Road block: The Shreveport City Council has rejected Mayor Cedric Glover’s proposal to issue $94 million in revenue bonds to pay for upgrades of city streets. The proposal called for using revenue from Shreveport’s utility franchise fee to pay off the bonds. Backers of the plan say street repairs are urgently needed. Opponents say the city shouldn’t take on that much additional debt. Council members, in a 5-2 vote Tuesday, rejected the plan.
On the rise: Sales of new homes rose in September after four straight monthly declines, largely because builders cut their prices. The Commerce Department is today reporting a sales increase of 5.7% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 313,000 homes. Still, that’s less than half the 700,000 that economists say must be sold to sustain a healthy housing market. A big reason for the gain is that the median sales price fell 3.1% to $204,400—the lowest since October 2010. The number of new homes on the market was also unchanged at 163,000, a record low. Sales of new homes fell for four straight months before September and hit a six-month low in August. Read more from The Associated Press about the housing report here.
Big brother: Google is dealing with more government demands to turn over information about its users as more people immerse themselves online. Google received more than 15,600 requests for user data in the period spanning January through June, 10% more than during the final six months of last year. The requests in the latest period pertained to more than 25,400 individual accounts worldwide—a tiny fraction of Google’s more than one billion users. The mounting pressure on the Internet search leader emerged in a statistical snapshot that Google released Tuesday of its dealings with authorities around the world. Google provided a country-by-country capsule of its legal sparring with authorities during the first six months of the year. Read more from The Associated Press here.
