Tuesday Afternoon Federal Newscast – April 13

The Afternoon Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Daily Debrief hosts Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris discuss throughout their show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

• The senior U.S. general in Iraq since 2008, Gen. Ray Odierno, will be succeeded by a leading Pentagon general at the end of the summer, military officials said Monday. His replacement is Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, the staff director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the officials said. Military officials spoke about the change on condition of anonymity because the announcement has not been made. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said Defense Secretary Robert Gates has not yet made a recommendation to the White House for Odierno’s successor.
• Democratic senators on Monday overcame Republican opposition to an extension of unemployment benefits and health-insurance subsidies for the unemployed. Four Republican lawmakers sided with Democrats to reach the necessary 60-senator threshold in the procedural vote. The Republicans were Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and George Voinovich of Ohio. The Washington Times reports most Republicans have pressed the majority Democrats to find money from elsewhere in the federal budget to pay for the measures, citing the size of the federal government’s budget deficit.
• President Barack Obama told assembled leaders at the 47-country Nuclear Security Summit Tuesday the risk of nuclear attack _ not by an enemy nation, but from terrorists _ was on the rise despite the end of the Cold War. In his opening address to the first full day of the summit, Obama described the new nuclear reality as a “cruel irony of history.” He called the conference with the goal of locking down all nuclear materials worldwide in four years. Obama had already held two days of meetings with selected leaders from among the 47 countries assembled to recharge efforts to keep nuclear material out of terrorist hands. It ends Tuesday with a joint declaration to guide future work toward locking away and cleansing the globe of materials still too easily accessible to terrorists.
• Twitter announced Tuesday that it is introducing advertising, allowing companies to pay to have their messages show up first in searches on its site. The feature is called Promoted Tweets. Twitter says Best Buy Co., Sony Pictures, Starbucks Corp. and Virgin America are some of the advertisers. Twitter has grown quickly in popularity since it started in 2006 but has yet to define a plan for turning its wide usage into profits. The eventual introduction of advertising was expected, although Twitter also has been making an undisclosed amount of money by providing Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. with access to messages for their search engines.

TOMORROW MORNING ON FEDERAL NEWS RADIO

Coming up on the Federal Drive

** Budget Director Peter Orszag recently said that earmarks are down, but a government watchdog group disagrees. We get analysis from Jodi Schneider of The American Banker.

** The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative won the top IRMCO award for interagency cooperation. We’ll hear from WHTI Director Chris Milowic of CBP.

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