Morning Edition

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with layoffs at HP.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: Technology giant Hewlett-Packard is poised to eliminate as many as 30,000 jobs worldwide. These cuts, though, will reportedly spare China - the company's largest source of growth, as well as its research and development divisions.

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

Mitt Romney is disavowing a plan by some wealthy Republicans to attack President Obama for ties to his controversial former pastor. Even the people behind that proposal said they are abandoning it after their idea was plastered on the front page of The New York Times.

The proposal centered on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who was a mentor to Obama before the two parted ways during the last presidential campaign.

Republicans unaffiliated with Romney were considering spending $10 million on a racially tinged advertising campaign tying Wright to the president.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

The head of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, has gotten an invitation to testify in front of the Senate Banking Committee about his bank's recent trading loss of at least $2 billion.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Dimon is very much the public face of his firm. In a Wall Street culture where banks are defined as much by the executives who run them is by the assets they hold. So, what kind of culture led to the multibillion dollar losses at JPMorgan Chase?

Valerie Trierweiler is a journalist and a twice-divorced mother of three teenage boys. She never thought she'd also end up as the first lady of France.

Americans will get their first close-up look at the woman who now calls France's Elysee Palace home when she and her partner, President Francois Hollande, visit the White House this afternoon.

Would that big, bad JPMorgan Chase trade have violated the Volcker Rule?

It's too soon to say, despite the fact that the rule is part of a two-year-old law.

The Volcker Rule bans deposit-taking banks from making speculative bets. But it allows banks to make investments to hedge risks.