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FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2010, file photo, Harold Hamm, chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc. of Enid, Okla., speaks during an Associated Press interview in Bismarck, N.D. Hamm didn’t wait long to make a nearly $1 million donation to a group supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after he became one of Romney’s top energy advisers in March. Just weeks after Hamm joined the Romney campaign, he gave $985,000 to a pro-Romney super PAC, according to campaign reports. Hamm’s company, Continental Resources Inc., oversees oilfield stakes in North Dakota and Montana, and Hamm has been disdainful of President Barack Obama’s energy policies. (AP Photo/Dale Wetzel, File)

Romney oil adviser also a big super PAC donor

Oklahoma oil billionaire Harold Hamm didn't wait long to make a nearly $1 million donation to a group supporting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney after he became one of Romney's top energy advisers in March. Just weeks after Hamm joined the Romney campaign, he gave $985,000 to a pro-Romney super ...

FILE - In this May 8, 2012 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Lansing, Mich. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

Romney shifting focus from economy to education

Mitt Romney is wading into a new policy arena — the nation's education system — as he broadens his focus to appeal to general election voters still getting to know President Barack Obama's likely opponent. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who has been reluctant to stray far from economic issues, ...

FILE - In this May 8, 2012 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Lansing, Mich. Romney is looking to pad his lead in the race for convention delegates in Republican presidential primaries Tuesday in Arkansas and Kentucky as he inches closer to the nomination he's all but certain to win. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

Romney inches closer to GOP nomination with sweep

Mitt Romney swept the Kentucky and Arkansas Republican presidential primaries Tuesday, inching closer to the GOP nomination he is certain to win. With no serious opposition left, the former Massachusetts governor easily won both contests. He won all 42 delegates at stake in Kentucky and at least 31 of the ...

Vice President Joe Biden speaks at Keene State College , Tuesday, May 22, 2012 in Keene, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Biden dismisses Romney's experience in business

The presidential campaign debate over Republican Mitt Romney's tenure at a private equity firm is going down the drain. Vice President Joe Biden argued Tuesday that Romney's experience doesn't make him any more qualified to be president than it does to make him a plumber. "That doesn't mean that private ...

FILE - In this May 2, 2012 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Chantilly, Va. Romney's courtship of female voters in his speeches sounds a bit like a movie casting call: Woman Whose Husband Took an Upholstery Class. Woman Who Is Back in College to Dodge Her Student Loans. Woman Who Owns Duplexes. Romney's campaign won't identify these women, making it impossible to check on his accounts. But they're serving an important role as Romney looks to narrow the advantage President Barack Obama has with women. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

'A woman who. ...': Romney's stories court females

Mitt Romney's courtship of female voters in his typical campaign speech sounds a bit like a movie's casting call. Woman Whose Husband Took an Upholstery Class. Woman Who Is Going Back To College. Woman Who Owns Duplexes. Romney's campaign won't identify these women, making it impossible to check the accuracy ...

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, left, and Joplin Superintendent of Schools C.J. Huff, right, flank President Barack Obama as he takes the stage to deliver the Joplin High School commencement address a day before the anniversary of the twister that killed 161 people, Monday, May 21, 2012, in Joplin, Mo. Obama jetted to Joplin immediately after wrapping up the national security-focused NATO conference in Chicago, the second international summit the president hosted over the past four days. (AP Photo/The Kansas City Star, Shane Keyser)

THE RACE: Polls show presidential race tightening

With about five months to go, the presidential race is tightening, polls show, with voters nearly evenly divided between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger. Obama and Romney are locked in a dead heat over handling the economy, the top concern of voters, a new Washington ...

FILE - In this Dec. 1, 2010 file photo, former Secretary of State Colin Powell meets with President Barack Obama, in the Oval Office at the White in Washington. Powell is declining to renew the endorsement he gave Barack Obama four years ago, when he called Obama "a transformational figure." Pressed in a network interview to say whether he's backing Obama, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff demurred Tuesday. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Powell not ready to endorse Obama for re-election

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell declined Tuesday to renew the presidential endorsement he gave Barack Obama four years ago, saying he wasn't ready "to throw my weight behind someone" at this time. The former chairman of the military's Joint Chiefs of Staff and Cabinet member under President George W. ...

FILE - In this May 21, 2012 file photo, President Barack Obama speaks in Joplin, Mo. A conservative-leaning independent group is launching a $10 million television ad campaign saying President Barack Obama has not lived up to the expectations voters had for him. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)

Independent groups launch dueling campaign ads

An independent group seeking to oust President Barack Obama launched a new TV ad Tuesday suggesting Obama had let down the voters who vaulted him into the White House in 2008. A pro-Obama group answered with an ad slamming Republican Mitt Romney, featuring a woman who lost her job at ...

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is surrounded by members of the Secret Service as he arrives in Jacksonville, Fla., Thursday, May 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Romney's playbook on Bain unclear as attacks grow

The core of his presidential candidacy under attack, Mitt Romney has yet to shape a playbook to defend a quarter-century in the business world that created great riches for him and great hardship, at times, for some American workers. Romney and his aides have struggled to respond consistently to intensifying ...

