NPR: Kathy Lohr

Last year, several states passed strict laws aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration. Those laws are now being challenged in federal court, and next month the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Arizona's immigration law — but that hasn't stopped some Southern states from moving forward with more restrictions.

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Let's go now to Florida, where late yesterday Governor Rick Scott announced that a new state attorney has been assigned to investigate the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The announcement came as thousands rallied in Sanford demanding justice for Martin. The teen was shot as he walked unarmed in Sanford, a suburb of Orlando. The shooter, George Zimmerman, is a volunteer neighborhood watch captain and he claims self-defense. He's also not been arrested. As NPR's Kathy Lohr reports, the cry is growing louder for an arrest to be made.

With three wins on Super Tuesday, and a victory in the Kansas caucuses over the weekend, GOP hopeful Rick Santorum is on a high — and campaigning hard in the South.

"This is going to be a very close race here in Mississippi and I know the same thing is true in Alabama. We've got lots of folks down here working hard," Santorum told a crowd at Weidmann's historic restaurant in Meridian, Miss. on Sunday.

Mississippi and Alabama hold Republican primaries Tuesday. The two Southern contests are crucial for former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is facing his most important challenge yet — winning Georgia on Super Tuesday. Georgia is considered Gingrich's home because he represented parts of the state in Congress for 20 years, but he hasn't lived there for more than a decade.

Over the weekend, Gingrich held several rallies, including one in Peachtree City, south of Atlanta, where he stressed that this area has long supported him.

"It is great to be home," Gingrich told the crowd. "I believe that I carried Fayette County in every single election, including the two that I lost."

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, one of the Tea Party's early superstars, has seen her approval ratings fall, and some of her core supporters are baffled by Haley's endorsement of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Haley won election in 2010 as a true fiscal conservative, capturing the endorsement of Sarah Palin, who said Haley was willing to challenge the good old boys of the state's politics.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's campaign has been down and then up this year.

More than 40 percent of the long-term unemployed say they've received a lot of help from family and friends. But only 1 in 10 reports getting much help from churches or community groups, according to an NPR/Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

While family may be the first stop for help, these groups say they're indeed seeing large numbers of people who have been out of work a long time.

'We're Overwhelmed Now'

There's a spirited debate going on between GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. A Super PAC called Restore Our Future is running negative ads against Gingrich on Romney's behalf. Gingrich called on Romney to get the ads off the air. Romney responded by saying the law does not allow him to communicate with a Super PAC.

GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is accusing his Republican opponents of what he says is reprehensible behavior — running attack ads in Iowa against the former House Speaker. Before a crowd of supporters in Hiawatha, Iowa, Gingrich stressed that the negative GOP attack ads are bad for the party and bad for voters.

Newt Gingrich is now the focus of the race to become the GOP presidential nominee — and with that comes the heat. His main opposition, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney went on the attack Friday, but Gingrich insists he'll stay positive. The big question is whether the former House Speaker can sustain his surge in the polls.

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Newt Gingrich traveled across South Carolina this week appearing at a number of town-hall-style meetings where he talked to voters and answered questions — mostly the same questions at every stop. He talked about the improving the economy, creating a new immigration policy, repealing President Obama's health care reform plan and transforming Washington.

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Newt Gingrich was in his 20s when he was hired at West Georgia College as a history professor. He had just returned from Belgium, where he was doing research for his doctoral dissertation.

"He was very much a person of intellect," says Mel Steeley, who taught history at the college for four decades and helped bring Gingrich to the school in 1970. "He would wander across campus and didn't notice people. He'd have something in his mind, always be thinking about something. When he first came, you kind of wondered if he was a student or a professor."

The mayor of Hattiesburg, Miss., Democrat Johnny DuPree, is the first black candidate to win a major party's nomination for governor in the state since Reconstruction. He's a long shot in the election against a well-funded lieutenant governor, Republican Phil Bryant. DuPree is not focusing on race, saying he'd rather talk about issues and his leadership skills.

