Through the ups and downs of the Republican presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has remained in effect the front-runner.

He has done so even without holding as many rallies, town hall meetings or meet-and-greet events as some of the other candidates. He's also done fewer media appearances.

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg has spoken.

After more than a year of deliberations and an unprecedented public hearing in June, the agency has revoked approval of the biotech blockbuster Avastin, a medicine that chokes off the blood supply to various cancer cells, as a treatment for metastatic breast cancer.

"Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, who outlined an emergency plan two days ago, isn't wasting any time taking action" in tackling his city's financial crisis, our colleague Micki Maynard at the Changing Gears project reports. "Today, Bing said the city will lay off 1,000 employees, or about 9 percent of the city's payroll, by Feb. 25."

"It is virtually certain that on a global scale hot days [will] become even hotter and occur more often" in coming decades, according to a report released today from a group of more than 100 scientists convened by the United Nations.

An index that's designed to forecast how the economy will be doing in coming months rose a solid 0.9 percent in October from September, the business research group The Conference Board reports. It had risen just 0.1 percent in September and had fallen 0.3 percent in August.

All parents hope their children will be smart. But no parents want their children to grow up to have problems with drugs like cocaine, marijuana and amphetamines.

So it's no surprise that a study out this week linking high IQ in children with illegal drug use as adults has been giving parents the willies. "I think it's kind of scary that this article is out there," says Lisa Boesky, a mom in San Diego.

Kurt Budke, coach of the women's basketball team at Oklahoma State University, was killed in the crash of a small plane last night in Perry County, Ark.

Also dead: assistant women's basketball coach Miranda Serna and two others, including the pilot. The coaches had been on a recruiting trip to Arkansas.

As The Oklahoman reports:

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 'Flickers Of Progress' Prompt Plan For Clinton To Visit Myanmar.

-- Robert Wagner Supports New Look Into Natalie Wood's Death.

It's not the final word, but scientists at the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics report today that "new tests conducted at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of INFN by the OPERA Collaboration, with a specially set up neutrino beam from CERN, confirm so far the previous results on the measurement of the neutrino velocity."