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• Return to sender? Presidential campaigns, allies hit swing-state voters with mail ad barrage
• MANITOWOC, Wis. (AP) -- Around lunchtime each day, the latest missives promoting or pillorying Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney arrive in Diane Ouradnik's mailbox. Before long, they're in her trash.
• Tearing and tossing has become routine for battleground-state voters drenched in caustic mail ads from the presidential candidates, political parties and their allied groups.
• Television commercials may be king, but millions of dollars a week are fueling the pinpointed mail ads: Gun owners are told Obama is a threat and Romney is "the clear choice." Bilingual ads going to Latino voters are questioning Romney's commitment to opportunities for "regular people." Senior citizens are getting dueling pieces from Obama and Romney casting the other as detrimental to Medicare.
• "I don't even read it. It's just too overwhelming. It's too much -- from all sides," says Ouradnik, a customer service representative in this lakeside Wisconsin city. She voted for Obama four years ago but is leaning toward Romney this time because she feels the incumbent has let her down and is too willing to blame others.
• Political mail at all levels is big business. Some 1.8 billion political mail pieces were sent in 2010, resulting in $338 million in revenue for the U.S. Postal Service, a spokesman said. The Postal Service expects to significantly surpass those marks in 2012.
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• AMMAN, Jordan (AP) -- The foiling of a planned al-Qaida terror plot in Jordan underscores a new subplot in the story of the Arab Spring: Things are heating up for King Abdullah II, a Western-oriented monarch who has run a business-friendly, pragmatic monarchy with some trappings of democracy.
• Jordan, a key U.S. ally that sits at a strategic crossroads between neighboring Syria, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Israel and Saudi Arabia, has so far weathered 22 months of street protests calling for a wider public say in politics.
• But this week's announcement that Jordanian authorities had thwarted an al-Qaida plan to attack shopping malls and Western diplomatic missions in the country has raised fears that extremists could take advantage of growing calls for change to foment violence.
• The king also has been working overtime to fend off a host of domestic chal

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