National

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

If you live in Ohio, you probably feel like this national presidential campaign is focused exclusively on one state - yours. Certainly may feel that way this week. President Obama has released a new TV ad in Ohio and he'll be campaigning in the key battleground state later in the week.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Let's talk now about one of this fall's key Senate races. In Missouri, Republican candidate Todd Akin is launching a bus tour today. You may remember he's the congressman whose controversial comments about rape led to calls that he drop out of the race. Today is the last day for Akin to remove himself from the ballot. He has made clear that is not going to happen. But he has an uphill fight to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Claire McCaskill. She has the financial advantage and she has the lead in the polls.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Some other news. Discover Financial Services has agreed to refund $200 million to more than three and a half million credit card customers. A federal investigation found the company used deceptive marketing practices. It's one of the first major enforcement actions by the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

NPR's Ailsa Chang reports that Discover allegedly charged customers for add-on services they never ordered.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Israeli officials made it known that Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to see President Obama during his visit to the U.S. For a variety of reasons, the president was not available. The two men have had a strained relationship.

It's not so much what Mitt Romney said about whether the government should guarantee people health care in his interview on CBS's 60 Minutes Sunday that has health care policy types buzzing. It's how that compares to what he has said before.

To back up a bit, Scott Pelley asked the former Massachusetts governor if he thinks "the government has a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don't have it today?"

The trading pits at the Chicago Board of Trade and the Mercantile Exchange have long been potent symbols of American capitalism. And they used to be as rough and tumble as the city itself, where burly men bought and sold commodities like hogs, cattle, corn and soybeans.

Trading volume has gone up considerably in recent years, but Chicago's trading pits are tamer places today — the result of a revolution futures trading has undergone over the past quarter century. Much of the trading has left the pits and gone electronic.

From breakfast to bedtime, college sophomore Julia-Scott Dawson and her mother, Robin Dawson, exchange a flurry of texts that include I love you's, inside jokes and casual chitchat.

"We talk every day," Dawson says.

"Every day," echoes her mother.

Julia-Scott Dawson is a sophomore at the University of North Carolina, which is just a 15-minute drive from where her parents live. Every week, she shares a Sunday meal with her family and grabs morning coffee with her parents when they can.

"I just love the time I spend with them," Dawson says.

Sara Terry's first clue that something was wrong with her son, Christian, came just three weeks after he was born.

"We went to check on him, just like any parents go and check on their kids just to make sure they're breathing," says Terry, 34, of Spring, Texas. "And we found him in his crib, and he wasn't breathing. He was blue."

She and her husband were horrified. They rushed Christian to the hospital and learned he had several medical problems.

A mysterious virus has put a Qatari man in critical condition at a U.K. hospital, the World Health Organization said Sunday.

His illness is due to a new type of coronavirus, the family of viruses that causes common colds and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

It's taken as a given that American voters in 2012 aren't as concerned about foreign policy as they are the domestic economy.

It's also accepted as true that on matters of foreign policy, President Obama has an advantage over his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who lacks significant firsthand foreign policy experience.

But Romney has made it a point lately to show that he's not ceding foreign policy and national security to Obama.

Tuesday marks six weeks until Election Day, but registered voters in two dozen states are already able to cast a ballot for president, with more states to allow early voting in the coming weeks.

In the 2000 presidential election, early voting accounted for 15 percent of the total ballots cast. By 2008, that doubled to 30 percent, according to the United States Elections Project at George Mason University. It's expected to be on the rise again this year.

Starting today, New York commuters are passing controversial new ads equating radical Muslims with "savages."

New York's Metro Transit Authority posted the ads in 10 subway stations today after a losing a legal battle with the pro-Israel group the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

Transcript

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

So six weeks to go before Election Day, but in-person early voting has already started in a handful of states. Many others will begin soon, and more and more of us are choosing to vote early. In Colorado, for example, where we just heard from Ari Shapiro, nearly 80 percent of votes were cast early in the 2008 presidential election.

Michael McDonald tracks these trends with the U.S. Elections Project at George Mason University and he joins me now. Welcome to the program.

MICHAEL MCDONALD: Oh, thank you for having me.