Stung by a series of defeats earlier this week, Mitt Romney got a much-needed boost Saturday with a win in the straw poll of the Conservative Political Action Conference and a victory in Maine's nonbinding caucuses.

Yet Romney walked away without delegates and tallied fewer votes there than he did four years ago. This time, he barely beat rival Ron Paul.

Villamayor de Santiago, population 2,500, is a small village just south of Madrid, Spain.

It's famous for three Manchego cheese factories and a windmill that stopped turning decades ago. More than one-third of the town is unemployed.

After Christmas, shopkeepers here decided to jumpstart their economy.

"We realized there's no money here — well, no euros anyway — in the pockets of our customers," says Luis Miguel Campayo, head of the local merchants' association.

There was one little-noticed part of this week's announcement about the $25 billion national mortgage settlement. North Carolina's banking commissioner, Joseph Smith Jr., will take over a new role and serve as independent monitor. He'll oversee the five banks which agreed to new mortgage loan servicing and foreclosure standards.

A year ago today, tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Cairo's Tahrir Square and celebrated a previously unimaginable achievement: the toppling of Hosni Mubarak.

But one year later, Egypt is far from stable and far from the democratic utopia many activists imagined. Is the nation better off?

Okfuskee County in Oklahoma is the birthplace of Woody Guthrie, who would have turned 100 this year. Much of the economic problems Guthrie sang about were from what he saw in the county, which was once the largest all-black community in the country. Guthrie's music still resonates there, especially in the town of Boley, where hope is hard to come by. Logan Layden of State Impact Oklahoma reports.

Transcript

GUY RAZ, HOST:

Well, every single state in the country will get a piece of that $26 billion to help troubled homeowners keep their homes, every single state except Oklahoma. The attorney general in Oklahoma decided to opt out of the multistate settlement to hold banks accountable for questionable lending and foreclosure practices.

Scott Pruitt is Oklahoma's attorney general, and he joins me now on the line. Attorney General, welcome.

SCOTT PRUITT: Well, thank you, Guy.

James Fallows of The Atlantic talks to weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz about President Barack Obama's compromise on providing reproductive services mandated by health care law after resistance from religious institutions and his latest cover story for The Atlantic on Obama's demeanor and a recent deal reached with five of the biggest banks in the country to pay back individuals whose homes were wrongly foreclosed on.

In January of last year, snow blanketed more than 42 percent of the country. Last month, it was just under 13 percent. The warm weather has lowered our heating bills and created a bit of an economic boost.

After two brutally long winters, the temperatures this year have been positively balmy. In the Washington, D.C., area, they've hovered in the 50s for much of the past two and a half months. Area landscapers, whose schedules are usually pretty lean this time of year, are busier. Take Chuck Dod Landscaping, which is building a stone wall in the backyard of a home in Mclean, Va.