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As the presidential election nears, Morning Edition is visiting swing counties in swing states for our series First and Main. We're listening to voters where they live — to understand what's shaping their thinking this election year. This week, we're spending time in Winnebago County, Wis., where we spoke with two women — one Democrat, one Republican — who embody their state's Midwestern charm and spirit of self-reliance. First, we hear from the Democrat.

Independent voters have grown in recent years into a mega voting bloc. By some estimates they outnumber registered Republicans, and even registered Democrats.

Every election cycle, independents generate enormous amounts of interest as candidates, pollsters and the media probe their feelings. These voters are widely considered to hold the key to most elections.

For the first time in a long time there is actually more than a modicum of interest in the women's side of a Grand Slam tournament. And, of course, it's all strictly due to a party of one: Serena Williams.

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A moment ago we heard warnings that Todd Akin will lose financial support if he stays in the race. For a campaign, of course, money is like oxygen, and the presidential campaigns have set out their latest reports on how they're breathing. President Obama and Mitt Romney each have an advantage, depending on which bank account you're looking at. NPR's Peter Overby reports.

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The airline industry is having a better than expected summer. Airline stocks have been on the rise and customer service is improving. These days, airlines are less likely to lose your luggage. They're also seeing the highest percent of on-time arrivals since the government started keeping track in the late 1980s.

NPR's Sonari Glinton reports the industry is getting some help from an unlikely source.

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NPR's business news starts with a really big apple.

It was bound to happen. Apple has surpassed Microsoft as the most valuable company ever. That happened when Apple stock hit $665 per share yesterday, boosting its market value to nearly $624 billion. Microsoft had held the record for market capitalization since 1999. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.

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

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And I'm David Greene.

President Obama will be out talking to voters today, with events in the battleground states of Ohio and Nevada. But by this time in an election year, a sitting president is campaigning even when he's home. The president made a surprise appearance, yesterday, in the White House briefing room. You can imagine what most of the questions were about. Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.

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OK, we're about to hit a new low. The London-based record label Decca held a competition earlier this year. The label was looking for someone who could sing an incredibly low note: the low E.

TIM STORMS: (Singing) E.

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The business school at UCLA wants to go into business for itself. The Anderson School of Management is part of a public university. Of course, it's in California and the school's leaders find that being part of public education in California right now is a little maddening. Budget battles and state budget cuts have become normal.

Will Stone reports on what the school wants to do instead.

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And our last word in business today is: pumped up kicks.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Nike will soon release its priciest shoe.

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The latest Lebron James-branded basketball shoe, known as - the Lebron X Nike Plus - is expected to retail for $315. I'm hoping that's for a pair, David, and not per shoe.

Anyway, it apparently includes some motion sensing technology - motion sensing technology that can record how high players jump when wearing them.

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Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin was going to face trouble no matter what. But it's Akin's fate that he also faces a deadline today.

GREENE: If he should withdraw from the U.S. Senate race by 5:00 Central Time this afternoon, it will be easy for party officials to name a replacement. And he is under pressure not to miss this opportunity.

High school students with heavy academic course loads often find the demands of homework colliding with the need for adequate sleep.

It looks like a bright new car wash, but it's a battery swapping station for electric cars in Israel. When a vehicle pulls up, it is slowly pulled through a conveyor. The spent battery is taken out and replaced with one that is fully charged. The entire process takes less than five minutes.

Fighting health care fraud in the U.S. can seem like an endless game of Whack-a-Mole. When government fraud squads crack down on one scheme, another pops up close by.

But the fraud squads that look for scams in the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs have some new weapons: tools and funding provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Medicare and Medicaid pay out some $750 billion each year to more than 1.5 million doctors, hospitals and medical suppliers. By many estimates, about $65 billion a year is lost to fraud.

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Changes in the health insurance industry are at the top of NPR's business news.

The giant insurance company Aetna plans to get a little bigger. It's buying Coventry Health Care for more than $5.5 billion. Now, if you want to know why, consider the changing landscape in which Aetna does business. Medicaid is expanding under President Obama's health care law, Medicare is expanding as Americans grow older, and those government-run plans include many opportunities for private insurance companies.

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For the residents of Janesville, Wisconsin, Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate was a story of a local man becoming the biggest news in the country. But for the librarians of Janesville, it meant something else entirely, as NPR's Don Gonyea found out last week.

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Let's go next to China, where the wife of a fallen Communist Party leader has received a sentence - a suspended death sentence for murdering a British businessman. Her accomplice, a family employee, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Gu Kailai came under suspicion after a scandal involving her husband, who was one of the rising stars of the Communist Party before he lost his job amid suspicions about his behavior. NPR's Frank Langfitt has been following this case from Shanghai.

Hi, Frank.

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India's government has persuaded companies to shut down more than 150 websites. Authorities blame those sites for circulating claims that led to panic. The claims fueled fears of violence during the Muslim festival of Eid. NPR's Julie McCarthy reports.

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Next week, Mitt Romney's campaign seeks to introduce Paul Ryan again. Even before the selection of the Republican vice presidential choice, President Obama's campaign had been working to define Ryan as extreme on issues from Medicare to abortion. What happens next week is that Romney and Ryan take the stage at the Republican National Convention, one of several things that will happen there.

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Let's listen to the words that made Todd Akin a lot more famous over the weekend. The Republican congressman from Missouri is running for United States Senate. He was probably no better known nationally than the average Senate challenger until he gave an interview to St. Louis TV station KTVI. He was asked why he opposes abortion in nearly all cases, including rape.

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American is currently seeking to cut costs in bankruptcy protection so the flight attendants' union pushed hard for this vote — warning that rejecting the contract could mean even deeper cuts or furloughs. The company's trying to cut about a billion dollars in labor costs. Mechanics and other union workers had previously accepted new contracts but pilots rejected American's latest offer earlier this month.