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When French peasants stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, they weren't just revolting against the monarchy's policies. They were also hungry.

From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring, high food prices have been cited as a factor behind mass protest movements. But can food prices actually help predict when social unrest is likely to break out?

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent was shot and killed this morning while on duty near Bisbee, Ariz., the Department of Homeland Security tells The Associated Press and other news outlets.

Another agent was shot and wounded, AP says.

According to KPHO-TV in Phoenix, "both agents worked out of the Brian Terry station in the Tucson sector."

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During a "series of secret meetings in recent months," the White House began to "consider for the first time whether to prepare for unilateral strikes" aimed at terrorist groups operating in North Africa, The Washington Post writes this morning.

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President Obama has held a lead over Mitt Romney in the polls for several weeks now, and that's prompted a conservative reaction. Some are charging that big media outlets are intentionally designing their polling to make it look like the president is getting the kind of voter surge he had in 2008. NPR's David Folkenflik has the story.

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'Tis the season for new car buying. Fall is when automakers roll out their latest models - with new technologies and better fuel efficiency. And to talk about the latest trends, we reached Michelle Krebs in Detroit. She's a senior analyst at the auto information website Edmunds.com.

Good to have you back, Michelle.

MICHELLE KREBS: Glad to be back.

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And here in the U.S., for retailers, the cost they pay for consumer fraud is going up. Merchants who sell their products using mobile devices or sell internationally are seeing their costs climbing higher still - almost 40 over last year.

NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.