Sympathy over US school shooting stretches globe

BANGKOK (AP) — Images of a tearful President Barack Obama speaking after a shooting rampage in Connecticut resonated around the world, with many outside the United States expressing hope Saturday that America's latest school massacre would prompt the country to strengthen gun control.

Shock and sympathy were the initial reactions to the rampage that left 28 people dead, including 20 children at an elementary school. Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard described the attack as a "senseless and incomprehensible act of evil."

"Like President Obama and his fellow Americans, our hearts too are broken," Gillard said in a statement, referring to the U.S. leader's emotional expression of condolence.

The gunman killed his mother at their home before opening fire Friday inside the school in Newtown, Connecticut, where he killed 26 people, including 20 children, police said. The killer, identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, then committed suicide.

Australia confronted a similar tragedy in 1996, when a man went on a shooting spree in the southern state of Tasmania, killing 35 people. The mass killing sparked outrage across the country and led the government to impose strict new gun laws, including a ban on semi-automatic rifles.

Gillard's sentiments echoed those of British Prime Minister David Cameron, who said he "was shocked and deeply saddened" to learn of the "horrific shooting."

"My thoughts are with the injured and those who have lost loved ones," he said. "It is heartbreaking to think of those who have had their children robbed from them at such a young age, when they had so much life ahead of them."

Initial official reaction at the national level did not touch on perceptions of the United States as a violent society, or its generally lax gun laws. On social media sites such as Twitter and in mainstream media outlets, however, there were plenty of comments about the causes of such incidents.

The attack quickly dominated public discussion in China, rocketing to the top of topic lists on social media and becoming the top story on state television's main noon newscast.

China has seen several rampage attacks at schools in recent years, though the attackers there usually use knives. The most recent attack happened Friday, when a knife-wielding man injured 22 children and one adult outside a primary school in central China.

Much of the discussion after the Connecticut rampage centered on the easy access to guns in America, unlike in China, where even knives are sometimes banned from sale. But with more than 100,000 Chinese studying in U.S. schools, a sense of shared grief came through.

"Parents with children studying in the U.S. must be tense. School shootings happen often in the U.S. Really, can't politicians put away politics and prohibit gun sales?" Zhang Xin, a wealthy property developer, wrote on her feed on the Twitter-like Sina Weibo service, where she has 4.9 million followers. "There will always be mental patients among us. They should not be given guns."

In India, Kiran Bedi, a retired pioneering policewoman who is now a major anti-corruption activist, expressed her concerns, tweeting in the shorthand style familiar to users of text services that: "Firearms in hands of unbalanced r security threat! Gun/even Driving license issue needs due diligence! They r responsibility before a right!"

Some in South Korea, whose government does not allow people to possess guns privately, blamed a lack of gun control in the United States for the high number of deaths in the Connecticut shooting. Most people on the Internet expressed utter shock at the scale of the tragedy, many of them calling it frightful and unimaginable and expressing condolences to the families of the victims.

Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's top daily, speculated in an online report that it appears "inevitable" that the shooting will prompt the U.S. government to consider tighter gun control.

In Thailand, which has one of Asia's highest rates of murder by firearms and has seen schools attacked by Islamist insurgents in its southern provinces, a columnist for the English-language daily newspaper The Nation blamed American culture for fostering a climate of violence.

"Repeated incidents of gunmen killing innocent people have shocked the Americans or us but also made most people ignore it quickly," Thanong Khanthong wrote on Twitter. "Because each Hollywood movie, namely Batman and Spiderman, have hidden the message of violence and brutal killings."

"Intentionally or not, Hollywood and video games have prepared people's mind to see killings and violence as normal and acceptable," he wrote.

In Japan, where guns are severely restricted and there are extremely few gun-related crimes, public broadcaster NHK led the noon news Saturday with the shooting, putting it ahead of an update on the final day of campaigning before Sunday's nationwide parliamentary elections.

