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Rebels trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad are making slow but steady gains in securing an incrementally larger safe zone in the north. They've captured a third major border crossing between Syria and Turkey. The rebels are trying to restore services to a recently liberated town.

Undecided voters in Ohio got a lot of attention this week from President Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney. Coal may be the key to many swing voters in the Buckeye State, which remains a top coal producer.

It's an issue weighing on coal miner Rick Carpenter's mind at the Barnesville Pumpkin Festival in southeastern Ohio.

"Save coal — fire Obama. Yeah, I've got one of those signs in my yard," he says.

In 1939, Jessie Lee Bond died. His death certificate says he drowned accidentally, but his family has always maintained that he was lynched after an argument with white shop owners — shot and thrown into the river.

No one has ever been charged with his death.

Decades later, his now-91-year-old brother, Charlie Morris, told StoryCorps in Memphis, Tenn., that he was at school when he was called down to the office and told that his brother had been murdered.

Tunisia was the birthplace of the Arab Spring last year, and many regard it as the most Western-looking nation in the Arab world. Yet it's also waging a roaring debate over how to define freedom of expression in an evolving society.

Tunisian protesters attacked the U.S. Embassy recently in response to the anti-Muslim video Innocence of Muslims. This was just the latest of several episodes in which hard-line Muslims have acted out publicly to what they see as attacks on their religion.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep. Somebody in Pittsburgh took the law into his own hands. More precisely, the person took a paintbrush into his own hands. He or she is apparently upset that in 2009 the city denied requests to paint crosswalks in the Polish Hill neighborhood. This unknown person painted unofficial crosswalks. Authorities are publicly scolding the crosswalk vigilante. But by coincidence, they're also promising to install real crosswalks within weeks. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's swing through Ohio took him from the suburbs of Columbus through parched cornfields and pumpkin patches to industrial corridors near Cleveland and Toledo. Romney says his policies will make things better for struggling Americans.

Kareem Serageldin is accused of hiding mortgage security losses during the financial crisis. He faces extradition to the U.S. A former senior trader for Credit Suisse, Serageldin is the highest level Wall Street executive to be charged in a case related to the 2008 financial meltdown.