Shakil Adil / AP

Pakistani children pray for the recovery of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai during a candlelight vigil in Karachi, Pakistan, Friday.

While 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai remained in the hospital recovering from a gun shot to the head, fellow school children in Pakistan gathered Friday to offer prayers for her recovery.

Yousafzai was targeted and shot by gunmen Tuesday on a school bus in Pakistan under order of the Taliban because of her outspokenness on education for girls and against the Taliban. She had previously blogged for the BBC on these issues under a pseudonym. Three suspects were arrested.

Radio Free Europe reports:

The prayers in schools and other places across Pakistan on October 12 are in response to a call by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provincial government for people around the nation to express solidarity with Yousafzai.

Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf is due to visit Yousafzai on October 12 as the gravely wounded schoolgirl recovers in a military hospital in Rawalpindi.

Prayers were held throughout the country Friday as leaders condemned the attack. A spokesman called Yousafzai's condition "satisfactory," but said the next two days are critical.

Asif Hassan / AFP - Getty Images

Pakistani Muslims pray for the early recovery of child activist Malala Yousafzai during Friday prayers in Karachi on October 12. Pakistanis at mosques across the country prayed Friday for the recovery of the schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban as doctors said the next two days were critical.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) during the vice presidential debate at Centre College Oct. 11, 2012, in Danville, Ky.

In the second to last question of the vice presidential debate Thursday, the topic of abortion, a contentious issue this election season, was put to the candidates in terms of their faith.

Moderator Martha Raddatz asked the two vice president candidates how religion has played a role in their views on abortion rights. Although both men are Catholics, a religion that does not believe in abortion, it is well-known that Republican Congressman Paul Ryan would like to see an end to abortion, while Vice President Joe Biden believes the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision should stand and continue to protect women’s right to the procedure.

Biden said he accepts his church’s “judgment…in my personal life,” but not in policy matters.

“I refuse to impose it on equally devout Christians and Muslims and Jews, and I just refuse to impose that on others,” he said. “I do not believe that we have the right to tell other people, women, that they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor, in my view. And the Supreme Court. I’m not going to interfere with that.”

Nearly half the country seems to follow similar thinking to Biden in terms of abortion. The most recent Gallup poll on the subject found that while more Americans identify personally as pro-life than ever before (50% vs. 41% pro-choice), they continue to support the legality of abortion as an option. Only 20% believe abortion should be illegal in all cases, while 52% say it should remain legal under certain circumstances, and 25% believe it should be legal under any circumstances — meaning 77% agree that abortion should remain legal.

Ryan asserted he would prefer to hand the matter over to Congress so it can legislate away the rights upheld by the Supreme Court several decades ago.

“We don’t think that unelected judges should make this decision,” he said. “People, through their elected representatives and reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination.”

Biden zeroed in on that comment to remind abortion rights supporters of the stakes in this election on the issue of abortion.

“The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That’s how close Roe v. Wade is,” he said. “Do you think he’s likely to appoint someone like [Antonin] Scalia or someone else on the court, far right, that would outlaw…abortion? I suspect that would happen.”

Ryan said his faith was “a factor, of course,” in his beliefs on abortion but that “reason and science” also influenced his position. He then described an emotional personal moment.

“I think about 10 ½ years ago, my wife Janna and I went to Mercy Hospital in Janesville where I was born for our seven-week ultrasound for our first-born child, and we saw the heartbeat,” he said. “Our little baby was in the shape of the bean, and to this day, we have nicknamed our first-born child ‘Bean.’”

Ryan then went on to describe how he believes “life begins at conception.”  Enforcing that belief into policy has resulted in the push (but failure) of so-called “personhood” amendments, which Ryan has supported in the past.

The congressman was quick to follow-up with the campaign’s official abortion stance by saying that a “Romney administration will be to oppose abortion with the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother.”

Earlier this week Mitt Romney caused a stir when he said, “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

The Romney-Ryan campaign quickly backtracked and reaffirmed that the Republican candidate would in fact support anti-abortion legislation that came to his desk. Later, Romney himself reaffirmed his “pro-life” candidacy.

Ryan also tried to paint the Democratic Party as abortion-happy, as if it was pushing for more abortions.

“The Democratic Party used to say they want it to be safe, legal, and rare,” he said. “Now they support it without restriction and with taxpayer funding, taxpayer funding in Obamacare, taxpayer funding with foreign aid.”

Ryan also attacked the Obama administration for Obamacare “infringing upon our first freedom, the freedom of religion.”