NHK, which had a reporter giving a live broadcast from the scene, said that five of the children at the school were Japanese, and that all five were safe. Its report could not immediately be independently confirmed.

Several Japanese broadcasters ran footage from Newtown, showing scenes of people singing outside churches Friday evening, as well as part of Obama's tearful press conference.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda sent a condolence message to Obama. "We express our condolences to the families of the victims," he said. "The sympathy of the Japanese people is with the American people."

In the Philippines, a society often afflicted by gun violence, President Benigno Aquino III said he and the Filipino people stand beside the United States "with bowed heads, yet in deep admiration over the manner in which the American people have reached out to comfort the afflicted, and to search for answers that will give meaning and hope to this grim event.

"We pray for healing, and that this heartbreak will never be visited on any community ever again," Aquino said in a statement tweeted by deputy presidential spokesman Abigail Valte.

Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Union's executive Commission, said that "''Young lives full of hope have been destroyed. On behalf of the European Commission and on my own behalf, I want to express my sincere condolences to the families of the victims of this terrible tragedy."

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Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok, Cassandra Vinograd in London, Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Malcolm Foster and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo, Charles Hutzler in Beijing, Ravi Nessman in New Delhi, Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, and Don Melvin in Brussels, contributed to this report.

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School shooting postpones Cruise premiere in Pa.

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. premiere of the Tom Cruise action movie "Jack Reacher" is being postponed following the deadly Connecticut school shooting.

Paramount Pictures says "out of honor and respect for the families of the victims" the premiere won't take place Saturday in Pittsburgh, where "Jack Reacher" was filmed.

The premiere would've been Cruise's first U.S. media appearance since his split from Katie Holmes over the summer. It was to be more contained with select outlets covering and a location away from Hollywood or New York.

A proclamation ceremony for Cruise had been planned with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

No new date for the premiere has been set. The movie opens Dec. 21.

Friday's massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school killed 20 children and several adults.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

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Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

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Routine morning, then shots and unthinkable terror

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — First, he killed his mother.

Nancy Lanza's body was found later at their home on Yogananda Street in Newtown — after the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School; after a quiet New England town was scarred forever by unthinkable tragedy; after a nation seemingly inured to violence found itself stunned by the slaughter of innocents.

Nobody knows why 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot his mother, why he then took her guns to the school and murdered 20 children and six adults.

But on Friday he drove his mother's car through this 300-year-old town with its fine old churches and towering trees and arrived at a school full of the season's joy. Somehow, he got past a security door to a place where children should have been safe from harm.

Theodore Varga and other fourth-grade teachers were meeting; the glow remained from the previous night's fourth-grade concert.

"It was a lovely day," Varga said. "Everybody was joyful and cheerful. We were ending the week on a high note."

And then, suddenly and unfathomably, gunshots rang out. "I can't even remember how many," he said.

The fourth-graders, the oldest children in the school, were in specialty classes like gym and music. There was no lock on the meeting room door, so the teachers had to think about how to escape, knowing that their students were with other teachers.

Someone turned the loudspeaker on, so everyone could hear what was happening in the office.

"You could hear the hysteria that was going on," Varga said. "Whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring."

Gathered in another room for a 9:30 a.m. meeting were principal Dawn Hochsprung and school therapist Diane Day along with a school psychologist, other staff members and a parent. They were meeting to discuss a second-grader.

"We were there for about five minutes chatting, and we heard Pop! Pop!, Pop!" Day told The Wall Street Journal. "I went under the table."

But Hochsprung and the psychologist leaped out of their seats and ran out of the room, Day recalled. "They didn't think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on," she said. Hochsprung was killed, and the psychologist was believed to have been killed as well.

A custodian ran around, warning people there was a gunman, Varga said.

"He said, 'Guys! Get down! Hide!'" Varga said. "So he was actually a hero."

Did he survive? The teacher did not know.

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Police radios crackled with first word of the shooting at 9:36, according to the New York Post.

