News Wrap: U.S. Drought Expected to Hike Up Food Prices

More than half of the continental United States was in moderate to extreme drought in June -- including corn- and soybean-producing states -- damaging crops and impacting prices at the grocery store.

In other news Friday, the National Weather Service says it has logged more than 4,000 record-high temperatures in the past month. The current heat wave has produced deadly storms and knocked out power for thousands. Also, a senior member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's military has defected to France.

A widely-reported headline this week announced that 3,215 high temperature records were matched or broken across the U.S. in June. But the PBS NewsHour's record temperature heat widget only reported 743 broken heat records--quite a discrepancy.

Six days after fierce storms hit numerous mid-Atlantic states, more than 500,000 people still remained without power. Also, Pakistan reopened routes to Afghanistan after having closed them for seven months, and the first trucks rumbled through Thursday.

NASA Earth Observatory released satellite images that show the power outages in the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area that occurred as a result of a rare, fast-moving "derecho" thunderstorm system on Friday, June 29th.

These before and after images from NASA show the power outages in the Washington, D.C. and Baltimore area that occurred as a result of a rare, fast-moving thunderstorm system on Friday, June 29th.

In the Midwest and the East, crews have been working for several days to return power to residents, where 24 people have died in extreme heat conditions. And in Colorado, the recovery from the devastating wildfires continues. Jeffrey Brown reports on efforts to tame fires and restore utilities.

Lack of water, "the great air conditioner", is causing unusually high temperatures and extreme weather events in the United States, Kevin Trenberth with the National Center for Atmospheric Research tells Judy Woodruff.

The continuing U.S. heat wave has killed at least 22 people, while states try to grapple with storm-driven power outages on the East Coast and wildfires in the West. Tom Bearden reports on the experiences of families in Fort Collins, Colo., who returned to their homes after the wildfires to see what treasures had survived.

President Obama traveled to Colorado to assess the damages wreaked by record-breaking wildfires. One person has died in the fires and more than 300 homes were destroyed.