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News from NPR

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Business

3:46 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Business News

By editor

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

NPR's business news starts with the back story on VIP loans.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

WERTHEIMER: A former mortgage company, Countrywide, used a VIP loan program to buy influence with members of Congress, staffers and other officials, including a number at Fannie Mae, the government backed mortgage giant central to Countrywide's business. That the bottom line of a new report out today from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Around the Nation

3:46 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Power Outages Darken Many July 4 Celebrations

By editor

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

On the day after the Fourth, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

And I'm Linda Wertheimer.

It was especially easy for some Americans to see the fireworks last night. They had no competing source of light.

INSKEEP: Brilliant displays lit up cities like New York and Washington, but across Maryland, Virginia and New Jersey, about a quarter of a million homes still have no electricity.

Election 2012

3:46 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Romney: Obama's Health Mandate Is A Tax

Credit Kayana Szymczak / Getty Images

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney walks with his wife, Ann, and other family members, along with Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, in the Wolfeboro, N.H., Independence Day parade Wednesday. Ayotte has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential contender.

By Josh Rogers

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney spent his July Fourth holiday marching in a New Hampshire parade, and backtracking statements a top adviser made about the individual mandate in the Obama health care law.

There was something for almost everybody in Wolfeboro's Independence Day parade: a local brass band, bonnet-wearing Daughters of the American Revolution, a Zumba instructor shimmying across the bed of a pickup truck, and even a Jimmy Durante impersonator, complete with prosthetic nose.

Southword

2:15 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Meet Al Black: Florida's Prison Painter

Next image Previous image

Credit Courtesy of Gary Monroe

Al Black is one of Florida's 26 officially recognized "Highwaymen" — a loosely affiliated group of artists who began painting in the 1960s, some of whom are still at it today.

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

Credit Gary Monroe

Examples of Al Black's prison murals from the book The Highwaymen Murals: Al Black's Concrete Dreams, University Press of Florida, 2009

By Jacki Lyden

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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In the 1960s, Al Black could be found cruising up and down Route 1 in his blue-and-white Ford Galaxy — with a trunk full of wet landscape paintings.

At the time, he was a salesman who could snatch your breath away and sell it back to you. As artist Mary Ann Carroll puts it, he could "sell a jacket to a mosquito in summer."

"A salesman is a con-man," Black readily admits himself today. He's a storyteller. And does he have stories to tell.

Revolutionary Road Trip

2:13 am

Thu July 5, 2012

In Libya's Shifting Sands, Kids Try To Find Their Way

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Credit John W. Poole / NPR

Three students outside the Science College of Benghazi University. They say they expect to have opportunities in Libya that would not have been possible when Moammar Gadhafi was in power.

Credit John W. Poole / NPR

Schoolgirls outside the Martyrs of Libya school near Leptis Magna, Libya. The country's history books are being rewritten, and Gadhafi's rule is now described as a time of corruption and atrocities.

Credit John W. Poole / NPR

Schoolgirls at the newly renamed Independent School in Misrata. The city was badly damaged in the fighting last year, and many lost friends or family members.

Credit John W. Poole / NPR

The vice principal at the Okba Bennafee high school, Abdel Mutaleb Suker, is a former rebel who says he started wearing military fatigues to command respect from the students, many of whom come from families loyal to Gadhafi.

By Steve Inskeep

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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In a stretch of sandy wasteland, Hisham Sadowi, 12, smacks a tee shot across a makeshift golf course in Benghazi, Libya.

On this course with no grass, local rules allowed him to place the ball on a little square of artificial turf he carries around.

Hisham dreams of becoming a professional golfer, and he stops briefly to speak to us. We asked him who his favorite golfer is.

"Tiger Woods," he exclaims.

Dead Stop

2:13 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Beyond The Music In St. Louis Cemetery No. 2

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Credit Pat Jolly / AP

Ernie K-Doe poses outside his Mother-In-Law Lounge during Jazz Fest in New Orleans in 2001. He died a few months later and was buried in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2.

