NPR 2011-08-18

 President Obama says it will probably be at least a year before home prices start rising again and sales pick up.

 
"It will probably take this year and next year for us to see a slow appreciation 1 again in the housing market."
 
And he says the federal government can't accomplish that alone and will need support from the banking 2 industry and others to make sure the market pulls out of its slump 3. He spoke 4 today at a town hall meeting in Illinois. Mr. Obama is wrapping up a three-day bus tour of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Meanwhile, Republican presidential contenders Mitt 5 Romney and Rick Perry are touring New Hampshire today, where Perry told a crowd he doesn't believe a man-made global warming.
 
"I do not buy into that a group of scientists, who have [been], in some cases, found to be manipulating this information."
 
Perry says he wouldn't commit federal funds to the issue.
 
A historic drought in Texas has caused record-breaking losses for farmers and ranchers. From member station KUT, Nathan Bernier reports.
 
Texas is bone dry, and three-quarters of the state is in the most intense drought category used by the US Drought Monitor. The conditions have ruined crops from cotton to corn, and it has cattle ranchers paying through the nose to feed their animals. Agriculture economist 6 David Anderson says the losses add up to more than five billion dollars since last November.
 
"...which is more than a billion dollars greater than the record previous drought, which was 2006, in terms of direct economic impact on agriculture."
 
Anderson says consumers will eventually feel the pain at the grocery store. Agriculture also accounts for almost 10% of the Texas economy. For NPR News, I'm Nathan Bernier in Austin, Texas.
 
Producer prices are up for July after a slight drop in June. NPR's Paul Brown reports that wholesale 7 price increases aren't creeping too far to the retail 8 marketplace yet because of the sluggish 9 economy. But one category is an exception.
 
The July Producer Price Index is up by 0.2%, twice what analysts 10 expected. Most of the increase is due to higher costs of light trucks, food and tobacco. Investment strategist Doug Roberts attributes some of the increases to vacation season demand he says may drop in the fall. But tobacco, he says, is in a class by itself. 
 
"Tobacco seems to be the item that everybody loves to hate. Now they keep increasing their prices. We keep increasing their taxes. And as a result, people still consume, but they pay more and more."
 
Roberts says food prices are rising as developing countries switch to Western-type diets, and demand for corn jumps in both the food and fuel industries. Paul Brown, NPR News.
 
On Wall Street just ahead of the close, the Dow was up four points at 11,410; the NASDAQ down 12 points at 2,511; S&P 500 up one at 1,194.
 
This is NPR.
 
Heavy clashes broke out in Libya between rebel forces and forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi fighting for the control of the only functioning oil refinery 11 in the coastal 12 city of Zawiya. The rebels surrounded the refinery which supplies oil and gas to the capital.
 
Prosecutors 13 in the Netherlands say they have circumstantial evidence linking four Hezbollah members to the 2005 assassination 14 of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. But as Larry Miller 15 reports, they concede there is no smoking gun.
 
The UN-backed Special Tribunal for Lebanon says there's enough evidence to go ahead with a trial of the four Hezbollah members. Among them, the suspected bomb maker 16, who blew up the US Marine 17 barracks in Beirut in 1983, killing 18 241 Americans. The indictment 19 into the truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others relies heavily on telephone records linking the suspects to cell phone used by the assassination teams. Hezbollah calls the tribunal an Israeli plot and claims Israel manipulated the phone records. It also refuses to turn over the suspects, and Lebanon says it can't find them. However, the court could try them in absentia. For NPR News, I'm Larry Miller in London.
 
Four of the five largest tobacco companies are suing the federal government over the new graphic 20 cigarette label warnings required by the Food and Drug Administration. Those are the ones that show a diseased lung and a sewn-up corpse 21 among others. The companies, including R.J. Reynolds, say the warnings violate their rights of free speech.
 
Will consumers pay three dollars a month for a debit 22 card? Wells Fargo wants to find out. The San Francisco-based bank says the fee will be applied 23 to checking accounts in certain states, starting in October. And that would be on top of the monthly service fees the bank already charges.