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NEAL CONAN, HOST:

President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney speak almost every day throughout the campaign season, sometimes two or three times a day. They deliver everything from commencement addresses to foreign policy analyses. But at rallies and union halls, high school auditoriums, at county fairs and a thousand other venues, they offer slight variations on a set of standard remarks known as the stump speech.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

Thousands of children with physical and mental disabilities live in institutions, isolated from their families and decades younger than other patients. The institutions are often better equipped to handle their medical needs, but can fall short when it comes to other aspects of the kids' lives.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Last month, customers of Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo and several other banks were unable to access their bank accounts. Hackers overwhelmed the sites with traffic that made them extremely slow or totally unresponsive. No funds were lost, but it was a nuisance.

Months earlier in Saudi Arabia, a virus named Shamoon spread through 30,000 of the computers of ARAMCO, the world's largest oil company, and erased file after file.

The Budapest String Quartet has always been my standard-bearer for chamber music. I grew up listening to their recordings, and especially admired not only their gorgeous sound, but also the uncanny interaction among all four players, even when there were changes in personnel. They had a way of playing as if they were speaking to each other, expressing deep and sometimes complicated feelings.

Here's your chance to weigh in on mutant forms of bird flu that have been in the news — the U.S. government wants to know just how scary you think these new viruses are.

Today's announcement that Vikram Pandit had abruptly resigned as chief executive of banking giant Citigroup has left competitors, analysts and media pundits stunned and sputtering.

"This comes as a huge surprise," William George, a Goldman Sachs board member, said in an interview on CNBC.

With a one sentence decision, the U.S. Supreme Court handed President Obama a victory today.

The court refused to hear a case that sought to block early voting Ohio. The AP reports:

"The court on Tuesday refused a Republican request to get involved in a dispute over early voting in the state on the three days before Election Day.

The second of two female Marines who tried to make it through the grueling Infantry Officer Course has failed due to medical reasons. The female volunteers are part of a study by the Marines to see if women can become ground combat leaders.

The Marines have not released the names of either woman, citing privacy concerns.