Next week Mississippi voters will decide whether to pass a constitutional amendment that redefines a person. Under the proposal, fertilized human eggs would be considered human beings, which would ban all abortions in the state. But abortion-rights activists say it would also limit contraception and threaten fertility treatments.

Les Riley has worked on the initiative for years, gathering signatures to get it on the ballot. Now, in northwest Mississippi, he's talking to voters and assembling yard signs that urge the passage of Amendment 26.

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Businessman and GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has been taking advantage of his recent rise to fame. Since he won the Florida straw poll late last month, he is everywhere: appearing on Sunday talk shows, promoting his new book and taking every opportunity to try to maintain his momentum.

People like the way he talks. His frank, motivational style has come out in GOP debates and in speeches.

As President Obama sells his jobs initiative across the country, people in Mississippi point to a program they say is already creating jobs. Mississippi has attracted attention because economists like the way the state got employers to share the cost of hiring workers.

Under the Subsidized Transitional Employment Program and Services, or STEPS for short, the state pays part of the cost of workers' salaries in the hopes that the subsidy will lead to full-time jobs.

Some analysts say this could be a national model, but it comes with a price tag.

After years of appeals and controversy, Troy Anthony Davis is scheduled to be executed in Georgia on Wednesday. Georgia's board of pardons turned back Davis' appeal for clemency Tuesday, despite high-profile support for his claim that he did not kill a police officer in 1989.

Several witnesses have changed their testimony since Davis' trial; tens of thousands are protesting the execution. Former president Jimmy Carter, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu and more than 50 members of Congress are among those who have asked Georgia to commute Davis' death sentence.

It's been six years since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and the rebuilding continues. In Mississippi, the largest project under construction is the Port of Gulfport. Some $500 million in statewide recovery funds are being used to rebuild the port. The state calls it a critical resource, but some residents hit hard by Katrina fear they won't see the benefits.

The Port of Gulfport sits just off Highway 90, a main road that runs all along the coast. Katrina's 30-foot storm surge nearly destroyed this facility which is the size of about 50 city blocks.

Kansas is one of several states trying to increase licensing requirements and regulations for clinics that perform abortions. The state has enacted a new set of rules but a lawsuit has prevented them from taking effect. On Wednesday, Kansas officials held a public hearing to consider changes to the rules.

President Obama is scheduled next week to announce a new federal jobs plan that could include some kind of worker training program. Among those programs the president is considering is one in Georgia, which has had mixed reviews.

At a recent town hall meeting in Illinois, Obama answered questions about the sagging economy, and mentioned Georgia Works, a job-training program that allows a company to try out a prospective employee for eight weeks while the worker still receives an unemployment check. He called it a smart program.

Six years ago Monday, Hurricane Katrina blew up the U.S. Gulf Coast, killed more than 1,800 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless. The story of the coast's recovery varies from place to place.

For some, life is back to normal. Along the Mississippi coast, thousands affected by Katrina still live in battered houses. They've been trapped by a technicality. Their homes were damaged by wind gusts rather than Katrina's storm surge.

In Biloxi, railroad tracks separate some of the neighborhoods that got the most help from those who got little or no aid.

Students in Atlanta's troubled public school system started classes this week. It follows a year of controversy after dozens of administrators and teachers were found to have cheated on state tests so that students would appear to have made academic gains.

This weekend, the University of Alabama will award degrees to students who would have received them last spring had a devastating tornado not postponed graduation. During ceremonies, the school will honor the six students killed in the storm. NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.

Bringing the 1996 Summer Olympic Games to Atlanta was a long shot. Athens, Greece was the sentimental favorite to host the centennial games, and tension was palpable as IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch made the announcement back on September 18, 1990.

"The International Olympic Committee has awarded the 1996 Olympic Games to the city of ... Atlanta," Samaranch revealed.

Space camp began in 1982, the year after the shuttle first flew. The camp started out small but more than half a million students have graduated from the program. The U.S. Space and Rocket Center, which runs the camp, is building a new simulator to mirror NASA's goals to travel to the Moon, Mars and into deep space.