House Speaker John Boehner has already said he has problems with the Senate bill and that he’d support an extension of unemployment benefits only if there were a company by job creation programs. So House Republicans say they plan to attach their own provisions to the legislation, proposals they say will lead to more jobs, such as building the Keystone XL oil pipeline or mandating employer-provided healthcare coverage only to employees who work 40 hours a week rather than 30. More than a million people lost their benefits Dec. 28th, but that number has since grown to nearly three million. Ailsa Chang, NPR News, the Capitol. 

 

The international community continues to praise this Saturday’s presidential election in Afghanistan. NPR’s Sean Carberry reports the turnout far exceeded expectations and Taliban violence, while significant in rural areas, fell far short of projections. 

 

Election officials estimate that more than seven million Afghans turned out to vote. That’s nearly double the turnout of the 2009 election.

 

“We don't know who has won. We know that the Taliban has lost.”

 

Thijis Berman, head of the European Union monitoring team, says all eyes will now be on Afghanistan’s electoral bodies that are tallying the votes and evaluating claims of fraud. 

 

“We do not know how these elections went.”

 

More than 150 fraud complaints have been filed against the eight presidential candidates. The final election results will be released in May after the allegations have been resolved. If no candidate gets more than 50%, there will be a runoff between the top two. Sean Carberry, NPR News, Kabul.

 

If you are running Microsoft XP on your home computer, starting tomorrow you are essentially unsupported. That’s because 12 years after the release of its popular operating system, the company says it will stop supporting XP. Patrick Thomas, a security consultant with Neohapsis, explains what it essentially means to millions still using the system. 

 

“Computers will continue to work as they have before April 8th except that at that point users’ security is essentially entirely in their own hands because Microsoft provider is no longer stepping in to release updates, to release patches." 

 

One reason many individuals and businesses have been slow to move on from XP is it’s relatively stable, thus made it roughly 30% of (companies) computers being used by businesses and consumers around the world are still running on XP.

 

Consumers boosted their borrowing again in February, though much of the rise was due to an increase in non-revolving credits, things like education and auto loans rather than for revolving credit which covers store and credit card debts.  

 

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 166 points to end the session at 16,245. The Nasdaq dropped 47 points today. 

 

You are listening to NPR News in Washington. 

 

The official death toll in the Washington state mudslide has now risen to 33 with 30 of the victims now positively identified by Medical Examiner’s Office. Latest victim id, there’s 30-year-old Billy L. Spillers, who, like the other victims, died as a result of blunt force trauma after a wall of earth and mud swept across a residential area on the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River that’s located some 55 miles northeast of Seattle, and dozens of people are still listed as missing after the devastating mudslide. 

 

Airlines delayed more flights and lost more bags last year, but fewer passengers complained to the federal government about it. That’s according to an annual study of airline quality. As NPR’s David Schaper reports, the overall marks to the airline industry are the highest ever.

 

The annual Airline Quality Rating’s report finds that the airline industry appears to be in a pretty good place right now, according to one of the study’s authors Dean Headley of Wichita State University. 

 

“Almost 80% on time with about three out of 1,000 passengers have their bags not shown up with them—that’s not a lot. And there are only about 1 out of 100,000 passengers are complaining about it. But that may be the ramp. People have maybe gone to the point where they say ‘I just don’t care anymore’.”

 

Headley says many consumers just don’t bother complaining to the federal government and seem resigned to the fact that poor service is the new normal for most airlines. David Schaper, NPR News.

 

In a film career that began at age six and continued well into his later years, actor Mickey Rooney is being remembered today. Rooney, who died over the weekend at the age of 93, never really stopped working. His bodywork included 16 of the Andy Hardy comedies over the course of two decades, including one that featured child star Judy Garland. Rooney gained nearly as much attention for his personal life—he was married eight times.