Rubio will enter the race today with a speech at the Freedom Tower in Miami, known as the Ellis Island of the South. That’s where thousands of Cuban immigrants like Marco Rubio’s parents were processed as they entered the U.S. In his speech, Rubio will talk about his experience as a child of Cuban exiles. 

“For me America is just a country. It’s the place that literally changed the history of my family.”

Marco Rubio is joining two other young Tea Party-backed freshmen senators in the race for the nomination, but his advisors say he will win the young fresh face bracket because he can beat Rand Paul and Ted Cruz by appealing to all factions of a deeply fractured Republican Party. Rubio hopes to win support from the Tea Party, social conservatives, foreign policy hawks and the mainstream governing wing of the GOP. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington. 

 

A former guard with the security firm Blackwater has been sentenced to life in prison for the 2007 shooting that killed 14 Iraqi civilians and wounded more than a dozen others. Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder. Three other Blackwater guards got 30-year terms for manslaughter and other crimes. All four were convicted for their involvement in the killings which took place in a crowded traffic circle in downtown Baghdad. 

 

A week before the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration is proposing new regulations. NPR’s Jeff Brady reports the rules for offshore drillers are designed to make sure out-of-control wells are sealed in an emergency.

This is the third round of new regulations since BP lost control of its well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, leading to a massive oil spill. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says the new rules are focused on equipment such as blow-out preventers. And she says there is a reason they took this long to complete.

“This is complicated stuff and there is an awful lot of assessment that was done post Deepwater Horizon to understand exactly what went wrong and what we need to do about it.”

Oil industry groups say they are still reviewing the new rules. The government will consider comments before issuing final regulations. Jeff Brady, NPR News. 

 

The legal battle against the recently approved FCC rule known as net neutrality has begun. The United States Telecom Association, the group that represents companies including AT&T and Verizon has filed suit against the rule at the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington. The secluded new FCC rule says all online content must be permitted to travel at the same speed. But it’s done, designed to prevent broadband service providers from providing so-called fast lanes for some customers’ content or deliberately slowing content to others. 

 

On Wall Street stocks were down modestly today. The Dow dropped 80 points to end the session at 17,977. The Nasdaq lost 7 points. 

 

You are listening to NPR.  

 

A judge at sentence convicted murderer Jodi Arias to life in prison. With sentence today Judge Sherry Stephens bringing to an end to a nearly seven-year-old case that has attracted worldwide attention. The decision by Stephens was largely a formality after a jury last month deadlocked whether to give the 34-year-old Arias life in prison or the death penalty for the killing of her sometime boyfriend Travis Alexander in 2008.

 

Closing arguments are underway in the trial of the man accused of killing six-year-old Etan Patz in 1979. As NPR’s Joel Rose reports, the trial of Pedro Hernandez lasted ten weeks. 

The case against Pedro Hernandez rests on a video-taped confession he made to police in 2012. In the video Hernandez says he lured Patz to the basement of a corner store in 1979 and then choked him. Prosecutors called other witnesses who say Hernandez told similar stories over the years. But defense lawyers say that confession is false—the fictional ravings of a mentally ill man with a low IQ. They say the crime could have been committed by another man who was long considered the main suspect. Etan Patz vanished while walking from his parents’ loft in lower Manhattan to bus stop. His body was never found. He was one of the first missing children to have his picture on milk cartons across the country. Joel Rose, NPR News, New York. 

 

A U.S. cyber security firm is saying it has successfully prevented a Chinese hacker group from tugging in an American technology firm. Officials with the company CrowdStrike telling Reuters the firm observed a China-based group called Hurricane Panda hauled attacks on a U.S.-based internet technology firm after hackers detected the cyber securities firm (security firm’s, rather) presence on its networks. Officials with CrowdStrike say they have a high degree of confidence that the attacker group was tied to the Chinese government.