Morning Edition

After a month-long offensive in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, rebels are struggling under a fierce counter offensive by the Syrian military and the outcome is far from clear. But the future of Aleppo, the country's financial hub, is already under discussion in secret meetings on the Turkish border.

Over cups of sweat tea in a Turkish border hotel, Moeihmen Abdul Rahman, a lawyer from Aleppo, sits down for his first meeting with Abu Riad, a commander from the Al Tawheed brigade, a coalition of rebel militias leading the assault on Aleppo.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney says he favors keeping all of the Bush-era tax cuts and then adding some more. To pay for these cuts, he would reduce or eliminate some of the tax deductions that many Americans have come to rely on. But his proposals are already facing a lot of resistance.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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

Today's shooting in New York City draws special attention because of the location: at the base of the Empire State Building, perhaps the most famous building in New York, one of the most famous buildings in the world. The gunman opened fire there. Several people were shot and wounded. We're getting conflicting accounts of how many, although news photographs from the scene do show a number of people down on the ground.

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Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep with condolences to the U.S. Postal Service. The Post Office is stuck with hundreds of millions of stamps bearing the likeness of Homer Simpson. The service predicted the stamps would be twice as popular as Elvis Presley. One billion stamps were printed. Bloomberg reports only 318 million have been sold. An inspector general's report says that kind of overprinting adds to the post office money losses.

DAN CASTELLANETA: (as Homer Simpson) Doh.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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NPR's business news starts with a big patent ruling.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

INSKEEP: This is a case of Apple against Samsung - and if that sounds familiar, it's because there's more than one patent case here.

While a jury in California deliberates a huge multibillion dollar patent infringement case, which we've been discussing this week, a ruling on a similar case with the same players has been issued today in South Korea.

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This week the publisher Penguin confirmed it is releasing a book about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. The book is called "No Easy Day." And as of this morning, it is number one on Amazon's bestseller list, even though it is not due out until September 11.

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And we are also following a guilty verdict in the case of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. A court in Oslo also declared that he is competent, not insane. And we talked about this with Alan Cowell, a correspondent for the New York Times.

So what does this mean for Breivik?

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Now, the summer blockbuster season at the movies is nearly over, which means some smaller and more independent films are making their way into theaters. Film critic Kenneth Turan saw "Robot and Frank."