achieve a meaningful ceasefire that is fully respected. Another one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable.” Mr. Bush also insists any truce must include monitoring mechanisms aimed at stopping weapons from being smuggled into Gaza. Overnight Israeli air strikes destroyed several homes of Hamas operatives, as well as a mosque which Israel says was used to store weapons.

An activist group in Chicago is pressuring lawmakers to accept Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris to the US Senate, despite allegations that Blagojevich tried to sell the seat left vacant by President-elect Barack Obama. Chicago Public Radio’s Susie An has details.

The group says the corruption charges on Blagojevich have nothing to do with Illinois former Attorney General Roland Burris. They’re demanding that Secretary of State Jesse White certify the appointment and that Senator Dick Durbin escort Burris into the Senate chambers. Dock Walls, director of the Committee for a Better Chicago, leads the activists. “We don’t believe that there is time for a change in government, and an opportunity to search for another candidate. Roland Burris is more than sufficient. He’s more than capable of taking care of the people’s business. There is no cloud over Roland Burris.”  Walls says if the group’s demands aren’t met, they will work to defeat White and Durbin in upcoming elections. For NPR News, I’m Susie An in Chicago.

A consortium of private equity and hedge fund firms is going to buy the failed mortgage bank IndyMac. The sale was announced today by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which seized the bank in July. NPR’s Ina Jaffe has more.

One head of the consortium is Steven Mnuchin—the founder of Dune Capital Management, a gold buyer,/ he is new to the banking business. The group will pay 13.9 billion dollars to the FDIC and pump another 1.3 billion dollars into the bank itself. IndyMac’s specialized in high-risk mortgages that did not require borrowers to prove they had sufficient income. When the housing market began to collapse, there was a run on the bank. But Evan Wagner, spokesman for IndyMac, says that what is left to the bank is fairly valuable. “You have 33 bank branches with a stable deposit base of around 6.5 billion dollars. And you’re also talking about customers who have kept their money in the institution, despite everything else that happened.” The new owners are expected to continue a loan modification program to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.

On the first trading day of 2009, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 258 points to close at 9,034. The NASDAQ was up 55 points, closing at 1,632. The S&P was up 28.

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AirTran Airways says a misunderstanding led to nine Muslim passengers being removed from one of its flights yesterday. In a formal apology, AirTran says other passengers on board thought they overheard a suspicious conversation. The nine were cleared of any wrongdoing but weren’t allowed back on board.

Ethiopian troops have begun pulling out of Somalia where for the past two years they’ve been trying to protect Somalia’s transitional government from an Islamist insurgency. Meanwhile a well-known Somali journalist and two members of the National Reconciliation Commission have been murdered. NPR’s Gwen Tompkins reports.

Hassan Mayow Hassan was a journalist working for Radio Shabelle. He was gunned down yesterday outside Mogadishu. Hassan is the latest in a long list of Somali journalists who have been killed over the past two years. Still others have been hounded out of the country. Assassination has become a tool of Al Shebab, the most radical wing of an Islamist insurgency that now controls most of Somalia. But there are other armed groups in Somalia that have been accused of killing for personal vendettas, or political gain. Abdullahi Abdi Egaal died in a separate incident yesterday. He was a member of Somalia’s National Reconciliation Commission. Another deputy minister of the commission was killed last week. The United Nations is calling for a full investigation, but Somalia’s transitional government is on increasingly shaky ground. It is unclear whether they can bring the guilty to justice. Gwen Tompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.

The teenage son of actor John Travolta died today. 16-year-old Jett Travolta was vacationing with his family at their home in the Bahamas, when he reportedly fell, hit his head and died. No further details are available.