Politics & Government

The northern Syrian city of Aleppo has been the site of the bloodiest recent fighting in that country's brutal war, and we're still getting only glimpses of the violence.

But GlobalPost has a striking video of a devastating bombing that killed an entire family — except for a 1-year-old boy who survived without any serious injuries.

Foreign policy and defense matters are normally a source of vulnerability for Democrats, but they're getting a fair amount of attention from speakers down in Charlotte.

"There are more mentions of Osama bin Laden than unemployment in the Democratic national platform," says Micah Zenko, a fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations. "You play to what your strengths are."

President Obama won't be giving the speech he might wish to give tonight.

All presidents accepting their party's renomination seek to shift from a message of hope and change to one of progress and accomplishment. Although Obama will certainly talk up the highlights of his term, he won't want to sound triumphant — not with a jobs report due tomorrow that's expected to show a 43rd straight month of U.S. unemployment above 8 percent.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Just ahead, it's early fall and, as we've been talking about, the presidential campaigns are now in full swing and it's also the beginning of school, so we decided to give you a crash course on education policy and who stands for what. That's in a minute.

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. Coming up, for the first time, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a Mormon, is leading the Republican presidential ticket. In recent years, Mormons have often been identified with conservative politics, but not all agree. We'll meet a group of Mormon Democrats in a few minutes.

But first, it was another big night for the comeback kid.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

BILL CLINTON: We are here to nominate a president, and I've got one in mind.

Party platforms are like contracts: No one bothers to read them until something bad happens.

We all know that parties to any agreement should study the fine print in advance, and surely that applies to the national political parties. The delegates really ought to spend some of their time in the host city studying the document they are voting to adopt.

But hey, it's a convention. It's a party. Who wants to sit in their hotel room and read?

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

OK, over in Europe there's been a lot debate on what to do about the troubled currency. And today the European Central Bank announced a new plan to bolster the euro at a meeting in Frankfurt. Bank president Mario Draghi is under immense pressure to prevent the collapse of Europe's monetary union. The bank did not lower interest rates, as some investors hoped, but did unveil steps to ease the eurozone's debt crisis. NPR's Jim Zarroli is in Germany, following the events, and he joins us now. Good morning.