The nation in brief

— QUOTE OF THE DAY

“To tear it down completely would be like saying to evil,‘You’ve won.’”

Fran Bresson, who attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in the 1950s, on the suggestion of some Newtown, Conn., residents to destroy the school where 26 people were killed Article, this page

Ex-secretary of state supports Hagel

WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a twice wounded Vietnam War veteran, is “superbly qualified” to run the Pentagon, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday in a television interview.

Powell, a Republican like Hagel, appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press program, rejecting criticism from other party members over a comment the former Nebraska lawmaker made about the “Jewish lobby” and a 2007 vote opposing designation of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group.

“He is a very strong supporter of the state of Israel,” Powell said. “It doesn’t mean you have to agree with every single position the Israeli government takes.”

Hagel, 66, has come under attack from Republicans including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Cornyn of Texas, members of Senate Armed Services Committee that will handle the nomination.

JPMorgan to vote on releasing report

NEW YORK - JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s board will consider releasing an internal report this week that faults Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon’s oversight of a division that lost more than $6.2 billion on botched trades, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

The final report, which builds on a preliminary analysis released in July, is critical of Dimon, 56, former Chief Financial Officer Doug Braunstein, 51, former Chief Investment Officer Ina Drew and others for inadequately supervising traders in a U.K. unit that built up a large and illiquid position in credit derivatives last year, these people said.

The report, which isn’t yet finished, will be presented to the board when it meets on Tuesday. The directors will then vote on whether to release it to the public when the bank announces fourth-quarter earnings the next day, the people said, asking not to be named because the report is not yet public.

Joe Evangelisti, a spokesman for the New York-based bank, declined to comment and said that each member of the board also declined to comment.

Family blames prosecutors in suicide

NEW YORK - The family of a Reddit co-founder who committed suicide weeks before he was to go on trial on federal charges that he stole millions of scholarly articles is blaming prosecutors for his death.

Aaron Swartz hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment Friday night, his family and authorities said. The 26-year-old had fought to make online content free to the public and as a teenager helped create RSS, a family of Web feed formats used to gather updates from blogs, news headlines, audio and video for users.

In 2011, he was charged with stealing millions of scientific journals from a computer archive at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an attempt to make them freely available.

He had pleaded innocent, and his federal trial was to begin next month. If convicted, he faced decades in prison and a fortune in fines.

“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death,” Swartz’s family said in a statement released Saturday.

Work on Mississippi River advances

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said contractors have completed the first phase of emergency work to remove rocks that have held up barge traffic in the drought stricken Mississippi River.

Contractors have excavated about 365 cubic yards of limestone from the river near the town of Thebes in southern Illinois, deepening the channel by about 2 feet, the Corps said in a statement Saturday.

Barge traffic for shippers including Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. of Decatur, Ill., has slowed on the river because of shallow water caused by the worst U.S. drought since the 1930s. About $2.8 billion worth of cargo, including grain, coal and fertilizer, moves along the Mississippi during a typical January, according to the American Waterways Operators, an Arlington, Va.-based industry group. The group has called for more water to be released from reservoirs upstream from St. Louis if drought conditions worsen.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/14/2013

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