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Fiery charges: Romney, Santorum assail each other (AP)
AP - Primed for a fight, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum traded fiery accusations about health care, spending earmarks and federal bailouts Wednesday night in the 20th and possibly final debate of the roller-coaster race for the Republican presidential nomination.

Poll: Obama benefitting from improving economy (AP)
AP - President Barack Obama is reaping political benefits from the country's brighter economic mood. A new poll shows that Republicans and Democrats alike are increasingly saying the nation is heading in the right direction and most independents now approve the way he's addressing the nation's post-recession period.

Shelling kills 2 Western journalists in Syria (AP)
AP - Syrian gunners pounded an opposition stronghold where the last dispatches from a veteran American-born war correspondent chronicled the suffering of civilians caught in the relentless shelling. An intense morning barrage killed her and a French photojournalist — two of 74 deaths reported Wednesday in Syria.

Obama administration seeks online privacy rules (AP)
AP - The Obama administration is calling for stronger privacy protections for consumers as mobile gadgets, Internet services and other tools are able to do a better job of tracking what you do and where you go.

Newark mayor: NYPD Muslim files 'deeply offensive' (AP)
Imam Abdul A. Muhammad of the Masjid Imam K. Ali Muslim mosque in Newark, N.J., speaks in his clothing and accessories store, regarding surveillance of the Muslim community by the New York Police Department, Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2012. Americans in New Jersey’s largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department’s effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray. The operation in Newark was so secretive, even the city’s mayor says he was kept in the dark. For months in mid-2007, plainclothes NYPD officers snapped pictures of mosques and eavesdropped in Muslim neighborhoods. The result was a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press. It cited no evidence of crimes. It was just a guide to Newark’s Muslims. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)AP - The mayor and police director of New Jersey's largest city said Wednesday the New York Police Department misled their city and never told them it was conducting a widespread spying operation on Newark's Muslim neighborhoods. Had they known, they said, they never would have allowed it.