President Bashar Assad's forces have placed landmines "near the borders with Lebanon and Turkey" along routes used by refugees trying to flee the fighting inside Syria, the watchdog group Human Rights Watch reported today.

Saying it has collected "reports and confirmations from witnesses and Syrian deminers," the organization called such actions "unconscionable."

There was a 1.1 percent increase in retail sales in February from January, the Census Bureau says. It was the largest rise in five months, Reuters reports.

And the gain didn't come just become rising gas prices led to a 3.3 percent increase in the value of gasoline sales. According to The Associated Press, retail sales rose 0.8 percent excluding gasoline.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. You too could be the proud new owner of an entire town. Buford, Wyoming goes up for sale next month. It's at 8,000 feet, the highest town on the coast-to-coast Interstate 80. It's an old railroad town, once home to thousands, but now with a population of one. That person, Don Sammons, plans to retire from managing his businesses and move. So an auction comes in April - one gas station, one convenience store, a garage and a home. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Pizza chefs from around the world are gathered to compete in events like: largest dough stretch, fastest pizza-box folding and freestyle acrobatic dough-tossing.

(As news comes in from Afghanistan about the killings of 16 civilians, allegedly by a U.S. soldier, we'll update this post.)

There are fears that the killing of 16 Afghan civilians on Sunday, reportedly by a U.S. Army staff sergeant who gunned down the men, women and children in cold blood, will inflame the people of that nation.

Alabama and Mississippi will play an unaccustomed high profile role Tuesday as each candidate for the Republican presidential nomination looks to voters in those states to give his candidacy a boost towards inevitability, if you're Mitt Romney, or just keep their candidacies alive if you're Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And today's last word in business is 50-50.

Those are the odds you'll ever see your lost cell phone again. That's according to a study by a security firm, the people behind the Norton AntiVirus software. The company set up an experiment where they purposely lost smartphones in public areas, you know, elevators, shopping centers, airports, places you may have left your phone at some point.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

The American soldier who allegedly shot and killed 16 men, women and children in two Afghan villages was from an Army base outside Tacoma, Washington. The Army/Air Force installation, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, is one of the biggest in the military.

It's also, as NPR's Martin Kaste reports, one of the most troubled.

(SOUNDBITE OF AIRCRAFT)

What is remarkable is that those who bought bonds will get a tiny rate of return. Renee Montagne talks to David Wessel, economics editor of The Wall Street Journal, about what the results mean, who's buying Treasuries and how the borrowed funds are being spent.