"Sandy Hook School. Caller is indicating she thinks there's someone shooting in the building," a Newtown dispatcher radioed, according to a tape posted on the paper's website.

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In a first-grade classroom, teacher Kaitlin Roig heard the shots. She immediately barricaded her 15 students into a tiny bathroom, sitting one of them on top of the toilet. She pulled a bookshelf across the door and locked it. She told the kids to be "absolutely quiet."

"I said, 'There are bad guys out there now. We need to wait for the good guys,'" she told ABC News.

"The kids were being so good," she said. "They asked, 'Can we go see if anyone is out there?' 'I just want Christmas. I don't want to die, I just want to have Christmas.' I said, 'You're going to have Christmas and Hanukkah.'"

One student claimed to know karate. "It's OK. I'll lead the way out," the student said.

In the gym, crying fourth-graders huddled in a corner. One of them was 10-year-old Philip Makris.

"He said he heard a lot of loud noises and then screaming," said his mother, Melissa Makris. "Then the gym teachers immediately gathered the children in a corner and kept them safe."

Another girl who was in the gym recalled hearing "like, seven loud booms."

"The gym teacher told us to go in a corner, so we all huddled and I kept hearing these booming noises," the girl, who was not identified by name, told NBC News. "We all started — well, we didn't scream; we started crying, so all the gym teachers told us to go into the office where no one could find us."

An 8-year-old boy described how a teacher saved him.

"I saw some of the bullets going past the hall that I was right next to, and then a teacher pulled me into her classroom," said the boy, who was not identified by CBSNews.com.

Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher. "That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."

He said the shooter didn't utter a word.

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"The shooting appears to have stopped," the dispatcher radioed at 9:38 a.m., according to the Post. "There is silence at this time. The school is in lockdown."

And at 9:46 a.m., an anguished voice from the school: "I've got bodies here. Need ambulances."

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Carefully, police searched room to room, removing children and staff from harm's way. They found Adam Lanza, dead by his own hand after shooting up two classrooms; no officer fired a gun.

Student Brendan Murray told WABC-TV it was chaos in his classroom at first after he heard loud bangs and screaming. A police officer came in and asked, "Is he in here?" and then ran out. "Then our teacher, somebody, yelled, 'Get to a safe place.' Then we went to a closet in the gym and we sat there for a little while, and then the police were, like, knocking on the door and they were, like, 'We're evacuating people, we're evacuating people,' so we ran out."

Children, warned to close their eyes so they could not see the product of his labors, were led away from their school.

Parents rushed to the scene. Family members walked away from a firehouse that was being used as a staging area, some of them weeping. One man, wearing a T-shirt without a jacket, put his arms around a woman as they walked down the middle of the street, oblivious to everything around them.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and other public officials came to the firehouse. So did clergymen like Monsignor Robert Weiss of Newtown's St. Rose Roman Catholic Church. He watched as parents came to realize that they would never see their children alive again.

"All of them were hoping their child would be found OK. But when they gave out the actual death toll, they realized their child was gone," Weiss said.

He recalled the reaction of the brother of one of the victims.

"They told a little boy it was his sister who passed on," Weiss said. "The boy's response was, 'I'm not going to have anyone to play with.'"

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Jocelyn Noveck reported from New York. Jim Fitzgerald and Pat Eaton-Robb in Newtown and Bridget Murphy in Boston contributed to this report.

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NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Only eight months after a very public rocket launch failure and less than a year on the job, North Korea's young leader took a very big gamble this week.

It paid off, at least in the short term, projecting Kim Jong Un to his people as powerful, capable and determined. On the other hand it will increase his country's international isolation and could stregthen the hands of the only entity that poses a threat to his rule: the military.

North Koreans gathered en masse Friday in a staged demonstration, partly to glorify Kim and partly to celebrate the launch of the rocket, which Pyongyang says put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. The rest of the world saw it as a thinly-disguised test of banned long-range missile technology.

