Missouri, Republican | featured news

Missouri Congressman Todd Akin, the conservative Republican U.S. Senate candidate, quickly backed off comments that aired earlier Sunday, in which he told an interviewer that a woman's body "has ways" to prevent pregnancy during rape and that such pregnancies are "really rare."

The Republican primary process rolls on nearly eleven months after it kicked off in Iowa, and with no definitive end in sight. On Saturday, Missouri began its process of awarding delegates to presidential contenders and the campaigns of Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum each looked to win the more aggressively-contested primary in Puerto Rico on Sunday.

Rick Santorum scored victories in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado nominating contests Tuesday night, winning him no actual delegates, but nonetheless blocking Mitt Romney's bid to keep alive a streak of victories in the Republican presidential primary. Santorum scored broad victories in the Minnesota caucus and a primary in Missouri, according to NBC News projections. But Santorum's most significant upset came in Colorado, where the state GOP declared him the apparent victor in caucuses there.

The Romney campaign's broadening of its attack this week to include Rick Santorum reflects some of the uncertainty surrounding votes Tuesday in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri -- the first multi-state election day of the campaign.