By BARTHOLOMEW SULLIVAN, Scripps Howard News Service

STUART, Fla. - Newt Gingrich is going to have to find a way to "tread water" during February until southern states on Super Tuesday offer him an opportunity at another win, according to close watchers of the GOP field.

MIAMI - Taking advantage of the last day to vote early before Tuesday's Florida GOP primary, Isis and Agustin Recio, part of the heavily courted Cuban-American electorate, decided on Mitt Romney.

ARLINGTON, Va. - Lt. Col. Luke Joseph Weathers Jr., an original Tuskegee Airman who a comrade said contributed to the "esprit" of the outfit, was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery Friday with all the Air Force's pomp and pageantry.

Outstanding student loan debt -- which exceeds $1 trillion, more than what Americans owe on credit cards -- is likely to be a major political issue this election year as students and their parents question the rising cost and value of a college education.

WASHINGTON - A quarter of Americans in a recent poll said they are less likely to support a Mormon running for president, suggesting Republican Mitt Romney continues to have a "Mormon problem."

NEW YORK - For those who say the Occupy Wall Street movement is both leaderless and ambiguous, listen to Alan Collinge, founder of Student Loan Justice, who's been sleeping in a corner of Zuccotti Park here for three weeks.

WASHINGTON - Forty-eight years ago, Johnnie Turner, just out of college, stood on the National Mall to hear Martin Luther King Jr. make his "I Have a Dream" speech. She is back for today's re-scheduled dedication of a national monument in his honor.

WASHINGTON - What's happening with Occupy Wall Street in New York City erupted in the nation's capital Thursday as hundreds gathered to protest corporate greed and endless war.

WASHINGTON - Weeks after an August raid on the Memphis Gibson Guitar plant led to complaints that enforcement of a rare species protection law was hurting domestic jobs, environmentalists and the domestic hardwood industry is pushing back.

WASHINGTON - Elmore Nickleberry, one of the sanitation workers whose cause lured Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis in 1968, said he was disappointed that a hurricane threat has postponed Sunday's scheduled dedication of a national monument in King's honor.
But he finally got to see the monument on Friday afternoon.