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There was meaning in the places President Obama and Mitt Romney chose for their dueling speeches on Thursday. The president was at a community college in heavily Democratic Cleveland. The Republican visited a small business in Cincinnati, a G.O.P. stronghold.

The London 2012 Olympics are officially over, but people are still buzzing about Sunday's closing ceremony. It included many of the highlights of British culture and history that weren't in London's opening ceremony. And in America, some viewers are angry about what was left out of the U.S. feed.

It's been more than a week since the Mars rover Curiosity made its successful landing on the Red Planet. Curiosity is by far the most technologically advanced rover to reach the planet's surface. David Greene talks to astrophysicist Neal DeGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, about Curiosity's two-year visit to Mars.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney discarded his increasingly inert better-safe-than-sorry campaign strategy Saturday when he named budget hawk and Democratic bete noire Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his running mate. But the pick has handed Democrats a trove of material to use in an effort to weaken the GOP ticket's appeal among independent voters, women and senior citizens.

When Republican Mitt Romney tapped House budget chairman Paul Ryan to be his vice presidential running mate, the decision forced both campaigns to focus on Medicare. The Ryan pick was a 180-degree turn from Romney's original premise, which was to focus exclusively on President Obama and the economy.

Once again this week, European officials sat down and tried to figure out what to do about the debt crisis. Investors seem to like the plan they came up with, and stock prices rose. But the program still faces hurdles, including a major court ruling in Germany next week. Host Scott Simon speaks with NPR's Jim Zarroli.

Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney seems to be winning the hearts of blue-collar voters in this part of the state. Economically, says one analyst, many residents here should be voting Democratic; but their social conservatism clouds the picture.

It can be lonely being a Democrat in the Deep South. In the reliably Republican region, even recruiting viable Democratic candidates can be a challenge. But strategists are looking to nearby states to learn how the party might start to make inroads in such red territory.

The nonprofit in charge of distributing organs wants to revamp the system for distributing kidneys for the first time in 25 years. But some transplant specialists and bioethicists fear the changes could end up discriminating against some patients.

In November, voters will decide whether new state laws on issues such as labor policy, immigration and gay marriage can remain in effect. They're using a process called "popular referendum." Different from a ballot initiative, it amounts to a public veto of elected officials. And its use is growing.