Business

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

Let's turn now to proposed rules to protect patients from abusive debt-collection practices, specifically at nonprofit hospitals. The rules come from the Treasury Department. They were required by the 2010 federal health law. Jenny Gold, of our partner Kaiser Health News, has more.

JENNY GOLD, BYLINE: When Deb Waldin arrived at the emergency room of Fairview Health Services, a nonprofit hospital system in Minnesota, on a scale of one to 10, she says her pain was a 12.

"Viva Forever" is the name of a new musical based on songs from the Spice Girls. The five members of the British girl-power band made the announcement Tuesday. The plot isn't much of a surprise — the show is about a group of girls who become swept up in a world of fame and celebrity. It opens in London this December.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

NPR's business starts with living wills for banks.

The nation's biggest banks are getting ready to file plans with the government for how they would unwind their assets if they were to fail. The plans are called living wills. Regulators want to avoid the type of damage the collapse of Lehman Brothers had on the financial system. Big banks have a July 1st deadline to submit their living wills to the Federal Reserve and FDIC. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Two dozen people on four continents have been charged with trafficking in stolen credit cards and bank account numbers. Eleven of the defendants were arrested in the U.S. They were caught after allegedly using a website set up by the FBI as part of a sting operation.

NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.

JIM ZARROLI, BYLINE: FBI officials said the arrests yesterday amounted to the largest coordinated international law enforcement action in history. It involved 13 countries in North America, Asia, Europe and Australia.

As Allison Aubrey and Dan Charles reported today on Morning Edition, meat has more of an impact on the environment than any other food we eat. That's because livestock require so much more food, water, land, and energy than plants to raise and transport. (Listen to the audio above for their conversation with Morning Edition's Linda Wertheimer.)

Take a look here at what goes into just one quarter-pound of hamburger meat.

The nation's housing crisis has touched countless people. Increasingly, the well-off are among them.

Housing counselors around the country say they are seeing more people struggling to keep their million-dollar homes. It's a twist on a familiar story of hardship — but one that involves some very big numbers.

Moving Up, Falling Down

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

You know the ads that poke fun at the hapless, square PC compared with the hip and clever Mac?

(SOUNDBITE OF AN AD)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Hello, I'm a Mac.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: And I'm a PC. And I feel inadequate.

Just days before student loan rates are set to double for millions of Americans, President Obama and congressional leaders haven't reached an agreement on legislation to keep those rates at 3.4 percent.

The debate reflects the growing concern over the debt burden many take on to get a college education. About two-thirds of bachelor's degree recipients borrow money to attend college, and collectively, student debt has topped $1 trillion.

We always liked the lofty design of euro notes. Until Planet Money reader Peter Minnig wrote in to point out the secret messages hidden in the notes — clues that suggest all may not end well for the euro.

What follows are a combination of clues Minnig pointed out, and those we found ourselves.

(Sorry about that giant "Specimen" printed across the bills. We're just following the European Central Bank's anti-counterfeiting rules.)

With a simple statement saying that "it is considering a restructuring to separate its business into two distinct publicly traded companies," News Corp. this morning confirmed the thrust of a story reported by its own Wall Street Journal, NPR's David Folkenflik tells us.

Home prices rose in nearly all major U.S. cities in April from March, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.

There's lots of chatter today about The Wall Street Journal's report that:

"Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.'s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see."

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And many people want to carve out a slice of the national meat market - that includes people who would like to sell you locally grown meat.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

A company from Kansas City - now, there's a city that knows meat - is developing an application, or app, for smartphones. Nathan Jones wants to help local farmers find distributors.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Chances are that your car's license plate has been photographed recently and downloaded into a data bank. The leading vendor of automated license plate readers says they're now used in nearly every state. Police say they fight crime, but there are privacy concerns about the new technology, as Charlotte Alright reports from Vermont Public Radio.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR STARTING)