Morning Edition

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Now, one way Mitt Romney has challenged President Obama is by going after his foreign policy record. Romney has been especially critical of the president's handling of Iran and Syria. But those attacks aside, some analysts say it's been hard to define where Romney stands on key international issues and whether he differs all that much from the president.

Here's NPR's Jackie Northam.

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From jobseekers in Spain, we turn to those here in the U.S. The latest employment numbers revealed that there are still many more Americans looking for work than there are our jobs that need filling. The May jobs report showed the economy added an anemic 69,000 jobs - about half the number that were added in April. Yet, here's the paradox: Despite the high number of people seeking jobs, many employers insist they can't find the right person for the exact positions they have open.

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And for our last word in business today, we go to Tacoma, Washington, home to what is now the newest and largest automobile museum in the country. It just opened over the weekend.

David Madeira is chief executive of LeMay, America's Car Museum. Madeira says part of the museum's largest label is based on exhibition space. It has 165,000 square feet in the four-story building.

Banks are often accused of dragging their feet when a homeowner wants to sell for less than the balance on the mortgage. A lot of those "short sales" might be better dubbed "really long and drawn out" sales. New federal guidelines, though, could now push lenders to approve short sales faster.

Like a lot of people with autism, Jeff Hudale has a brain that's really good at some things.

"I have an unusual aptitude for numbers, namely math computations," he says.

Hudale can do triple-digit multiplication in his head. That sort of ability helped him get a degree in engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. But he says his brain struggles with other subjects like literature and philosophy.

"I like working with things that are rather concrete and structured," he says. "Yeah, I like things with some logic and some rules to it."

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Good morning. I'm David Greene with a remembrance of Dick Beals, the man whose voice gave lie to Gumby. A glandular condition gave Beals his small stature and youthful voice, a voice that was used in more than 3,000 commercials. Beals played a wide range of roles - babies, teenagers, chipmunks. Perhaps most notably the Speedy Alka-Seltzer character.

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DICK BEALS: (Singing) Alka-Seltzer, plop, plop, fizz, fizz - oh, what a relief it is.

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The Susan G. Komen Global Race for the Cure takes place tomorrow here in the nation's capital. It's one of the breast cancer charity's biggest fundraisers. But this year, participation is way down. That follows Komen's controversial decision in February to stop funding Planned Parenthood programs. The decision was quickly reversed, but Komen's supporters worry about the long-term impact, as NPR's Pam Fessler reports.

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NPR's business news starts with a new, multibillion-dollar chemical plant.

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GREENE: Exxon Mobil plans to build a huge chemical facility in Baytown, Texas. It reverses a company statement last year that said it has no plans for new chemical factories in the United States. According to Reuters, decades-low natural gas prices made the move too enticing to pass over. Natural gas is a key fuel in chemical production. By using its own natural gas, Exxon Mobil can run a chemical plant relatively cheaply.

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OK, let's turn now to personal wealth. Today's last word in business is disappearing millions.

The number of millionaire households in this country declined in 2011. That's according to this year's Global Wealth Study from the Boston Consulting Group. It found the number of American households with a million dollars of investable assets shrunk by 2.5 percent.

The U.S. still leads the world in millionaires, but developing countries are gaining ground. Other countries added nearly 200,000 millionaire households in 2011.

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This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

The financial woes of Greece and other countries of the eurozone have meant painful austerity measures in exchange for financial bailouts. Now Irish voters have approved a European Union treaty to battle the debt crisis. It's an effort to enforce strict budget cuts or face financial penalties.

A federal judge in Florida has blocked the state from enforcing tough restrictions on groups that conduct voter registration drives. Because of the restrictions, the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote had stopped registering voters in the state. The groups challenged the new law in court.