Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has ended his bid for the White House, leaving Mitt Romney as the presumptive nominee.
The former Pennsylvania senator made the announcement at a news conference in the city of Gettysburg.
"While this presidential race is over for me, we are not done fighting," said Mr Santorum, a social conservative.
He had been campaigning in Pennsylvania, his home state, ahead of its primary on 24 April.
But he was far behind Mr Romney in terms of funding and was in danger of losing the state for the second time in six years, analysts said.
In 2006 Mr Santorum lost his Pennsylvania Senate seat by an 18-point margin.
In the current race for the Republican nomination, Mr Santorum lags far behind Mr Romney in terms of the number of delegates needed to seal the nomination at the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, in late August.
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich may not appear on the ballot for the June 26 Utah primary, after a $500 check - the required filing fee - bounced, an official said.
State election director Mark Thomas told ABC News that a $500 check given by the Gingrich campaign to secure his place on the Utah ballot bounced on March 27.
"Our office immediately attempted to contact the campaign and the designated agent but no phone calls were returned," Thomas said. "We also asked the state Republican Party to assist us, but they also could not get into communication with them, although I do not know how they attempted to contact them."
One source close to the campaign told ABC News that the Gingrich campaign recently changed finance and accounting staff. The designated agent who filed the paperwork for the campaign was Wallace Woodruff "Woody" Hales, though Hales still works for the Gingrich campaign.
If the fee is not paid by April 20, Gingrich will be disqualified from the ballot.
"Our office certifies the candidates to the county clerks on April 24," Thomas said.
The check bounce comes as no surprise as Gingrich confirmed a debt of almost $4.5 million to ABC News on Tuesday.
I am interested ton see how much Gingrich's numbers bounce in the primaries at the end of the month. If he and Paul pull more than 30% of the vote will probably spell problems for Mittens
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
The GOP professionals are already looking ahead to 2016 when they won't have to run against an incumbent and might find someone less cowardly and unappealing than this group. But they'll have to figure out how to neutralize the brain-dead hard right that tend to dominate the nomination process.
