Your customized headlines for Sat, Jul 21, 2012

LAS VEGAS — Amy and James Watt know there are a lot of important issues in this year's presidential election, but for them it hinges on just one: their home.

They never thought it would come to this when they bought their dream home, a three-bedroom with a large garage on a corner lot in suburban Henderson, Nev.

U.S. and European stocks fell Friday and the euro hit record lows after Spain's heavily indebted Valencia region asked for financial aid, increasing investor fears that the Spanish government will seek a full-blown bailout.

ANCHORAGE — Seven years and $4.5 billion after it bought leases to explore for oil off Alaska's Arctic coast, Royal Dutch Shell is finally close to drilling a well in the pristine Chukchi Sea, confident that it will discover a vast oil reservoir buried thousands of feet below the seafloor.

LAS VEGAS — Amy and James Watt know there are a lot of important issues in this year's presidential election, but for them it hinges on just one: their home.

They never thought it would come to this when they bought their dream home, a three-bedroom with a large garage on a corner lot in suburban Henderson, Nev.

— A summary of social science research on gun violence. See also Donohue and Ayres' study.

— Spain's rash of baby thefts.

— What the Olympics would look like if steroids were legal.

— If we legalized pot, it'd be so cheap stores could give it away like bar nuts.

The media critic Marshall McLuhan famously suggested that people deciding whether to buy a book should turn to page 69, read what's on it, and then make up their minds. It's a technique I've been using for years, and I've been pretty satisfied with the results. (There's also a great blog dedicated to the page 69 test, as well as one dedicated to the page 99 test.)

Harry Reid's recent vow to reform the filibuster has cheered advocates for procedural reform. But there remains a question: Which reforms, exactly, would he support?

On Wednesday, Reid singled out the abuse of a procedural step called the motion to proceed — a vote that's necessary for a bill to move to debate on the Senate floor. "I've made it all very clear in all of my public statements about the need to get rid of the motion to proceed," Reid said on the Senate floor, according to a preliminary transcript.