Thursday,  September 20, 2012 • Vol. 13--No. 065 • 24 of 32 •  Other Editions

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places: North Korea.

• 9. SHAKIRA PREGNANT WITH HER FIRST CHILD
• The Grammy-winning singer says she and her soccer-player boyfriend "are very happy" awaiting the birth.

• 10. HOW ODDSMAKERS VIEW THE NFL'S REPLACEMENT REFS
• Las Vegas casinos are betting that this weekend's games will be the highest-scoring ever -- thanks to the league's fill-in officials.

AP News in Brief
Controversy around Romney fundraising remarks shines light on power of viral videos

• NEW YORK (AP) -- After this, politicians everywhere should surely get the message. Mitt Romney's secretly recorded remarks at a Florida fundraiser -- and the uproar that has followed -- reinforce a key reality of the digital media era: the power of viral video to disrupt and potentially alter a high-stakes political contest.
• The amateur video of Romney casting 47 percent of Americans as believing they are "victims" who feel entitled to government assistance has burned up the Internet and aired continually on cable television since its release Monday by Mother Jones magazine. It's thrown his campaign off track in a tight race with President Barack

Obama and with less than seven weeks until Election Day.
• Mother Jones has not disclosed who recorded the remarks. A spokeswoman said that by Wednesday afternoon, the full video and a series of clips had received 5 million page views on the magazine's website and 3 million more views on YouTube.
• In a presidential race noteworthy for the intensity of its televised advertising -- Obama, Romney and their allies are on track to spend about $1.1 billion on campaign commercials this year -- the impact of the leaked video has been particularly stark.
• While both sides have deployed scores of highly produced ads aimed at swaying a small group of undecided voters in a handful of battleground states, the decidedly low-tech Romney video has done far more than any one commercial to sway the national political conversation.
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