“Our church should not have to sue our federal government to maintain their religious – religious liberties,” Ryan said referencing a mandate within the new health care law that insists insurance plans cover contraception.

After outcry from religious groups, the administration created an exemption for religious organizations so that they do not directly pay for contraception but the health plan would still offer it to women.

Because of the contentious nature of abortion in this country, particularly in religious communities, laws such as the Hyde Amendment prevent federal dollars from going toward abortion services. Similar measures were taken when crafting the Affordable Health Care Act, aka Obamacare. In fact, it was President Obama that agreed to sign an executive order that reaffirmed a ban on federal funding of abortions as part of a compromise with anti-abortion House Democrats to get his health care bill passed.

Additionally, federal monies provided to clinics that serve low-income women, such as Planned Parenthood, are also not allowed to go toward the organizations’ abortion services if they offer them.  

The issue of abortion, and women’s rights in general, were not raised during the presidential debate on domestic policy last week.

Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Seeking to portray the Romney-Ryan GOP ticket as not only dangerous but also dishonest and prone to flip-flipping on issues, the Obama campaign is promising to fact check Thursday evening's vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan.

The campaign issued a statement the morning of the debate entitled "What to Expect from the 'Marathon Man,'" and went on to list what it saw as the "four of the biggest lies Ryan has told," as well as to describe a Mitt Romney who "will say anything to win, even if it's not true." 

The statement condemns Ryan for "false claims" about Medicare, the Romney-Ryan tax plan, Simpson-Bowles, and his comments during the Republican National Convention on the closure of a Wisconsin General Motors plant.

Accompanying the Thursday morning attack was a new web video, "Paul Ryan and His Many Methods of Misrepresentation," and a new Twitter handle, @OFAdebates, which the campaign said would work in coordination with its existing @TruthTeam2012 to fact check Ryan's statements during the debate in real time.

President Obama has said he was "too polite" in the first debate, and pundits generally expect Biden to go on the offense Thursday, seeking to use his experience against his younger challenger.

After Mitt Romney appeared to muddle his position on abortion earlier this week through comments to The Des Moines Register, he is promising to be a "pro-life president," and to stop funding for Planned Parenthood, that relatively newfound scourge of the right.

Romney told the Register on Tuesday that he was not eyeing any legislation on abortion. His campaign was forced to immediately clarify that in fact a Romney president would support legislation aimed at "greater protections of life," conservative code for embryos. 

By Wednesday Romney was back to issuing his more usual stance on abortion.

"I think I've said time and again that I'm a pro-life candidate and I'll be a pro-life president," he told reporters while on the campaign trail in Ohio. "The actions I'll take immediately is to remove funding for Planned Parenthood. It will not be part of my budget. And also I've indicated that I will reverse the Mexico City position of the president. I will reinstate the Mexico City policy which keeps us from using foreign aid for abortions overseas."

U.S. temperatures continued to break records as the country recorded its warmest year on record thus far, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

In releasing its monthly “State of the Climate” data Tuesday, the organization said January through September had proved the warmest first nine months of any year it has on record in the United States.

Forty-six states recorded temperatures among their 10 warmest, while 25 of those had record warm numbers. The average national temperature during the period was 59.8 degrees Fahrenheit, almost 4 degrees above the 20^th century average. Washington state was a rare exception with its temperatures about average for these nine months.

The average temperature in September was also higher than average by about a degree and half at 67 degrees Fahrenheit. It marked the 16^th consecutive month that the country has experienced above average temperatures for the contiguous 48 states.

January through September 2012 was the 11^th driest period on record with the central United States (Ohio to Rocky Mountains) drier than average.

Evan Vucci / AP

Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign rally Oct. 9, 2012 in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney told The Des Moines Register he does not plan to pursue abortion-related legislation if elected.

The media immediately seized on the comments as a promise by Romney to back away from some of his harsher rhetoric on abortion. He has said he would prefer Roe v. Wade, which protects a woman’s right to abortion, be overturned and that abortion should be allowed only in instances of incest, rape, and to protect the health of the mother.

Yet, parsing the words of a man who has changed his mind on this subject in the past (he ran as a pro-choice candidate for the U.S. Senate and governor of Massachusetts), isn’t easy.

Here’s what he said:

“There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda,” Romney told the Register’s editorial board on Tuesday.

So no current legislation, but does that mean he would consider approving anti-abortion legislation brought forward by a Republican Congress? A clarification from a Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul seemed to suggest he would.

“Mitt Romney is proudly pro-life, and he will be a pro-life president,” she said in one statement. In another, she went further: “Governor Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections of life.”

