Morning Edition on WAMC

Politicians have touted modern manufacturing as the solution for lifting the economy and providing good jobs.

But today's manufacturing work requires strong math skills — not just adding and subtracting, but a good grasp of fractions, decimals and basic trigonometry. And job applicants who want to go into manufacturing often don't have what it takes.

So colleges and nonprofits, especially throughout Illinois, are stepping in to bridge this skills gap by combining manufacturing training with basic reading and math.

Doing Math On The Job

In Senate races, Democrats are fighting to preserve their thin majority. Their party campaign committee wants the Federal Election Commission to crack down on some of the Republicans' wealthiest allies — outside money groups that are using anonymous contributions to finance a multimillion-dollar onslaught of attack ads.

Samsung won a victory in Britain on Monday in its global patent war with Apple over the designs for its tablet computers.

A British judge ruled Samsung's Galaxy Tablets do not infringe on any of Apple's designs for the iPad.

Samsung, however, may have mixed feelings about this decision.

According to Judge Colin Birss, Samsung's Galaxy tablets are not cool enough to be confused with the iPad or violate any of Apple's design patents.

The ruling was a legal victory for Samsung, but if this were a consumer review, it would have been a bloodbath.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Ronn Matt told the Chicago Tribune that his mother used to frown on his habit of spitting cherry pits. But now he's a champion. Over the weekend in Michigan, Matt managed to unseat two spitting dynasties, families who had won for the last 20 years the International Cherry Pit spitting contest. He won by spitting a pit 69 feet. Impressive but far short of the world record of 93 and a half feet. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

Disney says nobody in North Korea asked permission to use Mickey and Minnie and some of the company's other characters. A concert for the country's new leader Jim Jong Un featured the Disney stars.

Transcript

LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

This was the scene one year ago today in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: We hereby declare Southern Sudan to be an independent and sovereign state.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)

Some Internet users may be out of luck when they try to log on Monday. They're victims of an international malware attack — a malicious software picked up by their computers online over a year ago. The FBI has turned off Internet servers set up as a stop-gap to keep tens of thousands of victims online.