The Early Word: Iran

NYTimes.com

Inspectors will soon report that there are signs Iran is hastening work on its nuclear program, David E. Sanger reports. While their report says the country has focused on enriching uranium to a level of purity Iran says is needed for medical purposes — which experts say is also most of the way to the level needed to produce a workable bomb — it does not remark on whether Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.

In an effort to win over voters in crucial Western states who are wary of Washington, Mitt Romney’s energy plan proposes to end federal management of oil and gas drilling, as well as coal mining on government lands, and hand that control over to the states, Eric Lipton and Clifford Krauss write.

A former lobbyist from a prominent Democratic family, Janna Ryan is now tied to the Republican presidential ticket, married to the vice-presidential pick whose conservative values have revved up the party’s base and looking a little uncomfortable with the attention, Susan Saulny and Christine Haughney report.

New details about Mr. Romney’s investments and strategies used by Bain Capital to minimize tax liabilities emerged Thursday in hundreds of pages of the equity firm’s internal documents published on Gawker.com, Nicholas Confessore, Floyd Norris and Julie Creswell report.

Having rejected four scanning devices as inadequate after millions of dollars of testing, the Transportation Security Administration has decided travelers have to continue taking off their shoes when passing through airport security checkpoints for now, Ron Nixon reports.