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The bad news: Retail sales fell 0.5 percent in June from May, the Census Bureau says. It's the third straight month that sales have been down from the month before.

But, Census adds that June sales were 3.8 percent above the pace of June 2011. And, "sales for the April through June 2012 period were up 4.7 percent ... from the same period a year ago."

President Obama and his campaign are being "dishonest" when they attack his record as a business executive, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said this morning on Fox & Friends as a new week on the presidential campaign trail began where the last one left off.

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Good morning. I'm Renée Montagne. Former President George H. W. Bush says when he turns 90 he'll celebrate by skydiving. Thrill seeking at 90 is becoming a trend. Thelma Gratch spent her 90th, presumably with arms raised, hurtling down a 230-foot high roller coaster at 80 miles an hour. She's had a season pass to an amusement park outside Cincinnati since 1979 so chances are she's spent other birthdays screaming her head off. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

The late Paul Conrad's 1991 work "Chain Reaction" is a mass of black chain link shaped into a mushroom cloud. It's in Santa Monica, Calif., where people either love or hate it. Now the end of the world has been delayed long enough for the statue to decay.

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Until this past weekend, Romney generally ignored invitations to be interviewed, except on Fox News. Then on Friday night, he did a series of TV talks defending his work at Bain Capital.

NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik was watching.

Last week's report by former FBI Director Louis Freeh confirmed what many said all along, that the Penn State child sex scandal was the biggest and most damaging in college sports history. Now that the report has been released, the focus is turning to the NCAA and what action it will take, if any.

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Mitt Romney and the Republican Party have lately been raising more money than President Obama and the Democrats. They won the money chase in May and in June. Normally, you would expect the incumbent to raise far more money.

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And President Obama's campaign promptly warned supporters that he could lose without more cash. Though the Democrats have still raised more in the overall campaign, this led us to ask: How much does a fundraising advantage matter?

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

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And I'm Steve Inskeep.

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NPR's business news starts with Microsoft's moves in the news business.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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And let's stay in the land of milk and honey, because our last word in business takes us to a barnyard venture that is solving to very old problems at once. The first is keeping unwanted plants out of a productive vegetable garden. The second, more existential problem is finding a suitable romantic partner. And the last word is weed dating.

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On a Monday, it's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

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And I'm Renee Montagne.

President Obama will be in the swing state of Ohio again today. He'll be holding his first big town hall meeting of the campaign in Cincinnati. And the president will likely continue his campaign attack against Mitt Romney's record of what Democrats characterize as sending jobs overseas while he was the head of Bain Capital. Over the weekend, the president said he would not apologize for those attacks.

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Montana is making it easier to hunt wolves. The wolf population has been growing even though wolf hunting is already legal. So wildlife officials are doing away with the statewide kill limit. They are nearly doubling the length of the season and the state will also allow trapping, which many conservationists call inhumane. Here's Dan Boyce with Montana Public Radio.

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The recession came close to killing off some of the American automakers. Now in a slow recovery, the American companies are doing better. Japanese car companies, some of them, are struggling - in particular some of the smaller Japanese automakers are facing trouble. NPR's Sonari Glinton looks at the fortunes of what are known as the Little Three.

The Red Cross announced Sunday that the conflict in Syria has now reached the level of civil war. The declaration means international humanitarian law now applies throughout the country, and is the responsibility of all parties, whether rebel or government.

Imagine going into bankruptcy with billions of dollars in cash still in your bank account. That's what American Airlines did last November. The thinking was that management would gut the company's pensions and union contracts and emerge from bankruptcy ready to compete.

But then US Airways said it could take over American and be profitable, and it wouldn't have to hurt American's employees nearly as bad in the process. American's pilots, mechanics and flight attendants loved that idea.

The bucking bull has long been the embodiment of the American rodeo, and it takes just four seconds for a strong young bull to reap its owner as much as $50,000 in prize money.

Four seconds is how long each 1- or 2-year-old bull will wear a weight strapped to its back as the massive animal is judged on how high it kicks and how much it twists.

In the past 10 years, bucking bulls have become a major industry. The price of the best bloodlines can soar to $250,000, and competitions take place everywhere from Madison Square Garden to Wyoming.

Think of this like a snapshot — a few perspectives of HIV-negative 20-somethings.

To start, we posted the following query on NPR's Facebook page:

"Thirty years ago, a positive HIV status was considered a death sentence. As treatments for the disease have advanced over the past three decades, we're wondering how younger people view the disease today."

Hundreds of people e-mailed and commented with their reactions. We also gathered reactions from young folks we met on the street.

Crystal Roberts-Lee has lived a tough life, and her HIV has, in some ways, been the least of her worries.

She was addicted to heroin and cocaine. Her daughter went to prison. A scorpion tattoo crawling across her neck marks the day her husband died from AIDS. Now, at 59, Roberts-Lee is the healthiest she has ever been.

"After I take my medicine, it's just a normal day for me," she says. "I go on with whatever I have to do. If I'm just out and about, I feel like I'm just like the next person."

This past week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a report linking climate change to some of the extreme weather events of 2011, like the devastating drought in Texas and record high temperatures in Britain.

None of this bodes well for the future, but there is a glimmer of hope. It turns out that U.S. carbon emissions are down nearly 8 percent since 2006.

The conflict in Syria has now reached the level of civil war, the Red Cross announced Sunday.

The declaration means international humanitarian law now applies throughout the country, and is the responsibility of all parties, whether rebel or government.

Russians are slowly beginning to recover from the devastating flooding that soaked the southwestern region of Krasnodar. The floods, which struck in the early morning hours on July 7, reportedly killed more than 150 people.

It wasn't long before outrage flowed. Masha Lipman, a researcher with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Moscow, says the government had advance notice of the disaster, but didn't pass along the message.