Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Crowd Gathering Again In Cairo, But Outside Square Life Is Normal

-- Economy Grew Less Than Previously Thought In Third Quarter.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis just reported.

That's a downward revision from BEA's original estimate of 2.5 percent growth. The agency will issue one more estimate for the quarter on Dec. 22.

Three young Americans are among those who have been detained by authorities in Cairo during the last few days of protests there, according to reports from The Washington Post, CNN and other news outlets.

"A visibly shaken" Chancellor Linda Katehi, as The Davis Enterprise says, apologized publicly Monday for the now-infamous pepper-spraying of Occupy UC Davis protesters by campus police last Friday.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Now that it's official and the so-called supercommittee in Congress has declared its members can't agree on how to cut about $1.2 trillion from the next decade's federal budget deficits, the "what next" stories are everywhere.

And many are zeroing in on the political effects.

The Milwaukee woman laid down a $100 bill and bought a restaurant. It's a "socially conscious" eatery on Milwaukee's South Side. The conditions include feeding the previous owner and his wife one free meal a day for a year.

There's another mass rally underway in Cairo's Tahrir Square — where four straight days of anti-military rule protests have turned violent and led to about 30 deaths and thousands of injuries as government forces responded with force.

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Linda Wertheimer.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

And I'm Steve Inskeep. Congress threatened itself with punishment if it failed to act. Lawmakers promised automatic spending cuts if a special committee failed to reduce the deficit. Now that they have failed, some want a way out of the punishment with which they had threatened themselves. This may be just one more episode in a long fight over taxes and spending, as we hear from NPR's Ari Shapiro.