NPR 2008-06-19

Scores of communities along the Upper Mississippi River continue to fight the rising waters even as levees around the area begin to fail. The governors of both Illinois and Missouri were on site today to assess the situation. From member station KWMU in St. Louis, Adam Allington reports.

At 4:00 a.m. this morning, floodwaters began overtopping levees between the towns of Hannibal, Missouri and Quincy, Illinois. The levees protect two city wells used by the town of Palmyra, four thousand acres of farmland and Burlington Northern Railroad Tracks. In the town of  Clarksville, Missouri, tractors are piling sand for sandbaggers. Jo Anne Smiley is the town's mayor. "You're heartsick for the people who are in business here, who having to move everything out. Second of all, you're heartsick for the people who have lived here for a long time and seen the town go through it before and hoped it would not happen again." Officials in Hannibal say the city is in pretty good shape. In Lincoln County, floodwaters are overtopping levees along Highway 79, threatening the towns of Elsberry,  Winfield, Old Monroe and Foley. For NPR News, I'm Adam Allington in St. Louis.

Congressional Democrats 1 are rejecting President Bush's call today for more domestic oil production. NPR's Debbie Elliott has more.

President Bush wants lawmakers to lift a ban on drilling off parts of America's shores. "We should expand American oil production by increasing access to the Outer Continental 2 Shelf, or OCS." His proposal didn't get a warm reception from House Democrats. Massachusetts Congressman 3 Ed Markey is chairman of the Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "If this was a good plan, then they would have adopted it over the six years they controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency 4 when they had a monopoly on political power. One of the biggest reasons they are not gonna be successful is the governors of Florida, the governors of California, Republicans, are going to scream." Florida Governor Charlie Crist says Congress should let states decide whether to allow drilling off their coasts. Debbie Elliott, NPR News, the Capitol.

The president is sending his US energy secretary to Saudi Arabia for a one-day meeting of major oil producers and consumers. The White House announced today Samuel Bodman will lead the US delegation 5 heading to the meeting, which is being hosted by the world's largest oil producer. Saudis called the meeting of oil-producing and consuming nations to discuss ways of dealing 6 with soaring energy prices and to work to try and prevent further increases.

Congress, for a second time, has enacted 8 a massive 290-billion-dollar farm bill. The Senate voting 80-14 to override 9 President Bush's veto of the bill, more than the two-thirds majority needed to enact 7 the measure. Most of the farm bill was put in place in May when House and Senate lawmakers overrode 10 a presidential veto at that time over a clerical error resulted(resulting) in 34 missing pages of the legislation.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 131 points to close at 12,029 today. The NASDAQ lost 28 points. The S&P fell 13 points.

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According to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, North Korea is expected to soon present China with a long-overdue declaration of the country's nuclear programs. Rice made the statement during a speech at The Heritage  Foundation,  a Washington-based think tank, as she was presenting a broad defense 11 of current  administration policy toward North Korea. North Korea was supposed to produce the declaration at the end of last year under a multilateral agreement, in which the country committed to abandoning its nuclear program in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives 12. Such move would clear the way for the lifting of US sanctions.

Chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, Royce Lamberth, met today with government and Guantanamo detainees' lawyers on how to handle the cases of some 200 detainees who are challenging their detentions 13. Last week, the Supreme 14 Court ordered the cases to go forward. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.

Lamberth and former chief judge Thomas Hogan met with some two dozen lawyers representing the government and the detainees. The array of decisions they face is daunting 15: from the logistical--where to hold hearings and how to provide for and finance security measures, to critical legal questions. There are about a dozen judges who have been assigned these cases, and  there is concern about contradictory 16 rulings on what information the government must produce and how fast, what the standard of proof is to justify 17 holding a detainee in prison and what to do with the many detainees who have been cleared for release but whose home countries have refused to take them back. Judge Lamberth assigned Judge Hogan the unenviable task of trying to resolve some of these questions in advance. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.

Mortgage rates have been moving higher. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage rose above 6.5% last week. That's the highest rates they've been since July of last year.