NPR 2011-11-18

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European stocks opened lower after Fitch ratings agency warned the US banking³ market is very vulnerable to further contagion from the eurozone crisis. France and Spain are holding bond auctions⁴ as yields rise for both countries. Spain faces its highest yields since it adopted the common currency. In Greece, the newly confirmed government is promising⁵ to speed up reforms in order to receive the next installment⁶ 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 commemorating⁷ 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 confrontations⁸ 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 activists⁹ are staging demonstrations¹⁰ 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 barricades¹¹, 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 dispersed¹². So now I think police have a pretty good handle on the different intersections¹⁴. And in fact I was just at the intersection¹³ 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 prospect¹⁵ of new apartments could infuse some energy into the beleaguered¹⁶ housing sector¹⁷.

 

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 scrutiny¹⁸ 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 taxpayers¹⁹ 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 offenders²⁰, and even more African-American victims were killed by people from their own ethnic²¹ 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.

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