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The National Association of Realtors Web site includes this assessment: "The housing boom has ended but sales at historically healthy levels will continue, and price appreciation will return to normal patterns across much of the country."

Still, some markets are hot -- and some clearly are not.

It is no surprise to me at all that coastal areas are still "hot." (See the list here. You can MSNBC's list here.) Read more about it, from MSN/Money, here.

For city-by-city data from MSNBC, click on a region of the country.

MSNBC points out that interest rates are rising and could rise again later this month:

Buyers are currently committing to an average 6.67 percent interest on new, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, compared with about 5.5 percent a year ago. That change raises the monthly cost $150 for a $200,000 mortgage.

And while the Realtors would like to see the Fed pause, most financial market insiders are expecting the central banks to raise short-term rates again June 29 after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke issued a warning about inflation this week.

While the housing market is expected to keep fading from its record levels, 2006 is still expected by many economists to be the third best year for housing ever.

The National Association of Realtors said yesterday:

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage should average 6.9 percent during the second half of the year, and the unemployment rate is expected to average 4.8 percent in 2006.

The national median existing-home price for all housing types is forecast to rise 5.3 percent this year to $231,300. With more construction in 2006 taking place in lower cost housing markets, the median new-home price is projected to increase 0.8 percent to $242,900.

For more, check out the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Web site.

Big-Box Stores Going to the Birds

A little background first: A few years ago, the legendary KARE11-TV (Minneapolis) reporter Ken Speake sent in a wonderful story about a mother bird who had figured out how to trip the automatic door-opener at the local Home Depot. The bird would fly by, open the door and fly into the store, feed her little ones, fly back, trip the door again and fly outside.

Now, The Boston Globe reported in March that big-box stores like The Home Depot, Lowe's and Wal-Mart are becoming home to birds with increasing regularity. They are like the modern-day barns of yesteryear. The Globe said:

"They are always looking to survive and find food and shelter," said Stephanie Hagopian, who directs the Living with Wildlife program of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

A warehouse-style store "might be like a barn was to them 100 years ago," she said.

Most of the birds are sparrows, which have adapted to living near buildings.

They survive on foliage, spilled grass seed and birdseed, and water inside home improvement stores, but the environment is unnatural.

Wildlife advocates say that companies sometimes poison and shoot the birds or catch them with plastic strips slathered in glue, which can result in a slow, agonizing death.

Home Depot and Lowe's Cos., which operates about 1,200 Lowe's Home Improvement stores in 49 states, have implemented "no kill" policies in response to customers' concerns.

Yancey Casey, a Home Depot spokesman, said the company "hears rumors all the time" about how it rids stores of birds.

"Most are just not true," he said. "We don't use glue traps or anything of that nature."

Home Depot and Lowe's say the preferred method is to catch birds with nets, usually strung between beams, and then to place them in cages to be released outside.

The procedure is carried out periodically throughout the year.

Lowe's hires pest control companies to release birds 60 miles from where they are captured, said spokeswoman Jennifer Smith.

Lowe's has also limited "external access points" and has taken other actions to discourage birds from entering the stores, she said. "Some of it is just good housekeeping. We don't want birdseed in the aisles."

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. works with "local experts" to remove birds from stores, said spokeswoman Sharon Weber, but did not specify how that is done.

Tree Laws

The Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal reported that its community is about to get serious about reworking local tree ordinances. I have seen this story recently arise in other cities, like this one in New York.

Given the amount of new home construction in many parts of the country, it strikes me as a great topic. What are your community's laws about preserving existing trees? How strictly are they enforced? What, if anything, is required of developers who clear treed plots of land?

The Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a commentary on the importance of urban forests to clean the air.
The San Antonio (Texas) Express-News says the city might rewrite part of its tree law this month.
In Seattle, a federal judge had to pay more than $600,000 in fines after his gardener cut trees on what turned out to be community park property.
In Kirkland, Wash., a local businessman was just slapped with a $6,000 fine and was ordered to restore 28 trees after he cut them down from a plot he was leasing.

The Kirkland story describes the city's new ordinance this way:

Under the new ordinance, property owners are free to remove two significant trees -- those [which are] at least six inches in diameter [and] measure 4.5 feet above the ground -- a year, though city staff encourage people to submit a tree removal request form just to avoid any illegal removals.

Property owners are not allowed to remove more than two healthy trees in a year for any reason, and they have to submit a tree plan to remove more than two hazard or nuisance trees or any trees located in sensitive areas like streams or wetlands. The cost of violating the ordinance is $1,000 per tree.

If you really want to see people get riled up, spend some time with employees of the local utility tree-trimming service as they cut limbs around power lines. It is an especially important service in hurricane zones -- but tree owners constantly hassle the crews.

A group called American Forests studies the decline of trees in several American cities. Here are some summaries from selected cities (all of which are in PDF form):

Hospital ID Mix-ups

The Michigan case of the tragic misidentification of victims in a fatal car accident is rare, but not unheard-of.

Ten years ago, when I was in Nashville, a similar case occurred, involving best friends who looked alike. Last month in Maryland, a mix-up involved two young children who were victims of a terrible wreck. CBS said similar cases have been reported in the last decade in Alberta, Canada; New Jersey; Kentucky and Florida. It might be worth a look to see the lengths that coroners and emergency workers go to as they try to correctly identify victims.

How much are the coroners in your state trained in forensics? In Indiana, where one of the mix-ups occurred this spring, calls have been made to change the state's system of electing coroners to a system that would use appointed licensed medical examiners. Here is a state-by-state listing of requirements for coroners.

HIPAA Hype

Three years after the federal government imposed new regulations that allegedly protect patients' private medical information, The Washington Post says the government has not imposed one single fine and has prosecuted only two cases. And it is not for a lack of complaints -- there were 19,420. The Post story said:

"The law was put in place to give people some confidence that when they talk to their doctor or file a claim with their insurance company, that information isn't going to be used against them," said Janlori Goldman, a health-care privacy expert at Columbia University. "They have done almost nothing to enforce the law or make sure people are taking it seriously. I think we're dangerously close to having a law that is essentially meaningless."

HIPAA has been a nightmare for journalists, who have been blocked from all sorts of information about traffic accidents and crime victims, for instance. The Associated Press recently pointed out:

HIPAA requires hospitals to ask patients whether they wish to have information disclosed to the public. If the patient says no, the hospital can't give out information such as the traditional short condition descriptions "good" or "serious," or even say whether the person is in the hospital, dead and in the morgue, or transferred to a specialized hospital.

"That's not very satisfying for readers if they don't know whether their neighbor or the person they know from Rotary is alive, dead or what," said Mark Furman, editor of the Baker City Herald.

Furman noted ways around the roadblock: If the hospital won't release information, a reporter can call family members, for instance. But, Furman asks, "Are we invading their privacy more by knocking on their doors?"

If a patient, unconscious or mentally ill, can't make a decision, medical personnel can make one in the patient's best interest, and hospital officials say they will generally make a conservative decision not to release information.

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Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.

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