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Why is one-time Republican presidential contender Herman Cain optimistic about the GOP bringing more African-Americans into its tent?

Because "a lot of people in this country have not realized or it does not get picked up in the polls [that] some black people can think for themselves," he said Monday afternoon. "They don't have to be told what to think and who to vote for and they are responding to the facts."

Officials in Texas say they will cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood following a federal court ruling last week. The decision by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the state can defund the health clinics because Planned Parenthood is associated with abortion.

The late Stephane Grappelli is perhaps the best-known jazz violinist in history. His collaborations with guitarist Django Reinhardt have influenced countless musicians. A comparison to Grappelli is one of the highest honors a young, rising violinist can receive.

The U.S. military announced that nine servicemen who were involved in two incidents of misconduct were given administrative punishments for their actions.

Mara Liasson joins Audie Cornish from the Republican National Convention hall in Tampa, Fla.

The movie 2016: Obama's America just did something that's hard for any political documentary to accomplish: it took seventh place on the list of this weekend's highest grossing movies. Usually, when any documentary pulls in more than five million dollars, it's about, say, Katy Perry. But 2016 looks at the ideologies and global movements that it says helped intellectually mold the President of the United States from a critical, conservative perspective. And the ending imagines an America economically undone by four more years of an Obama presidency.

The focus of the fighting in Syria is once again on the capital Damascus.

A Syrian military helicopter crashed in a ball of fire on Monday on the outskirts of the capital. Syrian state television and the state-run news agency SANA both acknowledged the crash, while grainy video footage posted on the Internet showed the flaming helicopter going down, trailed by a thick plume of black smoke.

When Kara Counard staged a photography exhibit at the ARTgarage in Green Bay this summer, she interviewed and photographed 33 subjects — women from the ages of 89-100 years old. She called it the Women Over 90 Project.

To give more volume to the exhibit, Kara brought in a group of fifth grade girls. The young people visited a nursing home and interviewed and photographed women in their 90s.

The United States was the biggest provider of weapons to other countries, last year. In terms of how much money it moved, it tripled its 2010 purchases and moved $66.3 billion worth of arms.

According to a Congressional Research Service report (pdf), that is the biggest amount in the history of the United States and most of it comes from sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia.

As the Republican convention gets under way in Tampa tomorrow, we can expect to hear more about the personal life of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

First, three stories from Thomas Peterffy's life as a trader:

Story #1:

When Peterffy was a kid growing up in communist Hungary in the 1950s his buddy went to Austria and brought back a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. Peterffy bought the pack, broke the sticks of gum up into little pieces, and sold them at a profit. The principal at his school was not amused. "Where's your communist conscience?" the principal asked.

Not surprisingly, given story #1, Peterffy moved to the U.S. as a young man.

Story #2:

Samsung sounded a defiant note today, saying it would continue its legal fight with Apple "until our arguments have been accepted."

Samsung came out badly battered on Friday when a jury awarded Apple more than a $1 billion in damages, after it found Samsung had willfully infringed upon some of Apple's patents.

With a bang of his supersized gavel, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus just opened the 2012 GOP convention.

And moments later with another bang of the gavel he declared it in recess.

As we've reported, tropical storm Isaac convinced Republicans to delay the real start of their convention until Tuesday.

Republicans have their former Democratic star at their convention this week in Artur Davis — and now Democrats have their answer in Charlie Crist.

The former governor and former Republican will speak next week at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, the party confirmed this morning. "I'm very pleased, at least in a small way, to try to help the president," Crist told NPR.

Tax rates have been a constant theme of this election cycle. Mostly, it's because Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is one of the wealthiest men to run for president and the rate at which he has paid federal taxes has been the subject of much discussion.

With nearly 700 food carts licensed last year, Portland, Ore., is arguable a leader in the mobile food revolution. Lucky residents can choose between Iraqi-Jewish sabich, yeasted Belgian liege waffles, or Indonesian rendang, all served out of a friendly window on the sidewalk. But all of these mobile meals come with a downside — namely, trash.

Phyllis and Darren Sudman started Simon's Fund in 2005, after their 3-month-old son Simon died in his sleep. They learned later that Simon had an undetected silent heart condition.

Today, Simon's Fund provides free heart screenings to children throughout the Philadelphia area to prevent other families from experiencing the same tragedy.

Even some Republicans don't think the loss of Monday's proceedings at their party's national convention in Tampa, due to Tropical Storm Isaac, will matter much in the grand scheme of things.

"The whole drama of the hurricane's very unique here," says David Woodard, a GOP consultant who teaches at Clemson University. "Suppose Isaac wiped out the whole convention — who cares?"

Conventions clearly are a diminished thing, Woodard says. They no longer decide who the presidential nominees are going to be, in anything but a strictly formal sense.

Political conventions, even ones that have been delayed a day by a tropical storm, are all about getting a party's message out to the nation.

Minutes ago in the Tampa Convention Center, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky used a sit-down with USA Today and Gannett correspondents to restate one key argument Republicans have been making and will continue to make through Election Day:

The NFL is in a pay dispute with referees, and replacement refs have been working the preseason. Players and unionized officials say the substitutes are struggling, and that it'll only get worse. They cite safety as their biggest concern. Host Michel Martin discusses the issue with Pablo Torre of Sports Illustrated.

Tropical Storm Isaac slammed Haiti with heavy rain and strong winds. Although the damage is less than feared, the country is still trying to rebuild after the devastating 2010 earthquake. Host Michel Martin speaks with Haiti's First Lady Sophia Martelly to learn more about how they were affected by the storm.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'd like to thank my colleagues Viviana Hurtado and Jacki Lyden for sitting in for me while I was away. Like it or not, the final phase of this year's election season is upon us. The economy is so central to this year's presidential contest and reeling(ph) political discussions up and down the ticket that we're going to ask NPR's Marilyn Geewax to set the stage by reminding us about what the key indicators on the economy are telling us and how those compare to four years ago.

Transcript

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Coming up, the NFL is in the middle of another lockout, but it's not the players. We'll get more from Sports Illustrated's Pablo Torre in just a few minutes.

The Donald isn't done yet with the "birther" conspiracy.

Developer/reality show star/sort-of politician Donald Trump brought his unique personality to Florida on Sunday and for at least a few minutes took some of the spotlight away from the Republican National Convention in Tampa and tropical storm Isaac out in the Gulf of Mexico.