Mary Dooe

Struggling electronics retailer Best Buy has named a new chief executive: Frenchman Hubert Joly will likely take the helm in early September. It's back-to-school time -- which means it's back-to-school lunch time. This year, kids lunch choices are going to be a little different. And beyond Beale Street, the blues and Elvis Presley, Memphis is dealing with some major urban challenges. So the city is launching a PR campaign, aimed in part at bringing former residents back to th city.

In South Africa, more than 30 workers have been killed by police at a platinum mine. The workers, who were armed, were staging what police said was an illegal strike. In Illinois today, unionized workers at a Caterpillar plant will vote on a contract to end a four month strike of their own -- a strike that has put the state's governor in an awkward position. And you know the look... guys around the office in button-down shirts and khaki slacks. We take it for granted now as the business casual “uniform,” but it wasn’t always. So how did the modern office dress code come to be?

Today there's word that a number of banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, are being subpoenaed, by regulators in New York and Connecticut. It's all about charges that the banks rigged an interest rate called LIBOR. Facebook, which went public in May with a stock price of $38 a share, is now down to around $21 a share. And today, that price could drop further, when a lockup ends and insiders are able to sell their shares. And as the worst drought in 50 years continues to send grain prices through the roof, several governors are asking the federal government to end a mandate that requires some of the nation's corn to be used for ethanol.

The stock price of Standard Chartered Bank is up sharply this morning, after the British bank settled with New York state regulators for $340 million after allegations that it hid thousands of financial transactions with Iran. Wal-Mart reports its quarterly earnings this morning. And the company is teaming up with other big retailers to offer a mobile payments network. And different parts of the country have experienced the housing collapse in different ways. But some places have a housing market that seems totally disconnected from the rest of the nation. Just ask the real estate agents in North Idaho.

Wisconsin congressman and now Republican vice presidential Candidate Paul Ryan will be in Iowa today, talking with voters at the state fair. It'll be Ryan's first solo-appearance since Mitt Romney announced Ryan as his running mate on Saturday. New figures out this morning show Japan's economy is slowing down. It grew at a rate of 1.4 percent in the latest three month period. The United States is taking home 104 Olympic medals this year. But there's one winner from the Olympics without any medals. It's something called Kinesio tape.

In Syria, rebel forces are battling with the government for control of the economic hub of Aleppo. At crucial moments like this in the Libyan conflict, there was assistance for the rebels from the U.S. and NATO -- in both money and materials. The latest economic data out of China show a continued economic slowdown there. New numbers on factory output and retail sales came in below expectations this morning. And the defense industry is worried it may have to issue mass layoff notices if Congress doesn't stop us from going over the so-called fiscal cliff in January. But what does the fiscal cliff mean for you?

As American Airlines winds its way through bankruptcy, some of its union workers are voting on new contract offers. Next week, a judge will decide if the company can throw out its old labor contracts and impose even more severe cuts on the workers. In the housing market, the credit rating agency Trans Union said late payments on mortgages have reached the lowest level in three years. And Apple and Google are expected to be major bidders at an auction today over patents from Eastman Kodak. Patent law is one of the most lucrative fields in the industry these days, and bilingual lawyers are in high demand because of it.

The British firm Standard Chartered bank isn't a bank you'll find on every corner in the United States, even though it processes almost $200 billion worth of global transactions every day. But it could soon have its banking license revoked in the nation's financial center, because of allegations that the bank has been hiding tens of thousands of secret transactions with Iran. This week, companies like Macy's, Kohl's, Nordstrom and JCPenney will reporter earnings, but those earnings will only tell part of the story. In Australia, there's a new tax on greenhouse gas missions, and it was expected to help the poor and the elderly. They get a refund to pay for basic goods like food and electricity.

We have touched down on Mars! The NASA rover Curiosity landed on the surface of the red planet late last night. And it was all hugs at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in California. While NBC has been criticized for not running Olympic events live, but criticism aside, NBC is looking at strong ratings for the games so far, and the Olympics could help the network long after the torch leaves London. And we hear from one former Republican Congressional staff member about why he left the game following last year's debt ceiling crisis, and what we need to do to fix the financial incentives in American politics today.