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Mitt Romney stuck to his guns in interviews with the major news networks, this afternoon.

"I had no role whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999," Romney told CNN.

Visa and Mastercard have announced that they will pay retailers more than $6 billion to settle several class-action and individual lawsuits retailers have filed since 2005.

According to a Wall Street Journal story from earlier this month, the settlement stems from complaints that Visa and MasterCard, the largest card-payments networks in the world, prohibited retailers from imposing surcharges to customers using those credit cards.

Mitt Romney faces new scrutiny over his time at the helm of Bain Capital, the private equity shop he ran from 1984 until — well, that's exactly the question.

The political fight of the moment is just when Romney stopped running Bain Capital, which specialized in buying troubled companies and turning them around.

Yes, Virginia, you are this election year's Santa Claus.

And it could be your bag of 13 presidential electoral votes that will be the key to deciding who occupies the White House in January.

Proof of Virginia's gathering importance?

President Obama is in the midst of a two-day Virginia campaign swing. Republican candidate Mitt Romney dispatched former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to counterattack Friday.

The airwaves are awash in campaign ads, and there's a veritable who-has-more-campaign-offices arms race well under way.

Richard Zanuck, the Oscar-winning producer of films like Jaws and Driving Miss Daisy, died today from a heart attack.

The nation's governors — well, many of them, anyway — are gathering in Colonial Williamsburg, Va., for their annual summer meeting this weekend.

It's no easy trick for the National Governors Association to get Republican and Democratic chief executives on the same page, or even the same room.

This year, in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act, it's even harder.

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You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. Here in Washington, D.C., the city government has been enveloped by a series of scandals and federal investigations this year. Two city council members have resigned after pleading guilty to bank fraud and embezzlement. And now, there are calls for the mayor, Vincent Gray, to quit too. Three of Gray's campaign associates have pleaded guilty to various crimes. Here's Patrick Madden of member station WAMU.

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Comic-Con, the big annual entertainment convention in San Diego, is well under way. The gathering is known for its devoted fans, often dressed in costumes, and its showcase of mostly science fiction and fantasy.

The convention has a reputation as a magnet for geeks, but in recent years, Comic-Con has become more mainstream and, dare we say, kind of cool. Here to give us the lowdown on what's going on this year is NPR's Nina Gregory, who joins me now from San Diego.

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The most popular series on television is in tumult. In the last couple of days, two of the three judges on "American Idol" have quit. Watching the judges criticize the singers and each other is a big part of Idol's appeal. NPR's Neda Ulaby reports without Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez, "American Idol" is seriously short on star power.

NEDA ULABY, BYLINE: Today's drama began with a phone call.

RYAN SEACREST: Jennifer?

JENNIFER LOPEZ: Hi.

SEACREST: Hi, it's Ryan.

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MELISSA BLOCK, HOST:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. It's Friday and we'll begin the hour with the week in politics. The presidential campaigns are trading barbs over Republican Mitt Romney's role at his private equity firm Bain Capital, specifically when did he stop managing the company. SEC filings appear to contradict Romney's claim that he ended his active management role in 1999 when he left to run the Salt Lake City Olympics.

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This week, one of the biggest coal mining companies in Central Appalachia, Patriot Coal, filed for bankruptcy protection. Over the past three months, a wave of layoffs has hit coal country hard, and this past month, the share of all U.S. electricity generated from coal hit its lowest level since the 1940s. Our colleague Guy Raz visited Webster County in the middle of West Virginia to find out what's killing King Coal.

The fate of Texas' new voter ID law is now up to a three-judge federal panel in Washington, D.C.

Lawyers for Texas and the Justice Department wrapped up five days of arguments in U.S. District Court Friday, with each side accusing the other of using deeply "flawed" data to show whether minorities would be unfairly hurt by a photo ID requirement.

In Germany, the past few weeks have been marked by an intense debate over religious liberties.

Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel jumped into the fray saying her administration would work to protect religious circumcision.

"It is absolutely clear to the federal government that we want Jewish, we want Muslim religious life in Germany. Circumcisions carried out in a responsible way must not be subject to prosecution in this country," Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.