Your customized headlines for Wed, Aug 8, 2012

Regulators are catching flak for not acting sooner to stop banks that helped Iran flout U.S. sanctions. This week, the state of New York said London-based Standard Chartered Bank concealed $250 billion in Iranian transactions, violations that persisted for nearly a decade.

In 2006, a trio of medical professors gathered 20 cardiologists and asked them to discuss a hypothetical heart patient with a blocked artery and no symptoms. Removing the blockage would be riskier and costlier than giving the patient a few pills to take. The professors wanted to know: Would the cardiologists do the procedure?

CLEVELAND — Ohio's unemployment rate has plummeted over the past three years and is now far below the national average, which might normally be cause for celebration.

But battered by long years of hard times, many voters in this state view the improvement as little more than a mirage: More than two out of three say the economy is worse or the same as it was a year ago, according to a recent poll.

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. – Mitt Romney sought to inject welfare as an issue in the presidential campaign here Tuesday, accusing President Obama of dismantling federal welfare reform and creating a "culture of dependency."

The Government Accountabil­ity Office on Tuesday called on federal regulators to revamp standards that measure the impact of radiation from cellphones.

The year-long review by the GAO, which was done at the urging of lawmakers, did not suggest that cellphone use causes cancer. But the GAO was critical of the way the Federal Communications Commission has managed its standards, noting that the rules, which had not changed since 1996, lagged behind those of the international community.

CLEVELAND — Ohio's unemployment rate has plummeted over the past three years and is now far below the national average, which might normally be cause for celebration.

But battered by long years of hard times, many voters in this state view the improvement as little more than a mirage: More than two out of three say the economy is worse or the same as it was a year ago, according to a recent poll.

Mitt Romney's favorability ratings have stalled during his campaign's bumpy summer months, with his earlier improvements as he was wrapping up the Republican presidential primaries in the spring appearing to flat-line, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Republicans on Tuesday pinned their hopes of winning back a Senate seat in Missouri — and perhaps control of the chamber — on Todd Akin, picking the conservative congressman to take on endangered Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill in November.

ELK GROVE VILLAGE, Ill. — Mitt Romney sought to inject the issue of welfare into the presidential campaign here Tuesday, accusing President Obama of dismantling federal welfare reform and creating a "culture of dependency."

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — Mitt Romney mistakenly confused the words "Sikh" and "sheik" at a fundraiser here Tuesday night when he offered his condolences to the victims of last weekend's shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.