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According to activists inside and outside Syria, the government's 27-day siege against the opposition stronghold of Baba Amr has now succeeded. Initial reports suggest that forces are entering this neighborhood in the city of Homs, but details are sketchy at best because most of the reporters and citizen journalists covering the story have either fled or died.

Mitt Romney had a big night Tuesday — with victories in two states over insurgent Rick Santorum, thereby increasing his margin over Santorum by ... six delegates?

As improbable as it might seem, the combination of Michigan's delegate allocation rule and Arizona's rule-violating winner-take-all contest could mean that Romney's twin victories provide him little ultimate benefit — and highlight again the dual-track GOP primary campaign season.

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And I'm Renee Montagne. American democracy activists held in Egypt are headed home today. The nongovernmental organizations whose employees were being held confirmed that the travel ban had been lifted. The workers were being held in Egypt on charges of fomenting unrest. NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson is in Cairo, and she joins us now on the line.

Soraya, how many people are leaving Egypt altogether - I mean Americans?

Seven American democracy advocates who had been prevented for weeks from leaving Egypt and were accused of being there illegally are now on their way out of the country, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Cairo.

"They are walking through security in the VIP terminal at the Cairo Airport," she just said in an email to our Newscast desk.

Media suppression, corruption and the murder of political rivals have marked the regime of Vladimir Putin, who is running for his third term as president in Russia's election next week. Despite mass demonstrations, he's expected to win.

Conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart died Thursday in Los Angeles. For more on the Breitbart's life, Steve Inskeep talks with Dave Weigel of Slate.com.

Give some teenagers access to the Internet, and they'll feel better.

That's the conclusion of a new study that found that teens with chronic fatigue syndrome who got six months of online behavioral therapy were far more likely to recover than those given care in person.

"The use of Internet seems to appeal to modern youth reflected in our high participation rate (96 percent of eligible adolescents entered the study) and follow-up rates (97 percent)," the lead researcher, Sanne Nijhof, told Shots via email.

With Republicans blaming his energy policies for higher gas prices and rising fears that U.S. gas prices could hit an average of $5 a gallon, President Obama on Thursday will renew a call Democrats make whenever oil prices rise that Congress repeal tax breaks for oil companies.

Andrew Breitbart, who cultivated controversy with his BigGovernment website and was a conservative thorn in the sides of many liberals, has died, his newssite's editor-in-chief, Joel Pollak, just said he can confirm. He emailed that word to The Two-Way moments ago.

In a post on BigGovernment, it's reported that "Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles." He would turn 43 this year.

There are reports from several news outlets that fighters who have been battling the Syrian Army in the beseiged Baba Amr district of Homs are retreating from that area.

There were 2,000 fewer first-time claims for unemployment last week than in the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports.

It says there were 351,000 such filings.

A fourth death in Tennessee appears to have brought the toll from severe storms that swept through parts of the Midwest and South on Wednesday to at least 13.

Chrissy Keuper of WUOT-FM in at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville has told our Newscast Desk about the fourth fatality in the Volunteer State.

The airline hired the coach to train its flight attendants to speak in hushed tones while serving passengers. Crews will be trained on tone and volume. The low tones are reserved for Virgin's new upper class dream suite.

Two more American military personnel were killed in Southern Afghanistan today when, officials believe, an Afghan civilian grabbed a weapon from an Afghan soldier and opened fire, NPR's Quil Lawrence reports from Kabul. At least one other attacker may also have been involved.

Quil adds that "we don't know yet whether this attack is linked to the Quran burnings, which set off so much violence — including the killing of four U.S. servicemen in the week that followed."

Jury selection was underway in a courtroom in Waterloo, Iowa, when a potential juror left her wallet on a bench. She returned from a break and found cash missing. Witnesses and security cameras led authorities to a suspect. The man was another potential jury member.

Campaigning in Tennessee Wednesday, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum's camp took the opportunity to slam rival Mitt Romney for having a "liberal Record" on freedom of religion. At Nashville's Belmont University, Santorum spoke about his own views of religious freedom.

A federal appeals court hears arguments Thursday in legal challenges to tough new state immigration laws in Alabama and Georgia. The Justice Department and civil rights groups have sued. At issue are both civil rights violations, and whether states can constitutionally engage in immigration enforcement.

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Acorn Media distributes British TV series in the United States, and now it's acquired a controlling interest in the estate of Agatha Christie. The late author of murder mysteries has sold billions of books.

The Republican presidential candidates are focused on Super Tuesday. Ten states will have nominating contests next week. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney spent Wednesday campaigning in one of those states: Ohio.

House Majority leader Eric Cantor is pushing a package of small business bills that also has the support of President Obama. The rare instance of cooperation could mark a change in strategy for the House following historically low approval numbers for Congress and rising poll numbers for the president.

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We're going next to the town of Harrisburg, Illinois, one of many Midwestern towns struck by tornados. Harrisburg suffered the most of those towns. The tornado killed six people, with winds of up to 170 miles per hour. NPR's Cheryl Corley is there.

Later this month, an election will be held to select Hong Kong's next chief executive. The race has been tarnished with accusations of extra-marital affairs and conflicts of interest. As the local press puts it: Beijing has lost control of the puppet strings.

Beginning Friday, the Bank of Greece will stop exchanging drachma notes for euros. The deadline comes at an uncertain time for Greeks, who worry that their country's debt crisis could eventually force it out of the eurozone.

U.S. intelligence officials tracking the situation in Syria have their eye on one group in particular: al-Qaida's affiliate in Iraq.

The group has longstanding ties to Syria, and its early members weren't just Iraqis; many of them were Syrians. The former leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, not only established a network of fighters in Syria, but he also folded them into his northern Iraqi faction of al-Qaida.

In the Michigan Republican primary Tuesday, Mitt Romney had a near-death experience, but he squeaked out a narrow victory over Rick Santorum. That, says veteran Republican strategist Ed Rogers, has calmed some of the anxiety in Republican circles about Romney's strength as a general election candidate.

"Mitt Romney did what he needed to do to give more certainty and more clarity to the race. He dodged a bullet; it was an ugly win," Rogers says. "It's not over. Santorum is still very competitive."