Credit Courtesy of Rob Florence

Antoinette K-Doe (second from the left) stands with friends around a statue of her deceased husband, Ernie, at the St. Louis No. 2 tomb. Antoinette is buried in the tomb, and her mother — Ernie K-Doe's second and favorite mother-in-law, Leola Clark — is shown in the portrait. Clark is buried in the tomb, too.

Credit Masahiro Sumori / Wikimedia

Earl King on stage at the 1997 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He died a few years after Ernie K-Doe, and now the two share a tomb.

By Gwen Thompkins

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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There's so much water in, around and underneath New Orleans, that the dead spend eternity in tombs above ground.

Most of the tombs now have a similar design: On top, there's space for a wooden coffin or two, and at the bottom lies a potpourri of decanted family remains. Sooner or later, whoever is up high must vacate and settle lower, making room for the newly dead. That's how families stay together — in a desiccated jumble of grandpas, grandmas, siblings and cousins.

Around the Nation

2:09 am

Thu July 5, 2012

New Orleans Struggles With Murder Rate, And Trust

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Credit Debbie Elliott / NPR

Sgt. Miro Brekalo talks with residents in New Orleans' Gentilly neighborhood, as other officers walk their beat. Their goal isn't only to stop crime; it's also to connect with citizens who are often reluctant to report crimes.

Credit Debbie Elliott / NPR

Theresa Elloie is fighting to keep open her Sportsman's Corner bar, where two murders were recently committed outside. Her father opened the bar in the 1960s.

Credit Debbie Elliott / NPR

Third District Commander John Thomas urges residents the Gentilly neighborhood to help fight crime and drug violence.

Credit Debbie Elliott / NPR

Jerome Temple works with New Orleans youth who are vulnerable to street crime. He says the only way to stop the violence is to hold kids accountable for bad choices. "How many kids don't know a gun is wrong?" he asks.

By Debbie Elliott

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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New Orleans now has the highest per capita murder rate in the country. Most of the killings are concentrated in the city's poorest neighborhoods — places like Central City, just a few blocks north of the stately mansions that line St. Charles Avenue.

The city's mayor is launching a new program aimed at cracking what he describes as a deeply rooted culture of violence. But victims complain that a failed criminal justice system has left the streets to vigilante justice, with innocent residents caught in the crossfire.

A Wounded Neighborhood

Around the Nation

2:07 am

Thu July 5, 2012

'Black Eden,' The Town That Segregation Built

Credit Robert Abbott Sengstacke / Getty Images

The Idlewild Club House, Idlewild, Mich., September 1938.

By editor

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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Sometimes history is made in the most unlikely of places.

This summer, the community of Idlewild, Mich., once known as America's "Black Eden," is celebrating its centennial — and its place in American history.

Located about 30 miles east of the larger resort city of Ludington, tucked away in the woods of the Huron-Manistee National Forests, the town was once a go-to spot for summer vacations. It was a resort unlike any other in the United States, however, and was, in essence, the town that segregation built.

Planet Money

2:06 am

Thu July 5, 2012

The Farmer And The Commerce Clause

Credit Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court, 70 years after rejecting Roscoe Filburn's bid to limit the federal government's power to regulate commerce.

By David Kestenbaum

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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Last week's Supreme Court ruling on the health care law might have made Roscoe Filburn a little happier.

Filburn was an Ohio dairy farmer who had a beef with the federal government, one he took to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1942. He lost.

Politics

2:05 am

Thu July 5, 2012

Ohio Senator Vulnerable For Health Law Support

Credit Mark Duncan / AP

Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown speaks in Columbus, Ohio, in May. Brown, who is up for re-election this year, says he wakes up every day "trying to figure out how to create jobs."

By David Welna

Originally published on Thu July 5, 2012 9:25 pm

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President Obama hits the campaign trail Thursday with a bus tour in Ohio. The state is a crucial battleground not only for the presidential election, but also because it could decide whether Democrats keep control of the Senate.

Up for re-election there is Democrat Sherrod Brown, who is being challenged by the state's Republican treasurer, Josh Mandel. Mandel is highlighting Brown's staunch support of the new health care law — with a big assist from outside groups.

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