The Obama administration announced new fuel efficiency standards that require cars in the United States to average 54.5 miles per gallon by the year 2025.

As the Detroit Free-Press reports, President Obama got this process rolling in 2010, when he asked the EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to come up with standards that would lead to new and cleaner cars on the roads.

The nation's foreclosure crisis rarely is mentioned by the presidential candidates, but it looms large as their campaigns grapple with finding evicted voters in swing states.

Organizers are discovering scores of vacated homes in key battlegrounds that contributed strong turnouts in the 2008 election. In the past four years, more than 3.7 million homes have been lost to foreclosure, according to market research firm CoreLogic.

Okay, so Bic has been taking a lot of flack for selling this pen "for her." (As it says on its web site, it is "a ball pen essentially for women," although that seems to invite a caveat, such as, "although there may be certain men to whom it appeals and we don't judge.")

The GOP's proposed platform supports a federal ban on same-sex marriage. But gay and lesbian Republicans say the party is changing. Host Michel Martin checks in with two Republicans making their issues more visible at the convention: R. Clarke Cooper of the Log Cabin Republicans and Sarah Longwell of Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry.

There's been a lot of debate about whether working moms "can have it all." But all this talk has got singles saying they'd also like to have a better life outside of work. Host Michel Martin discusses single women who want to get "off the fast track" with columnist Sue Shellenbarger and lawyer Anne Marie Bowler.

Single mothers have a lot on their plate, but reports show that the unemployment rate among single moms has doubled in the last five years. Host Michel Martin speaks with three moms who have raised children as single moms, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, Dani Tucker and Angelica Perez-Litwin.

Isaac is headed toward the Gulf Coast, and Louisiana's governor has declared a state of emergency. The storm is threatening to hit New Orleans as the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches. Host Michel Martin speaks with Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed of Homeland Security in New Orleans, about how they're preparing the city for the storm.

Saying that "it's offensive to me as a woman and as a minority" that Democrats portray the GOP as "the party that hates you" when they reach out to non-whites, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made the case this morning that it's the Republican Party that minorities should be looking to join.

Thermodynamics — the branch of physics dealing with heat and its relation to other forms of energy — is profound stuff.

Rooted in the engineering realities of engines and air conditioners, it also rises above these day-to-day realities to embrace heady, universal principles in complexity, order, chaos and organization. Thermodynamics touches everything that really matters in human life, including — most famously — the nature of time. It is profound and slippery.

It was just a year ago that we wrote about then-16-year-old Lexi Thompson, who set a record when she won the Navistar LPGA Classic in Alabama. Her final was 2 under 70 to win. Barely old enough to drive a car, Lexi became the youngest victor in LPGA history.

With the Todd Akin controversy barely in the rear-view mirror, another Republican senatorial candidate is causing some waves of his own.

As fighting in Syria continues to spread and worsen, more Syrian civilians are trying to get out of their country. They've essentially got four choices: Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.

Turkey and Jordan have taken the greatest flood of people. The U.N estimates that 5,000 people arrive at Turkey's border every day seeking protection. There are several camps to house them but people are coming faster than places can be built to receive them. Refugees are also getting help from Turkey's Red Crescent Society.

If men could become pregnant, they'd probably visit the doctor more often.

But without a compelling inducement like contraception to get them in the door, they often miss out on sexual and reproductive health services that could protect not only them but also their partners.

There are lots of ways to get to 270 and they don't all involve Florida's 29 electoral votes, according to Rich Beeson, the national political director for the Mitt Romney Campaign.

Beeson, speaking with Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep on Tuesday, says the Sunshine State would be nice to have in the red column, but it's not a sine qua non for clinching victory in November.

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: