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A man whose wife accused him of being so cheap he wouldn't even pay for her cup of coffee has been ordered by an Iranian court to buy her 124,000 roses.

The roses were promised in her dowry, which is binding under Iranian law.

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Oil has hit a true record, with crude oil futures briefly hitting $103.95 a barrel Monday. That's higher than the inflation-adjusted record set in April 1980.

Prices eventually settled Monday at $102.45 a barrel. A weakening dollar is partly responsible, as investors pour their money into hard assets like oil.

Many schools receive wads of cash, but the University of Minnesota has received a more animated gift: comics.

Lawyer John Borger has collected 30,000 comic books since college, and at his wife's insistence, he's agreed to donate his collection, worth six figures, to the school's library.

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A three-nation crisis in Latin America threatens the region's stability after Venezuela and Ecuador cut diplomatic ties with Colombia and ordered troops to their borders with Colombia.

The dispute erupted over the weekend after Colombian troops crossed Ecuador's border to kill a rebel inside Ecuador.

John Otis of the Houston Chronicle talks with NPR's Renee Montagne.

Pipe leaks in New Orleans are so bad that the city is losing millions of gallons of fresh water a day.

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board is struggling to rebuild a system that was a mess even before Hurricane Katrina.

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The combination of a slowdown in manufacturing and a rise in prices is causing some economy watchers to worry that stagflation might be on the horizon.

Stagflation is when inflation and a recession attack, leaving the economy severely weakened. David Wessel of The Wall Street Journal talks with NPR's Renee Montagne about whether the economy is facing stagflation.

Alabama, Georgia and Florida have been battling for more than a decade over how to share water. Georgia says it needs more water to satisfy the needs of Atlanta and its suburbs.

But Alabama and Florida say Georgia has done a poor job of planning for growth and that the state's water demands shortchange other states.

Now the dispute may end up in court. NPR's Renee Montagne talks with NPR's Greg Allen.

One silver lining in the real estate crisis is that nonprofits are finding great land deals. Developers who had been sitting on tracts of land slated for development are dumping the parcels at fire-sale prices.

Habitat for Humanity, which builds housing for needy families, is aggressively buying properties it couldn't afford a few years ago.

Elaine Korry reports.

Starting in the 1950s, a group of artists found new ways to create colorful, abstract works known as "color field" painting.

They rarely used paint brushes and one of them couldn't even draw. A new exhibit celebrates their tradition-breaking techniques.

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The Hope Now Alliance, a group of lenders organized by the Bush administration to help borrowers struggling to stay current with home mortgages, says it has helped 1 million homeowners since July.

But critics say the effort isn't doing enough to address a crisis.

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