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Longtime troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi has, as expected, taken on the extremely difficult challenge of being the "joint special representative for Syria" who will try to broker a peace plan for that nation on behalf of the United Nations and the League of Arab States.

You may have heard that the house of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was burglarized, back in July. Among the stolen items, was a 64 GB silver iPad.

Today, there's news from the San Jose Mercury News that the iPad was recovered from an unlikely source: It was in the hands of Kenny the Clown, who used it to entertain kids and tourists in the Bay Area.

^{Note: We've asked NPR journalists to share their top five (or so) political Twitter accounts, and we're featuring the series on #FollowFriday. Here are recommendations from Tamara Keith (@tamarakeithNPR), an NPR congressional reporter.}

Blogging about being a mom is a booming business. And the popularity of these blogs has spawned an industry that turns some of the moms into virtual product reps.

With companies and conferences devoted to connecting moms with industry, regulatory agencies that keep track of truthfulness and transparency in advertising are struggling to keep up.

Advocates say a public prayer amendment to the Missouri state constitution will strengthen the right to pray in public. But critics say it'll marginalize non-Christians. Guest host Jacki Lyden talks with Missouri State Rep. Mike McGhee who sponsored the initiative, and the Anti-Defamation League's Karen Aroesty, who opposes it.

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that he's paid a rate of at least 13 percent in taxes over the past 10 years. But the Obama campaign again called on Romney to release more tax returns. Guest host Jacki Lyden discusses this and other political news with Univision's Fernando Vila and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert.

A group of Catholic nuns say they're worried about the way GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney will approach poverty and safety-net programs, if elected. So the nuns have invited him, and his running mate Paul Ryan, to spend a day with them, helping the poor. Sister Simone Campbell discusses the invitation with guest host Jacki Lyden.

Monday, New York comedian Matt Fisher wrote a very serious blog post headlined "My Sister Paid Progressive Insurance to Defend Her Killer In Court."

It quickly drew considerable attention on the Web, bad publicity for Progresssive Insurance and coverage from national news outlets because he laid out a sad story:

A federal court has rejected part of Florida's new election law that would have restricted the number of early voting days across the state. The court said the new law cannot take effect in five counties where the African-American vote could be key in November.

The ruling — which was announced late Thursday — is a win for voting rights groups, who say the new law was meant to suppress minority voters in Florida in the Nov. 6 presidential election.

In this case, life is imitating art:

"The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office has placed Walter White on their priority list of the county's most wanted," The Tuscaloosa News reports. "White, 55, was on probation for a 2008 charge of making methamphetamine when he was arrested on similar charges in Bibb County earlier this year."

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Two U.S. Troops Killed By Afghan Police Officer; Latest 'Green On Blue' Attack.

-- Women In Russian Punk Band Found Guilty Of Hooliganism.

And we've updated a post we first published last evening:

Two American military personnel were killed early today in western Afghanistan's Farah province when "a member of the Afghan Local Police turned his weapon" on them, allied commanders in Kabul report.

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Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. She's no sheep dog, but Zoe the dog has adopted a little lamb. The lamb was born on a farm in Australia and abandoned by his mother. That's when farmers brought him to their Dalmatian, how immediately began doting on Dotty. Actually, not that surprising, since Dotty - as his name suggests - is a white lamb covered in unusual black spots, looking exactly like a Dalmatian. What you might call a sheep in dog's clothing. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

A Russian judge today found three members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism connected to "religious hatred."

Word of the verdict came just before 7:30 a.m ET. Just before 10 a.m. ET, the judge announced that each woman was sentenced to serve two years in jail — the minimum that could be imposed.

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Just two years ago, Warwick Park in Baltimore City sat neglected and overgrown while children set up hoops on busy streets to play ball in the middle of traffic.

Then Fayette Street Outreach Organization brought together neighbors and young people from throughout the community and engaged an attorney from our Community Law Center to advocate for the park's restoration.

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

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

Secretary General Ban Ki Moon is expected to tap a veteran U.N. troubleshooter to take over from international envoy Kofi Annan. At the same time, U.N. military observers are wrapping up their mission. By next week, all of the unarmed U.N. military observers will be out of Syria.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Sometimes it can feel like a lot of what we hear is bad news. Well, we're going to hear next about some stories that inspire. All month, we've been collecting stories on NPR.org about good things Americans are doing, how they're working together to improve their communities.

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We call it Participation Nation. You've told us about a California doctor who turned a two-room free clinic into a community health center.

GREENE: A writing program to help young people in Maine become storytellers.

It's been a hot summer in Oklahoma and the heat's forced those without air conditioning to get creative. Mechanics at O'Brien Auto Performance are keeping cool in kilts. From May to October, some employees there don kilts to enjoy a breezier workday.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene. In Russia today, a judge has delivered a guilty verdict for three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot. The band members were given a two-year sentence. They were found guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, after staging a protest in Moscow's main cathedral last February.

Families often pull together to help finance a college education, with parents and grandparents chipping in or co-signing loans. And now, a SmartMoney report finds the U.S. government withholding money from Social Security recipients who've stopped paying on federal student loans.

At 40, Julie Sanders is a mother of three from Portland, Ore. But when she was 16, Sanders belonged to a white supremacist group — and one night in 1988, she witnessed a murder. Since then, she's kept the event a secret from most of her friends and family.

Before she sat down to talk about the incident with her friend Randy Blazak at StoryCorps, Sanders says, she had rarely talked about her past at all. She started out by recalling what her life was like in her teen years.

In 1991, a man named Stephen Mobley robbed a Domino's pizza in Hall County, Ga., and shot the restaurant manager dead.

Crimes like this happen all the time, but this particular case became a national story, in part because Mobley seemed so proud of his crime. After the robbery, he bragged about the killing and had the Domino's logo tattooed on his back.

But there was another reason Mobley's case became famous.

For more than 30 years, Charles Daum made a living by defending people accused of run-of-the-mill crimes. Then he met a charismatic Washington, D.C.-area man charged with distributing cocaine.

What happened next is a plot worthy of a television crime drama.

The accused drug dealer, Delante White, turned the tables and helped convict his own defense lawyer of manufacturing evidence and putting on false testimony to help the drug dealer's case.

Refinance activity continues to boom, fueling the home-loan market. Low interest rates have created a class of "serial refinancers" — those lucky enough to borrow at lower rates — and given them new opportunities to spend their freed up cash.

Settlement attorney Robert Gratz never used to be on a first-name basis with his clients.

"In the past, our practice was such that you'd see people, and that was the end of it," he says.

Gratz now sees the same faces all the time, of clients refinancing again and again — these days in the mid-3 percent range.

For more: Why does the government subsidize crop insurance in the first place? We try to answer that question in our latest podcast.

The federal government spends about $7 billion a year on crop insurance for U.S. farmers. Policies are sold by private companies, but the government sets the rates, so the companies can't compete on price.