Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

President Obama's Ohio speech yesterday was designed to draw a contrast between his economic vision and Mitt Romney's. It was also meant to argue that the state of the economy doesn't hand his rival the keys to the White House.

NPR's Scott Horsley reports.

SCOTT HORSLEY, BYLINE: As initial unemployment claims ticked up again this week, President Obama said he's reminded every day just how tough things still are for many Americans. But he also expressed confidence that by working together, those challenges can be overcome.

The two sports headlines that matter the most this morning.:

-- Tiger Woods Tied For Second At U.S. Open; Michael Thompson Leads By Three Strokes.

Golf's Open is being played at San Francisco's Olympic Club. ESPN's broadcast resumes at 9 a.m. ET.

-- Miami Wins Game Two Of The NBA Finals By Score Of 100-96; Series With Thunder Tied At 1-1.

The Heat and Thunder play next on Sunday at 8 p.m. ET. ABC-TV is the broadcaster.

People around the world are watching anxiously to see the reaction in the streets of Cairo and other Egyptian cities to Thursday's "smooth military coup."

"Leftist and liberal Egyptian activists" have called for demonstrations, al-Jazeera reports, starting after midday prayers in that Muslim nation (Egypt is six hours ahead of the U.S. East Coast).

In recent months, economic growth in China has not only slowed — it's slowed faster than most people expected. Last week, for the first time since the depths of the global financial crisis, the government actually cut lending rates to try to spur growth. All of this has people wondering: Where is the world's star economy headed?

In the car business, Lincoln once stood as the pinnacle of luxury. Frank Sinatra drove a Lincoln. So did the Shah of Iran. In the U.S., the presidential limo was a Lincoln.

The brand peaked with the 1961 Lincoln Continental, a beautiful, innovative car that stood for style, individuality and sophistication.

But after the '60s, Lincoln started on a long, slow decline that mirrored the slide of the American auto industry.

The famous paintings on the walls of caves in Europe mark the beginning of figurative art and a great leap forward for human culture.

But now a novel method of determining the age of some of those cave paintings questions their provenance. Not that they're fakes — only that it might not have been modern humans who made them.

The first European cave paintings are thought to have been made over 30,000 years ago. Most depict animals and hunters. Some of the eeriest are stencils of human hands, apparently made by blowing a spray of pigment over a hand held up to a wall.

If you make movies that have anything to do with science, please note: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, pays attention.

Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that people accused of a crime deserve the right to a defense lawyer, no matter whether they can afford to pay for one. But there's no such guarantee when it comes to civil disputes — like evictions and child custody cases — even though they have a huge impact on people's lives.

For decades, federal and state governments have pitched in to help. But money pressures mean the system for funding legal aid programs for the poor is headed toward a crisis.

A Legal ER