When Romney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press in September he once again re-affirmed his anti-abortion position and said he would “encourage pro-life policies” if elected president and appoint Supreme Court justices that would reverse Roe v. Wade.

Romney said he would seek to ban the use of U.S. funds being used overseas for abortion in both the Meet the Press and Register interviews.

Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan has taken even stauncher positions on abortion in the past, supporting legislation that sought to limit abortions to cases of “forcible rape,” a divisive term.

Both the Obama campaign and Planned Parenthood criticized Romney’s comment to the Register as just another demonstration of his flip-flopping. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund called it a “misleading” comment.

“Let’s be clear: Mitt Romney wants to overturn Roe v. Wade, end federal funding for Planned Parenthood preventive services, end insurance coverage for birth control, and repeal health protections for women,” the organization said in its statement.

Mitt Romney moved ahead or narrowed the lead held by President Obama in several national polls that took place in the days after the first presidential debate in which the Republican candidate's performance was widely praised. 

A Pew Research Center poll on Monday showed Romney ahead of Obama by four points. Previously the president had led by eight points in that poll. Rasmussen also gave Romney the edge in its most recent poll (49% to 47%), as did a poll conducted by Public Policy Polling.

A Gallup poll from directly after the debate showed the two candidates tied at 47% each, though its daily tracking continues to show a five-point lead by Obama. 

While the Romney campaign might celebrate its candidate's improvement, many politicos and pollsters said it simply reflects the continued tightness of a competitive presidential race. 

"Regardless of what the [poll] variations might be, it’s a close race," said Anne Kornblut, deputy national politics editor of The Washington Post, on MSNBC's Jansing & Co. Tuesday. "The 'October Surprise' everyone always talks about is that we're back to where we were in the spring. It's a very close race." 

Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup Poll, added that Obama is already regaining some of the ground he lost in the immediate aftermath of his first head-to-head debate with Romney.

"Romney definitely got a significant boost on Thursday and Friday of last week, but when we monitor our data from Saturday and Sunday, and actually I was just looking at our numbers from last night, Obama is picking back up again," he explained on Jansing & Co. Tuesday.  

New daily polling data is expected from Gallup at 1 p.m. Tuesday.

"We think that continuation of a huge move by Romney is not in the data," Newport added. "It’s looking like the race among registered voters is still tilting slightly in Obama’s favor. Among likely voters, we would think Romney would probably be even or have a very slight lead."

Update: Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street, has asked the campaign to take down the ad, according to a statement by the nonprofit. "We do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads," it wrote on its blog.

The Obama campaign released a new ad starring Sesame Street's Big Bird that pokes fun at a Mitt Romney line from last week's first presidential debate.

Romney promised during the debate to "stop the subsidy to PBS," the network that broadcasts Sesame Street. "I love Big Bird...But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it," he added.

The new 30-second spot from the president's re-election campaign dismisses Romney's stance on PBS and Big Bird as overblown paranoia.

"Bernie Madoff. Ken Lay. Dennis Kozlowski. Criminals. Gluttons of greed," the ad begins. "And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name."

 Cue Romney at the mic saying "Big Bird" over and over again.

"Big, yellow, a menace to our economy," the ad continues. "Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about, it's Sesame Street."

Cut to a benign, sleeping Big Bird cuddled up with a stuffed teddy bear. 

MSNBC's Chuck Todd pointed out during Daily Rundown that the ad is not a serious one for the campaign given that it is playing on national cable and broadcast stations rather than in battleground states where it could have a real impact on the race.

The co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, John Sununu, has once again called the president “lazy” and “incompetent.”

Sununu, also the former chief of staff for former President George W. Bush and a former governor of New Hampshire, used these words to sum up his review of President Obama’s performance at the first presidential debate Wednesday night.

“What people saw last night I think was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is,” Sununu said on Andrea Mitchell Reports Thursday. “And how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are and how he has failed to even begin to address them.”

Host Andrea Mitchell offered Sununu the chance to walk back the remark, but he adamantly declined.

“He didn’t want to prepare for this debate,” Sununu said. “He’s lazy and disengaged.”

Given this is a charge Sununu leveled at the president just last week during an appearance on Fox News and these were the first lines he spoke on Andrea Mitchell Reports, it seems clear this is a well-rehearsed, thought-out line by the ex-governor.

David Axelrod, senior adviser to the Obama campaign, was on the defense the morning after the first presidential debate in which most pundits seem to agree that Mitt Romney turned in a better performance than President Obama.

“He delivered his lines well,” Axelrod said of Romney before charging the Republican candidate with lying.

