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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

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

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

And I'm David Greene. Renee Montagne is talking with voters in Colorado this morning for our series First and Main.

It is hard to believe but we are finally nearing the end of a presidential campaign that in many ways started back in January 2009.

INSKEEP: Iowa begins early voting today. Other states begin soon, and the presidential candidates are preparing for a final expensive and possibly brutal final act.

Oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee has written an article in Newsweek about what he calls America's current failure to treat and prevent cancer — and a failure to make funding cancer research a priority. Dr. Mukherjee tells David Greene there is a lag in designing cancer drugs as well as funding cancer research in the U.S.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We are pleased to announce this morning that NPR has ended its lockout of Mike Pesca. The network reached a deal with our sports correspondent after his replacement repeatedly confused adjectives with adverbs. OK, that's a joke, but in reality the NFL reached a deal with referees after the replacements made a series of brutally criticized calls. Mike Pesca has been following developments.

Mike, good morning.

MIKE PESCA, BYLINE: And that was a goodly decision. Oh, wait a minute. I've done it too.

(LAUGHTER)

A small solar power company hopes to become a winner in a market littered with losers.

San Jose, Calif.-based SoloPower is opening a $60 million manufacturing facility in Portland, Ore., Thursday as it works toward receiving a major government loan — like the one given to now-bankrupt Solyndra. SoloPower thinks it has a strategy to succeed where Solyndra failed.

On April 11 of this year, an extraordinary cluster of earthquakes struck off Sumatra. The largest shock, magnitude 8.7, produced stronger ground-shaking than any earthquake ever recorded. And it surprised seismologists by triggering more than a dozen moderate earthquakes around the world.

The quakes are also a sign of big changes to come in the Earth's crust.

At Fort Myer, Va., a small Army base across the river from Washington, D.C., Chaplain Mark Worrell is talking to about 100 soldiers, reciting the grim numbers.

"This year, 2012, there have been more suicides in the Army than combat deaths," he says.

Worrell paces in front of the stage in a small auditorium and talks with the soldiers for more than an hour about the warning signs of suicide. He asks them what they would do if a friend starting selling his tools and lost interest in his favorite hobbies.

Update at 3:30 p.m. ET, Sept. 27

Alleigh Marre, a spokeswoman for Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown's campaign, released a statement, saying: