NPR News

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Video Depicting Urination On Corpses Won't Derail Peace Talks, Taliban Says.

-- Judge Blocks Pardons Issued By Outgoing Mississippi Gov. Barbour.

The number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance rose by 24,000 last week from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports. There were 399,000 such claims.

Also, "the 4-week moving average was 381,750, an increase of 7,750 from the previous week's revised average of 374,000," the agency says.

Legendary football coach Joe Paterno, who lost his job at Penn State in the wake of the scandal over a former assistant's arrest on charges of sexually abusing young boys, will be honored by the school at some point, university President Rodney Erickson told alumni Wednesday evening.

Most of the 203 pardons, clemencies and sentence reductions granted by outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) just before he left office Tuesday, which ignited a firestorm of criticism and controversy in the state, are now in legal limbo.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The job-search site CareerBuilder has released a survey on the most outrageous excuses for coming in late. Employers across the country submitted gems like: I thought I won the lottery.

Though experts are warning it will inflame anti-American sentiment in Afghanistan and hurt efforts to start peace talks with the Taliban, a video that appears to show four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of three Afghan men will not affect efforts to begin such negotiations, a Taliban spokesman tells Reuters.

"This is not the first time we see such brutality," the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said.

Fresh off his big wins in New Hampshire and Iowa, Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney took his campaign to South Carolina. That state votes a week from Saturday. The other Republicans are trying to throw up road blocks.

While GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney savored his second consecutive win in the Republican nominating process, those who finished behind him in New Hampshire also continued on to South Carolina. They are hoping that it is in the Palmetto state where they can get his campaign to to stumble before it becomes unstoppable.

Over the next three years, RBS will cut 3,500 jobs. That's in addition to more than 30,000 layoffs that happened over the last two years. In the U.S., RBS runs Citizens Bank with branches in about a dozen states.