Mark Memmott

Less than a week after all the tea-reading over what, if anything, it means that Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have a love in his life, now there are these stories to ponder:

The bad news: Retail sales fell 0.5 percent in June from May, the Census Bureau says. It's the third straight month that sales have been down from the month before.

But, Census adds that June sales were 3.8 percent above the pace of June 2011. And, "sales for the April through June 2012 period were up 4.7 percent ... from the same period a year ago."

President Obama and his campaign are being "dishonest" when they attack his record as a business executive, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said this morning on Fox & Friends as a new week on the presidential campaign trail began where the last one left off.

Some of us are old enough to remember when electric football first became one of the coolest toys.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney at a Wyoming fundraiser he hosted Thursday for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (via MSNBC's First Read):

"Sooner or later there is going to be a big surprise. Usually a very unpleasant one. Whether it's 9-11 or the other kinds of difficulties or crises that arrive, they always do. ...

An update on our post from Wednesday headlined "Heir To Billions May Have Lived With Wife's Body For Days In Britain":

Today in a London court, the BBC says, a police detective testified that Hans Kristian Rausing "has been arrested on suspicion of [Eva Rausing's] murder."

A "not guilty" verdict has been handed down in a case that has been front-page news for months in Great Britain:

John Terry, former captain of England's national soccer team and captain of the English Premier League's Chelsea Football Club, "has been cleared of racially abusing fellow footballer Anton Ferdinand," the BBC writes.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 200 Feared Dead In Syria's Bloodiest Day So Far.

-- JPMorgan Earned $5B In Second Quarter Even After $4.4B Trading Loss.

The reporter who last year broke the news that former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky had been accused of sexually abusing young boys today helps answer some very interesting questions:

We'll be done with Friday the 13ths for 2012 once today comes to a close.

If you're nervous, once again we offer something that's supposed to help.

Learning how to say paraskevidekatriaphobia supposedly cures one of any Friday the 13th-related fear.

The grim numbers vary and independent observers haven't yet been able to get to the scene. But there's word from Syria of what may be the single worst day of bloodshed so far in what's become a long line of such horrible events since protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad began in March 2011:

Though it suffered an estimated $4.4 billion second-quarter loss related to its bungled trading in some very risky types of investments, JPMorgan Chase said this morning that it still did well enough in its other businesses that it had net income of $5 billion in those three months.

In a scathing report that takes to task former head football coach Joe Paterno and other top Penn State officials, an independent report from investigators led by former FBI director Louis Freeh says there was a "total disregard for the safety and welfare" of Jerry Sandusky's child victims "by the most senior leaders" at the school.

That is "our most saddening and sobering finding," Freeh concludes about his investigation into the scandal that rocked the school last year.

As brother Jim Memmott tweeted: "Good heavens, what a life."

Read this New York Times obituary of Robert de La Rochefoucauld and we bet you'll say something like that too. As the Times writes, in World War II the French count's exploits as an agent for the British:

"Detectives are investigating whether one of the heirs to the Tetra Pak drinks carton fortune lived with his wife's body for up to a week after her death in their Belgravia mansion in London," The Guardian reports.

On this "17th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II," 30,000 people gathered in Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, today to bury 520 more victims of the 1995 slaughter there.

And as The Associated Press says, "the annual ritual was as heartbreaking as ever."

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People this morning that his policies would be good for all Americans and that those of President Obama have not helped the nation's poorest people.

And, he told delegates to the NAACP's annual convention in Houston, "if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president."

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon predicted this would happen: The bank "plans to reclaim millions of dollars in stock from executives at the center of the trading blunder that shocked Wall Street," The Wall Street Journal reports

"My grandfather stuck it in the attic a hundred years ago and here it is now, a blessing to his grandchildren."

A blessing for sure.

As the Toledo Blade reports, when Karl Kissner and his cousins were clearing out his grandfather's home in Defiance, Ohio, on Feb. 29 they came across a box of very rare and very valuable baseball cards.

With a vote Tuesday evening by its House of Deputies, the Episcopal Church became the largest U.S. denomination so far "to officially sanction same-sex relationships," as CNN's Belief blog writes.

It seems that North Korea's young leader may have reconnected with an old love.

There were 3.6 million jobs open and ready to be filled in May if the right candidates came along, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning.

That was up from 3.4 million in April, was the second-most for any month so far this year and was up 16 percent from the 3.1 million in May 2011.

David Callaway, editor-in-chief at MarketWatch, was this morning named to be editor-in-chief at USA Today.

There, he will be teamed up again with Larry Kramer — the newspaper's new publisher. Kramer founded MarketWatch.

The power struggle between the military leaders who have been running Egypt since the spring 2011 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak and newly elected lawmakers escalated further today.

Members of parliament's lower house met in defiance of an order from the nation's highest court to disband.

Iran must be "part of the solution" to the crisis in Syria, former U.N. Secretary-General Koffi Annan said today in Tehran.

But as Annan spoke, there was new word about how horrible things have gotten in Syria since protests against the regime of President Bashar Assad began in March 2011 and forces loyal to Assad cracked down on his opponents.