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Mitt Romney's release Friday of his 2011 tax return and a summary of his tax rate over 20 years gave friends and foes alike something to grab hold of. But not all his allies greeted the move.

For the first time, two female Marines are among those training to see if they have what it takes to be battlefield leaders. They're part of a test to see if women can lead Marines in ground combat — jobs that are closed to them now. The training is so difficult that about 20 percent of participants fail.

It's rare for incumbents like Rep. Thad McCotter, the Michigan Republican, to fail to collect enough valid signatures and get on a ballot. But this kind of embarrassment has occasionally happened to others. Fortunately for many politicians, most states don't have such ballot-access requirements or ask for a minimal number of signatures.

For more than half a century, former King Norodom Sihanouk dominated his country's politics, from French colonial rule to independence. He is also known for his unsuccessful efforts to keep Cambodia out of the Vietnam War and his alliance with the Khmer Rouge. "The King Father," who thought of himself more as an artist than as a politician, died Monday at age 89.

Economic historian Gregory Clark's study of social mobility traced surnames and found that a person's success in life may be largely determined by the status of ancestors hundreds of years ago. That means improving opportunities across generations might be a lot harder than anyone imagined.

Steve Inskeep speaks with Tom Ricks, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and contributing editor to Foreign Policy magazine, about the presidential candidates' foreign policy plans.

The investigation, however, did prompt the resignation of one high-ranking official as well as the retirement of former ATF director Kenneth Melson.

Tempers are boiling in Greece and other European nations that traded bailouts for a strict austerity plan. Some say Germany's rigid solution is already failing, and may even fracture the euro zone. If that happens, that'll be very bad news for the U.S., too.

Keith Poole of the University of Georgia, with collaborator Howard Rosenthal of New York University, has spent decades charting the partisan ideological shifts and polarization in Congress from the 18th Century until now to get the view of how the political landscape has changed from 30,000 feet up. What they have found is that the Republican Party is the most conservative it has been a century.

Intellectual property and penalties for infringement have been fertile ground for writer Rob Reid.