AP News in Brief
In risky business of running for president, Romney, Obama largely playing it safe
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the risky business of running for president, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are largely playing it safe.
• For all the small daily dramas of the 2012 campaign, there's a risk-averse dynamic playing out: Neither candidate has been making bold new policy proposals or displaying a free-wheeling personal style. So far, at least.
• Part of that is just who they are: Obama always has been known for his cool demeanor, and Romney has discipline built into his corporate pedigree.
• Neither of them has the swagger of former President George W. Bush, the renegade streak of 2008 GOP nominee John McCain or the rapscallion's grin of former President Bill Clinton.
• But Obama and Romney are men who know how to gamble: Obama decided to run for president after just two years in the Senate, launched an ambitious health care overhaul effort while the economy was still on shaky ground, and gave the "go" order on the Osama bin Laden raid. Romney entered politics after a career in private equity, where risk is part of the job description.
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Activist put death toll in central Syrian region at over 90, many women and children
• BEIRUT (AP) -- Activists have raised the number of those reportedly killed by regime forces in a district of central Syria to more than 90.
• The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that more than 90 people had been killed in the Houla area in the last 24 hours.
• A local activist giving his name as Abu Yazan reached via Skype said 12 people died in shelling and 106 were killed when pro-regime thugs known as shabiha stormed the area.
• That death toll is one of the highest for any single event since the popular upris
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