PHOENIX (AP) -- A surging Rick Santorum is making increasingly harsh remarks about President Barack Obama, questioning not just the president's competence but his motives and even his Christian values.
Mitt Romney also is sharpening his anti-Obama rhetoric. He said Tuesday the president governs with "a secular agenda" that hurts religious freedom. In general, however, the former Massachusetts governor has not seriously challenged Obama's motives, often saying the president is decent but inept.
But Santorum and Newt Gingrich have heightened their claims that Obama's intentions are not always benign, ahead of Wednesday's televised GOP presidential debate and next week's primaries in Michigan and Arizona.
Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who suddenly is threatening Romney in his native state of Michigan, says Obama cares only about power, not the "interests of people." He says "Obamacare," the health care overhaul Obama enacted, includes a "hidden message" about the president's disregard for impaired fetuses, which might be aborted.
Santorum even seemed to compare Obama to Adolf Hitler, although he denies trying to do so.
High court reviews affirmative action
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court is setting an election-season review of racial preference in college admissions, agreeing Tuesday to consider new limits on the contentious issue of affirmative action programs.
A challenge from a white student who was denied admission to the University of Texas flagship campus will be the high court's first look at affirmative action in higher education since its 2003 decision endorsing the use of race as a factor.
This time around, a more conservative court could jettison that earlier ruling or at least limit when colleges may take account of race in admissions.
In a term already filled with health care, immigration and political redistricting, the justices won't hear the affirmative action case until the fall.
But the political calendar will still add drama. Arguments probably will take place in the final days of the presidential election campaign.
Treasury to release tax overhaul plan
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration will propose lowering the current 35 percent corporate tax rate, while at the same time eliminating loopholes and subsidies and imposing a minimum tax on the overseas profits of American companies.
Administration officials said the Treasury Department today will detail aspects of President Barack Obama's proposed overhaul of the corporate tax system, a plan he broadly outlined in his State of the Union speech last month.
The 35 percent nominal corporate tax rate is the highest in the world after Japan. But deductions, credits and exemptions allow many corporations to pay taxes at a much lower rate.
The administration plan is not likely to go as far as a House Republican proposal to lower the rate to 25 percent. But Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told a House committee last week that the administration wants to create more incentives for corporations to invest in the United States.
"We want to bring down the rate, and we think we can, to a level that's closer to the average of that of our major competitors," Geithner told the House Ways and Means Committee.
Agency calls for daily cease-fire in Syria
BEIRUT (AP) -- Food and water are running dangerously low in the besieged Syrian city of Homs, with frantic cries for help from residents amid government shelling that pounded rebel strongholds and killed at least 30 people Tuesday, activists said.
Shells reportedly rained down on rebellious districts at a rate of 10 per minute at one point and the Red Cross called for a daily two-hour cease-fire so that it can deliver emergency aid to the wounded and sick.
"If they don't die in the shelling, they will die of hunger," activist and resident Omar Shaker told The Associated Press after hours of intense shelling concentrated on the rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr that the opposition has extolled as a symbol of their 11-month uprising against President Bashar Assad's regime.
Another 33 people were killed in northern Syria's mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya region when government forces raided a town in pursuit of regime opponents, raising Tuesday's overall death toll to 63, activists said. The Local Coordination Committees, an opposition group, said more than 100 were killed Tuesday, but the report could not immediately be confirmed by others.
Russia, one of Assad's remaining allies, urged the United Nations to send a special envoy to Syria to help coordinate security issues and delivery of humanitarian assistance.
Children removed from Texas home
DAYTON, Texas (AP) -- Texas authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home where a registered sex offender lives after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds.
Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said.
The children ranged in age from 5 months to 11 years. Three who were age 5 or older had not been enrolled in school, Carter said.
The children were removed after authorities found two 2-year-old children tied to a bed during a January visit to the home, according to a court document.
A legally blind, 5-year-old girl "was in a restraint on a filthy mattress, and appeared to be in a daze," the document said. One child had a black eye and knocked-out tooth.
Legless amphibians discovered in India
NEW DELHI (AP) -- Since before the age of dinosaurs it has burrowed unbothered beneath the monsoon-soaked soils of remote northeast India -- unknown to science and mistaken by villagers as a deadly, miniature snake.
But this legless amphibian's time in obscurity has ended, thanks to an intrepid team of biologists led by University of Delhi professor Sathyabhama Das Biju. Over five years of digging through forest beds in the rain, the team has identified an entirely new family of amphibians -- called chikilidae -- endemic to the region but with ancient links to Africa.
Their discovery, published Wednesday in a journal of the Royal Society of London, gives yet more evidence that India is a hotbed of amphibian life with habitats worth protecting against the country's industry-heavy development agenda.
It also gives exciting new evidence in the study of prehistoric species migration, as well as evolutionary paths influenced by continental shift.
"This is a major hotspot of biological diversity, but one of the least explored," Biju said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We hope this new family will show the importance of funding research in the area. We need to know what we have, so we can know what to save."