Morning Edition

The biggest scandal in the world right now has nothing to do with sex or celebrities. It's about an interest rate called LIBOR, or the London Interbank Offered Rate.

Most Americans probably never heard of LIBOR. When I first moved to New York, I hadn't. Back then, I could barely afford my apartment and got an adjustable rate mortgage. And so I wondered: When my rate adjusts, how will I know how much I'll be paying?

I searched through all the documents and it was right there — LIBOR. I would be paying a few percentage points above whatever LIBOR was.

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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.

It is definitely wrong to hit and run, but it's a little impressive that a high school student was hit and kept running. Anaheim, California police say a high school cross country team was running when a turning car whacked one of the runners. The young woman was apparently determined, because she got backed up and ran away. The driver called after her to stop, stayed where he was and called police. The runner was eventually treated and suffered only minor injuries.

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Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. To kick her 10-year habit, Tori is leaving home for a small island - theoretically, a no-smoking island. Home is an Indonesian zoo. Tori is an orangutan. The Guardian reports she learned to smoke imitating visitors who tossed cigarette butts into her cage. Her non-smoking orangutan roommate does what he can, stamping out burning butts before she can get to them. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

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Three weeks from today, the 2012 London Summer Olympics begin. London will show off its cathedrals and castles, it's parliament and palaces, all that is splendid in one of the world's greatest cities. There is a seedy side of London, however, one that Olympic organizers presumably will not present. That is where we'll be going today with this encore presentation from our Crime in the City series.

Mystery writer Mark Billingham took reporter Vicki Barker to some of the places that inspired his dark twisted thrillers.

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On to some lighter fare, it's been fun, but this is it: the end of Pie Week here on MORNING EDITION.

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Aw. Go on, go on, go on.

WERTHEIMER: Along with a lot of cravings, the series has evoked thoughtful memories from listeners around the country.

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And today's last word in business takes us to London, where Europe's new tallest building has been inaugurated. It's called the Shard. Maybe that's because it sort of looks like a giant shard of glass, 1,016 feet tall. It stands out in a city with a relatively low skyline. It towers over the Tower of London, and the Shard brings many metaphors to mind.

A growing number of cities want to tackle the problem of homelessness by outlawing what are known as "acts of daily living" — sleeping, eating and panhandling in public. In Philadelphia, a new rule is targeting not the homeless but those who feed them.

When Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced the ban on serving food in public parks last March, he said moving such services indoors was part of an effort to raise standards for the homeless.

Pools open to the public were supposed to have chair lifts installed for people with disabilities in time for this summer, but after a wave of protests, the federal order was delayed until January.

Still, some of the country's 300,000 or so pools at hotels, parks and gyms continue to fight the requirement.

Vestavia Hills pool near Birmingham, Ala., is one of thousands of pools that scrambled to get a chair lift installed by May.

Health officials in Kenya say reducing the transmission of HIV among gay men is a central part of their national AIDS strategy. But they face serious challenges, including the fact that homosexuality is still a crime in the East African nation.

HIV rates among gay and bisexual men in Kenya are far higher than the national average.

Groupon and Living Social have sold tens of millions of daily deals and are now a major force in retail. But they rely heavily on getting businesses to offer their goods and services at deep discounts. In exchange, businesses hope for payoff in the form of return customers.

Sometimes, though, the flood of extra business causes more problems than it solves.

Deal-Hungry Crowd

Ailie Ham had just opened Creative Hands Massage in Washington, D.C., when she decided to offer deals through Living Social and Groupon last year.

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Good morning. I'm Linda Wertheimer. Twitter is going to the dogs. Yesterday, Patch, a Jack Russell terrier, boarded a train near Dublin. When the train staff discovered him, they posted his picture on Twitter. It was re-tweeted more than 500 times. Within a half hour, his owner saw the photo and tweeted: That's my dog. Then she opened a Twitter account for Patch, in case he should go missing again. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs is adding staff to its hospitals to meet the mental health needs of vets of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. As Erin Toner of WUWM in Milwaukee reports, some clinicians say the help cannot come soon enough.

ERIN TONER, BYLINE: The VA hospital in Milwaukee is a hectic place. On most mornings you have to circle the parking lots over and over to find a spot. Luckily there's valet service if patients would rather leave the parking to someone else.

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In Britain today, parliament continues its hearing on the interest rate scandal at Barclays Bank. This week, several of the bank's top executives resigned, including the chief executive, Bob Diamond. Yesterday, parliamentarians quizzed Diamond for three hours.

NPR's Philip Reeves is in London, where he says outrage is growing.

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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.

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

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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.

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.