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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And here in the U.S., for retailers, the cost they pay for consumer fraud is going up. Merchants who sell their products using mobile devices or sell internationally are seeing their costs climbing higher still - almost 40 over last year.

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.

Richard Lapointe confessed in 1989 that he stabbed, raped and killed his wife's 88-year-old grandmother two years earlier. But in the 23 years since, experts in criminal justice have come to better understand how sometimes people make false confessions — especially someone with brain damage, like Lapointe. On Monday, Connecticut's state Appellate Court ordered a new trial, saying prosecutors wrongly withheld potentially important evidence.

In this year's presidential campaign, $11 million has been spent so far on ads targeting Hispanics, according to ad-tracking firm Kantar Media/CMAG.

That's eight times the amount spent four years ago on Spanish-language ads, and it's focused in just a handful of battleground states: Florida, Nevada, Colorado and, perhaps most surprisingly, North Carolina.

Throughout the series First and Main this election season, Morning Edition is traveling to contested counties in swing states to find out what is shaping voters' decisions.

The series started in Florida and the hotly contested county that includes Tampa, then continued to a county in Wisconsin that voted twice for George W. Bush and then swung to Barack Obama.

Here's how the new novel from crime writer Dennis Lehane begins: "Some years later, on a tugboat in the Gulf of Mexico, Joe Coughlin's feet were placed in a tub of cement."

Pretty hard to stop reading after an opening line like that — at least you'd think. "It was funny, a guy came up to me the other night, and he said, 'I really loved this book once it got going,' " Lehane tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "I thought, 'Jesus Christ, read the first sentence! How much more "getting going" is it going to get?' "

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The satirical news site reported a bogus poll: 77 percent of rural white voters would rather vote for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than President Obama. The Iranian news agency Fars did not understand it was a joke, and reported the survey as fact.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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

Day after day in Syria, people are being killed, but sometimes it takes a weekend like this past one to remind us just how horrifying the conflict is. Government troops were battling rebels were for control of Aleppo, Syria's largest such city. And as they fought, flames spred through a centuries-old market, burning huge sections to the ground.

The Impossible Project saved Polaroid film before it went off the market. It bought the last remaining factory and restarted production. And a gadget called the Instant Lab prints Polaroids from your iPhone.

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Thousands of people gathered at the New York Hall of Science this weekend for what's called the World Maker Faire. It was the third an annual celebration of 21st century Do-It-Yourself culture, with workshops, speakers and demonstrations.

But, as reporter Stan Alcorn discovered, the main attraction is the makers themselves.

STAN ALCORN, BYLINE: At the center of the World Maker Faire is Katy Perry.

JESSE GREEN: Katy Perry is the unicorn that we made for a friend's wedding.

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A disease that once ravaged the world, killed countless children, even famously affected President Franklin Roosevelt, has now been eradicated in all but three countries: Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The disease is polio. And at the United Nations last week, Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon met leaders of those three countries, who pledged to step up efforts to wipe out polio entirely.

The role of James Bond has been played by six different actors in the Bond film franchise that started in 1962. Each actor brought his own strengths to the rakish British spy, from brooding physicality (Sean Connery, Daniel Craig) to smooth charm (Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan).

For every actor who has portrayed Bond, there are fans who think he defined the character, and that the others merely toiled in his shadow. Craig will try to solidify his place in the Bond pantheon next month when the franchise releases its 23rd film, Skyfall.