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Saying that "we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term," News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch said this morning that The Daily will "cease standalone publication" on Dec. 15.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Homeless Man Given Boots By NYC Police Officer Chooses To Go Barefoot Again.

-- His Holiness Comes To Twitter: Pope Benedict Is '@Pontifex'.

Other stories making headlines:

Starting Dec. 12, the Vatican says, Pope Benedict XVI will be on Twitter to answer questions about faith.

His Holiness will be posting as @Pontifex.

"The handle is a good one. It means 'pope' and it also means 'bridge builder'," Greg Burke, senior media adviser to the Vatican, tells Reuters.

Can he say a lot in 140 characters or less?

"Those shoes are hidden. They are worth a lot of money."

With those few words, 54-year-old Jeffrey Hillman says a lot.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. An elementary school pet is typically an animal that can be kept in a terrarium or a small cage, like say a hamster. For a few hours, some Russian village kids cared for a far wilder creature - a lion cub they found in a field after it escaped from the trunk of a car. Waiting for police to come and take it to a local zoo, the kids played with it in the gym. The cub reportedly swiped the air but did not bite. It's MORNING EDITION. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

With a modified wheelchair and a $20 bowling ball from a yard sale, a Virginia man rolled a perfect game last week. George Holscher had 12 strikes in a row, according to The Virginian-Pilot. Holscher is the second wheelchair bowler on record to rack up 300 points.

Part of a book critic's challenge is to sift through piles of new publications, panning for literary gold. In a way that makes us what one of my favorite children's book heroines, Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, called a "turnupstuffer" — "Somebody who finds the stuff that turns up if only you look." Or like Dickens' optimistic Mr. Micawber, who was always sure something good would turn up.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Well, the subject of our last word in business today may not change the world, but it is kind of snazzy. It is called the Air Umbrella. Now, picture an umbrella handle and nothing else, sort of like a wand.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Yeah. We are entering a magic world, here. That wand apparently keeps you dry by releasing a shield of air. The tech website Mashable says it's still a design concept, but in theory, you could adjust the power and size of your invisible air shield depending on how heavily it's raining.