Defies

SAN FRANCISCO -- Why even play three more games? It's the San Francisco Giants' world, and the rest of us just eat overpriced Cioppino and get fat on Ghirardelli chocolate. It was impressive for Barry Zito to use his 85-mph fastballs to shut down the Cardinals in St. Louis in a must-win game. But it was preposterous for him to stick out his bat and get a run-scoring single against Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers. Who does he think he is, Marco Scutaro? Everything - and I mean everything - that the Giants do these days turns into gold.

ST. LOUIS -- On the day that Republican leaders had hoped Todd Akin would drop out of the Senate race, the defiant GOP nominee launched a statewide bus tour with renewed backing from fiscal and antiabortion conservatives. Alongside more than 100 supporters, many of them faith leaders at conservative congregations, the GOP candidate whose campaign was upended by his "legitimate rape" comments is being celebrated by many on the right flank for bucking the establishment's calls to step aside.

TEHRAN - Egypt's new president rankled his hosts but won plaudits elsewhere Thursday when he condemned the Iran-backed government of Syrian President Bashar Assad as an "oppressive regime," sparking a walkout by Assad government officials at a summit of nonaligned nations. "We express our solidarity with the struggle of the Syrian people against an oppressive regime that has lost legitimacy," Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi told the assembled delegates at a conference hall in the Iranian capital.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is among the California law enforcement officials who may defy a proposed state law and continue to detain arrestees who are illegal immigrants when asked to do so by federal authorities. The Trust Act, which cleared the state Legislature on Friday, is the latest measure nationwide to push back against federal immigration policy, either by reducing or increasing enforcement. The law would prohibit local authorities from complying with federal detention requests except when a suspect has been charged with a serious or violent crime.

The Republican Party has ridden ideological, anti-government fervor to a number of victories, particularly in the 2010 midterm election. But the political dangers created by the free-wheeling, anti-authoritarian movement have come into full view in the person of rogue U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin. Most traditional GOP nominees who made a giant blunder - as Akin did Sunday with his foolish comments about how “legitimate rape” seldom makes women pregnant - would find it hard to resist the barrage of calls from Republican Party major-domos to give up their candidacies.

BOSTON - When he began his campaign for president last year, Mitt Romney made a clear case for what he said made him best qualified for the job: His record as Massachusetts governor, head of the 2002 Winter Olympics and, above all, the businessman who founded Bain Capital. To create jobs in the private sector, he argued for months, it takes experience in the private sector. "We invested in over 100 different businesses, and net-net - taking out the ones where we lost jobs and those that we added - those businesses have now added over 100,000 jobs," Romney said of his Boston firm in January.

California's bullet train is appropriately named -- not because it will ever be as fast as a speeding bullet but because it has taken more potshots than a Montana stop sign . Critics deride the line as a train to nowhere that will never attract the funding needed to run all the way from Sacramento to San Diego (with a spur to San Francisco) as originally envisioned. What's more, they say, the train's planning has been so undermined by special interests that it has no chance of running fast enough to fulfill its promise to get from L.A. to San Francisco in 2 1/2 hours.

NBC's coverage of the London Olympics has blown away the most optimistic projections for audience performance in an increasingly fractured media landscape. More than 210 million Americans have watched a portion of the Games. The network attracted an average of about 32 million viewers a night in prime time - though the time difference with London meant NBC was showing highlights from events that occurred long before the telecast. Younger viewers, including those typically tethered to laptops or cellphones, have been watching the coverage, often with groups of friends.

It's impressive enough when Travis Pastrana hydroplanes his dirt bike across a swimming pool. But it's really something when, just like a motocross Jesus, the 28-year-old extreme sports superstar pushes the limits of his two-wheeled trajectory, crossing the pool, then jumping down a concrete wall, then a kiddie pool, before landing on an idyllic Panamanian beach. Pastrana is one member of Nitro Circus, a collective of athletes from the motorcycle, bicycle and skateboard worlds who attempt seemingly impossible stunts and often succeed.