“The problem isn’t with his performance. The problem is with his underlying theories and some fundamental dishonesty that we saw last night,” Axelrod said on Morning Joe Thursday. "I give him an F for being honest with the American people."

Axelrod, a longtime adviser to the president, said the Obama re-election campaign would “continue to prosecute this case,” over the next 30 days before the election, but also called on the media to fact check some of Romney’s comments last night, particularly on his tax, education, and health care plans (some of which is already happening.)

“You guys have an obligation as well to check some of these allegations,” he said. “Everyone was very dazzled by the fact that Mitt Romney came in with some well-rehearsed lines, but now we have to sit back and say, 'What exactly is it that he said and was it true?'”

Asked by host Joe Scarborough why the president didn’t make that case if that’s what he believed, Axelrod tried to take the high road.

“I understand there was a hunger for us to attack Romney more personally than the president did last night,” he allowed. “The president was talking to the American people…treating the American people like adults.”

Axelrod said the president would “review” his performance and “if he wants to make some changes in the next debate he will do so.”

There are more debates to come, he argued.

The Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) continued its campaign against Mitt Romney’s presidential bid by holding a pre-debate rally in Denver October 2.

Mitt Romney and President Obama will take part in their first one-on-one presidential debate Wednesday, October 3, in Denver.

The organization, which has been advertising in the state in the lead up to the debate, hosted the rally at the Auraria Campus in downtown Denver with local officials, such as Senator Michael Bennet and Rep. Diana DeGette, university students, and PPAF president Cecile Richards.

About 200 attended the rally, according to a PPAF spokesman.

The centerpiece of the health organization’s current Colorado push is highlighting the group's national “Ask Mitt” online campaign in which participants were asked to submit questions for Mitt Romney via online and Twitter and then vote on their favorites, such as, “When are you going to address the fact that family planning is an economic issue?”

PPAF is pressing Romney on his stance on abortion, health care, funding for its health care arm, Planned Parenthood, and women’s rights in general.

“We’ve had thousands of women and men write in questions that they’d like to have Mr. Romney answer,” explained Richards on MSNBC Wednesday. “What is his plan for women? It seems to us he really is committed to rolling back the clock on women’s access to health care.”

Online, mobile, and TV advertising promoted the effort. “While you’re here in Colorado, I hope you’ll answer a few questions,” begins the TV ad.

The organization, which is the political arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, endorsed President Obama for re-election earlier this year. 

Obama leads Romney 50% to 45% among likely voters in Colorado, according to a September 20 NBC News/Marist/Wall Street Journal poll.

A group of marketing and veteran gay rights activists is hoping to rally the youth vote in the four states where gay marriage will be on the ballot this November through a social media campaign. Maine, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington all address the legality of gay marriage through ballot questions.

The Four 2012 campaign hopes to be the updated version of "Rock the Vote," by offering shareable, pro-gay-marriage content in the form of images, videos, and other graphics via social networks, such as Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, and Twitter.

Four 2012 co-founder Brian Ellner, who also oversaw the Campaign for New York Marriage, said the goal is to "engage and excite youths and make sure they come and vote," as well as raise "national dollars for the effort."

The organization's website includes links to donate to each state's pro-gay-marriage campaign: Mainers United for Marriage, Marylanders for Marriage Equality, Minnesotans United for All Families, and Washington United for Marriage. 

The public is encouraged to submit content, such as a Bruce Springsteen image (above) that was created by Scott Wooledge of Daily Kos and a video from YouTube star Michael Buckley. The images of other pro-gay-marriage celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Pink have also featured in previous content.

Four 2012 is also producing its own social content, including a series of state-specific videos about gay couples, such as the one it released Tuesday on Maine. Tuning into the "social media driven culture" of youths is important to organizing on this subject, Ellner said.

"Young people support marriage equality in staggeringly high numbers," he added. "The more young people that come out to vote the better we do."

Although gay marriage has never won before at the voting booth (states where it is legal, such as Massachusetts and New York, passed it via the legislature or courts), organizers are hopeful this year will be different. The Obama administration, including the president, has come out in support of gay marriage and national polling shows that half the country believes same-sex marriage should be valid under the law.

The organization, which received initial funding of $200,000 from shopping site Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg, has also taken out some paid advertising on Facebook.

Other organizers for The Four 2012 include Ryan Davis of Blue State Digital, the politics-minded digital marketing firm that worked on President Obama's 2008 online campaign; Andre Banks of AllOut.org, and Jeremy Heimans of social media consultancy Purpose.