President Barack Obama pauses during his news conference at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Monday, May 21, 2012. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Obama's preference for talks with Iran faces test

President Barack Obama's preferred path to end the Iranian nuclear standoff faces a stern test this week when world powers sit down with Iran in another bid to press it to meet international demands to prove it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons. Failure will strengthen calls for military ...

Obama stands by hits on Romney's Bain Capital days

President Barack Obama sought to undermine Mitt Romney's key rationale for his presidential candidacy Monday, sharply attacking his Republican challenger's background as a venture capitalist and arguing that profit-making alone is not a qualification for the White House. "His main calling card for why he thinks he should be president," ...

Cory Booker is latest gaffe-prone Obama surrogate

Add Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker to the long list of political stand-ins for both President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney who've veered wildly off message in a presidential contest notable for its attention-grabbing gaffes. An Obama backer, Booker forced the president's campaign into damage-control mode over the weekend ...

FILE - In this May 17, 2012 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney speaks in Jacksonville, Fla. Romney is set to raise about $10 million during a fundraising swing through the northeast. Romney's top finance aide on Monday told donors in New York City that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was set to raise at least that _ and possibly “substantially” more _ during more than a dozen fundraising events in Connecticut and New York over the course of two days. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Romney to raise about $10 million in NY, Conn.

Chasing President Barack Obama's cash advantage, Republican challenger Mitt Romney expects to raise $10 million during a three-day fundraising swing through the New York area that included a video meeting with donors in China. Romney's top finance aide told donors in New York City on Monday that the presumptive Republican ...

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton mingle before the meeting on Afghanistan during the NATO Summit, Monday, May 21, 2012, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

THE RACE: Obama and Romney fight over budget goals

The presidential race is shaping up as a battle between Republican calls for more government austerity and Democratic appeals for more spending to promote jobs and growth with tax hikes on high-income earners. It mirrors a fight raging in Europe. Presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney has embraced a House-passed Republican ...

A nation-by-nation look at Arab Spring's progress

Starting Wednesday, Egypt is holding its first free presidential election since it came under dictatorship 60 years ago. The winner will succeed Hosni Mubarak, one of four rulers toppled in the uprisings that began 18 months ago across the Middle East and became known as the Arab Spring. But replacing ...

New Obama ad challenges Mitt Romney's economics

President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is keeping up its effort to paint Mitt Romney as a job-destroying corporate raider at Bain Capital. In a video being released Monday, Obama's campaign zeroes in on a Marion, Ind., company, American Pad & Paper, also known as Ampad. The ad charges that Ampad ...

Romney, US Sen. Brown play down past connections

Massachusetts Republicans Mitt Romney and Scott Brown have a history of supporting each other throughout their political careers. But with each facing a tough election, neither the presidential candidate nor the U.S. senator is playing up that history, perhaps with good reason. Brown, trying to win re-election in one of ...

FILE - In this July 18, 2006, file photo, Gov. Mitt Romney, right, looks over bolts in the ceiling of a Big Dig tunnel while speaking with Alexander Bardow, center, Massachusetts Director of Bridges and Structures, and Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation John Cogliano in Boston. Romney was at his New Hampshire vacation home on a summer night in 2006 when tons of concrete ceiling panels in one of Boston’s Big Dig highway tunnels collapsed. The debris crushed a car and killed a female passenger. Romney, then in his final year as Massachusetts governor, dashed back to Boston and immersed himself in the crisis. His response offers insights into what kind of leader the expected Republican nominee would be if elected president. Romney has made his management skills a major selling point in his campaign. (AP Photo/David L Ryan, Pool)

Romney faced leadership test in Big Dig tragedy

Mitt Romney was at his New Hampshire vacation home on a summer night in 2006 when 26 tons of concrete ceiling panels in one of Boston's Big Dig highway tunnels collapsed, crushing a car and killing a female passenger. Romney, then in his final year as Massachusetts governor, dashed back ...

A woman mark her ballot during the presidential election in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Sunday May 20, 2012. (AP Photo/Manuel Diaz)

Dominican election in dispute after apparent win

A governing party official appeared to have scored a first-round win in the Dominican Republic's presidential election but supporters of his main opponent complained of vote-buying and other forms of fraud and said they would challenge the results. Danilo Medina of the current president's Dominican Liberation Party received just over ...

President Barack Obama, right, shakes hands with with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, left, during their meeting at the NATO Summit in Chicago, Sunday, May 20, 2012. With Obama, Karzai thanked Americans for the help their 'taxpayer money' has done in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

NATO shifts to help an elusive Afghanistan peace

President Barack Obama and NATO allies declared Sunday that the end of the long and unpopular Afghanistan war is in sight even as they struggled to hold their fighting force together in the face of dwindling patience and shaky unity. From his hometown and the city where his re-election operation ...