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Given his victories on Super Tuesday, there's growing talk that Republican officeholders and voters are just about ready to line up behind Mitt Romney as the party's "inevitable" presidential nominee.

The South hasn't gotten the memo.

We have two pieces of economic news this morning:

-- First the Labor Department announced that while American workers were more productive at the end of last year, the gains in productivity slowed. The AP reports that could "signal that companies are ready to hire more workers."

The AP adds:

As has been the case with all of Apple's product unveilings, there is a shroud of secrecy surrounding today's impending announcement.

Today, Apple has invited media to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for a 1 p.m. ET. event. The only clue provided by Apple was a typically cryptic invitation with a picture of an iPad and a few words: "We have something you really have to see. And touch."

Our friends at It's All Politics have started to digest the results of Super Tuesday. In a nutshell, it pretty much left us where we were before the 10 big contests: All four candidates are still in the race and the campaign will go on and on.

There were two non-presidential pieces of news from last night, too:

The first batch of Oreo cookies was made at the original Nabisco bakery in New York in 1912. The company is releasing limited edition "Birthday Cake" Oreos.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

As they counted up the votes on Super Tuesday, you could almost hear Celine Dion singing that theme song from Titanic — the one about how her heart and the whole tragic tale would go on.

And on.

So it is with this year's Republican presidential contest.

Usually by this time in the picture, the GOP has given its heart to its hero and it's lights out for the rest of the cast. But once again this week, the GOP of 2012 refused to read the usual script.

Renee Montagne talks to Terry Emmert, who's in charge of transporting a 340 ton granite boulder to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be featured in a modern art exhibit.

Another year of growth was enough to edge Brazil past the stagnant United Kingdom in global economic rankings. Agriculture and food processing were the big areas of growth for Brazil.

In Houston Tuesday, a federal jury convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford of running a massive Ponzi scheme. Jurors agreed with prosecutors, who claimed he ran a global scheme that lasted more than 20 years and involved more than $7 billion in investments.

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

It was the biggest day yet in the Republican presidential race. Mitt Romney hoped that Super Tuesday would reinforce his frontrunner status. And to some degree it did. He won six of the 10 states, including the most populous and hotly contested state, Ohio.

Wind power is all the rage in Oklahoma and could be a boon in a state that has been hit hard by unemployment. The problem is finding qualified people to work in the industry.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Perhaps it's fitting that the state that kept everyone up late last night, waiting for results, was Ohio. It's a swing state, and it seems every four years, in the fall, Ohio becomes the center of attention in a presidential election.

This year, as NPR's Tamara Keith reports, it just happened a little earlier.

TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Talk to Ohio voters - Republicans and Democrats alike - and there's one issue that rises above all the others.

MARVIN HAYWOOD: Number one: our economy.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Let's devote the next few minutes to the subject that President Obama began his press conference on, the U.S. housing market. The president pointed out that in many ways the U.S. economy is looking up. But...

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: There are still millions of Americans who can't find a job. There are millions more who are having a tough time making the rent or the mortgage, paying for gas or groceries. So our job in Washington isn't to sit back and do nothing. And it's certainly not to stand in the way of the recovery.

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RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

And our last word in business today is: culinary frontiers.

When companies come into foreign markets, they often devise products that reflect local tastes - kosher Big Macs in Israel, for instance. So with Dunkin Donuts aiming to nearly double its outlets in China, it has come up with pork donuts.

Mitt Romney won six of the 10 Super Tuesday contests. Rick Santorum won three while Newt Gingrich won one. Ron Paul was the only candidate who did not win at least one contest.

President Obama held a wide-ranging news conference Tuesday. He bluntly challenged Republican critics of his Iran policy — saying the stakes are too high to let politics intrude. The news conference was designed to steal some of the spotlight from GOP presidential hopefuls on Super Tuesday.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, it was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. More than three years later, Lehman is emerging from Chapter 11. The firm is really just back in business to liquidate itself. Lehman has about $65 billion in assets that it intends to distribute among its many creditors starting next month.

GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum won three Super Tuesday contests: Oklahoma, North Dakota and Tennessee. He just missed in Ohio. Mitt Romney went on to win there.

The race between two veteran Ohio Democrats, Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Rep. Dennis Kucinich who were redistricted into the same congressional district ended badly for Kucinich who lost to his fellow House Democrat.

Meanwhile, the House Republican Conference will lose Rep. Jean Schmidt, who was defeated by Brad Wenstrup, a podiatrist and Iraq War veteran, in an upset.