NPR 2011-11-18

 Contagion 1 from the European debt crisis is far from contained as US banks are warned they are at serious risk, and bond yields rise everywhere in the eurozone except Germany. Teri Schultz also reports from Brussels that financial authorities are now formally reviewing the new government of Greece, whose burgeoning 2 debt threatens to bring down other EU economies.

 
European stocks opened lower after Fitch ratings agency warned the US banking 3 market is very vulnerable to further contagion from the eurozone crisis. France and Spain are holding bond auctions 4 as yields rise for both countries. Spain faces its highest yields since it adopted the common currency. In Greece, the newly confirmed government is promising 5 to speed up reforms in order to receive the next installment 6 of bailout money from Brussels. Horst Reichenbach, head of an EU task force assigned to help Athens do that, warns the deck has stacked against the Greeks.
 
"Reform's just always easier in times of growth. Here, Greece has to succeed in very difficult times."
 
The EU is waiting on written commitments from Greek political leaders before it sends the money. For NPR News, I'm Teri Schultz in Brussels.
 
US stocks trading lower, at last check, the Dow was down 174 at 11,732; NASDAQ off more than 2% at 2,586.
 
An annual march in Athens commemorating 7 a student uprising in the 1970s has evolved into public anger over the financial state of Greece. Police clashed with rioters and detained dozens of people, and in Italy confrontations 8 between protesters and police as well in Turin over the financial crisis in that country. The new prime minister warns Italians will have to sacrifice through the country's new austerity measures.
 
Occupy Wall Street activists 9 are staging demonstrations 10 in cities across the US, marking the start of the movement two months ago in New York. In that city, NPR's Eyder Peralta after a number of arrests earlier in the day, the situation's calmer for now.
 
Earlier in the morning, you heard people saying, you know, "Let's take the barricades 11, there is enough of us here. We can take it and they are not going to arrest us all.” And then as the day went on, the protesters got dispersed 12. So now I think police have a pretty good handle on the different intersections 14. And in fact I was just at the intersection 13 of Wall Street and Pearl. And there was a group of drummers, and one of the cops came up to one of the protesters and told them, “Hey, we like that beat.” So it seems the interaction with police hasn't been as tense as predicted. 
 
NPR's Eyder Peralta in New York.
 
Homebuilders are coming off a month of a slight decline in construction. The number of homes on which they broke ground fell 0.3% in October. But the prospect 15 of new apartments could infuse some energy into the beleaguered 16 housing sector 17.
 
This is NPR News.
 
The country's energy secretary is facing tough questions about the administration's decision to give a a half-billion-dollar loan to the solar company Solyndra, which later went bankrupt and laid off all of its workers. Steven Chu told a House panel today as far as he could tell, there were no red flags about Solyndra's fate.
 
"The loan guaranteed to Solyndra was subject to proper, rigorous scrutiny 18 and healthy debate during every phase of the process."
 
He says he was not aware of his staff’s outlook in 2009 that Solyndra was likely to face severe cash problems. He says he does not believe taxpayers 19 will recover much of the 528-million-dollar loan Solyndra received.
 
The Justice Department says homicide rates are at their lowest level in four decades. Researchers say the biggest declines came in cities where more than one million people live. NPR's Carrie Johnson reports on the new analysis of murders across the United States.
 
The Bureau of Justice Statistics studied homicide data between 1980 and 2010. Their report says men are responsible for the vast majority of murders, and gun violence by teens continues to be a problem, even though the overall homicide rate has dropped. Researchers also found most white victims were killed by white offenders 20, and even more African-American victims were killed by people from their own ethnic 21 background. African-Americans remain six times more likely than white people to be victims of homicide. Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.
 
President Obama’s in Indonesia. He’s shoring up military and economic ties with East Asia.
 
I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News in Washington.