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Every day at the convention in Tampa, Newt Gingrich — the former House Speaker and a former college professor — will hold a two hour policy workshop.

Mara Liasson joins Audie Cornish from the Republican National Convention hall in Tampa, Fla.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We just heard in Debbie's story from Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans. He insists that his city is, in his words, much, much better prepared than it was seven years ago. So we thought we'd take a few minutes to understand what lessons New Orleans learned from Katrina and in what ways its better prepared for Isaac.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Audie Cornish.

MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

And I'm Melissa Block.

The Florida peninsula has been spared the worst of tropical storm Isaac. The large system is now in the Gulf of Mexico, taking aim at a wide swath of the northern Gulf coast. Forecasters predict Isaac will pick up strength as it travels over the warm Gulf waters and will become a hurricane. They expect the storm to make landfall by Wednesday morning.

As the Republican convention gets under way in Tampa tomorrow, we can expect to hear more about the personal life of presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

With a bang of his supersized gavel, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus just opened the 2012 GOP convention.

And moments later with another bang of the gavel he declared it in recess.

As we've reported, tropical storm Isaac convinced Republicans to delay the real start of their convention until Tuesday.

With nearly 700 food carts licensed last year, Portland, Ore., is arguable a leader in the mobile food revolution. Lucky residents can choose between Iraqi-Jewish sabich, yeasted Belgian liege waffles, or Indonesian rendang, all served out of a friendly window on the sidewalk. But all of these mobile meals come with a downside — namely, trash.

Phyllis and Darren Sudman started Simon's Fund in 2005, after their 3-month-old son Simon died in his sleep. They learned later that Simon had an undetected silent heart condition.

Today, Simon's Fund provides free heart screenings to children throughout the Philadelphia area to prevent other families from experiencing the same tragedy.

Even some Republicans don't think the loss of Monday's proceedings at their party's national convention in Tampa, due to Tropical Storm Isaac, will matter much in the grand scheme of things.

"The whole drama of the hurricane's very unique here," says David Woodard, a GOP consultant who teaches at Clemson University. "Suppose Isaac wiped out the whole convention — who cares?"

Conventions clearly are a diminished thing, Woodard says. They no longer decide who the presidential nominees are going to be, in anything but a strictly formal sense.