The launch's success, 14 years after North Korea's first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

"North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader" who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

North Korean state media said Kim himself issued the order to fire the rocket Wednesday despite the prospect of another failure and condemnation from abroad. Kim was praised for boldly carrying out his father and former leader Kim Jong Il's last wish before his Dec. 17, 2011, death.

Kim Jong Il had made development of missiles and nuclear weapons a priority despite international opposition and his nation's crushing poverty.

His son's success is likely to help him consolidate his power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

But what is unclear is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions against a country with what the United Nations calls a serious hunger problem.

"Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the "Machievellian argument" that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — "the only real threat to his rule."

There is also the question whether Kim, after thumbing his nose at the world by firing the rocket, will continue to ignore the universal wisdom that "North Korea's only hope for escaping economic implosion is for the country to open up economically," said Robert Hathaway, Asia director at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

As a cold wave lifted, tens of thousands of people gathered at the snowy Kim Il Sung Square on Friday, some dancing in the plaza before the rally began, continuing beer-filled street celebrations that had started on Wednesday.

Top officials told the people the critics abroad were characterizing the launch as a missile test. Denying the claims, they urged North Koreans to stand defiant in the face of outside condemnation.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

A missile program is built on decades of systematic, intricate testing, something extremely difficult for economically struggling Pyongyang, which faces guaranteed sanctions and world disapproval each time it stages an expensive launch.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

Successfully firing a rocket, however, was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed the April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul said.

The launch success "consolidates his image as true successor of his father's songun (military-first) leadership, but it will also deepen his country's economic isolation because sanctions will get tougher. That will hurt his image as an economically savvy leader and undermine his legitimacy for the next two to three years," Kim said.

The next big question is how the outside world will react. U.N. Security Council condemnation has already come; more sanctions may follow, both from the U.N. and individual countries.

Scott Snyder, a Koreas specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that the launch and North Korea's nuclear ambitions should inspire cooperation between the often wary U.S. and China, and South Korea and Japan.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation "it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger," Snyder said.

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AP writers Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

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U.S. drops China’s Taobao website from “notorious” list

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday dropped a website owned by China‘s largest e-commerce company, Alibaba Group, from its annual list of the world’s most “notorious markets” for sales of pirated and counterfeit goods.

Taobao Marketplace, an online shopping site similar to eBay and Amazon that brings together buyers and sellers, “has been removed from the 2012 List because it has undertaken notable efforts over the past year to work with rightholders directly or through their industry associations to clean up its site,” the U.S. Trade Representative‘s office said in the report.

The move came just before an annual high-level U.S.-China trade meeting next week in Washington.

Taobao Marketplace is China’s largest consumer-oriented e-commerce platform, with estimated market share of more than 70 percent. The website has nearly 500 million registered users, with more than 800 million product listings at any given time. Most of the users are in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has called Taobao “one of the single largest online sources of counterfeits.”

The Chinese Commerce Ministry strongly objected to Taobao’s inclusion on the USTR’s 2011 notorious markets list. A ministry spokesman said it did not appear to be based on any “conclusive evidence or detailed analysis.

Alibaba hired former USTR General Counsel James Mendenhall to help persuade USTR to remove Taobao from its list.

The Chinese company’s bid to shed its “notorious” label won support from the Motion Picture Association of America, a former critic of Taobao, which praised its effort to reduce the availability of counterfeit goods on its website.

But U.S. software, clothing and shoe manufacturers urged USTR to keep Taobao on the list.

To stay off in the future, USTR urged “Taobao to further streamline procedures … for taking down listings of counterfeit and pirated goods and to continue its efforts to work with and achieve a satisfactory outcome with U.S. rights holders and industry associations.”

USTR said it also removed Chinese website Sogou from the notorious markets list, based on reports that it has made “notable efforts to work with rights holders to address the availability of infringing content on its site.”

U.S. concerns about widespread piracy and counterfeiting of American goods in China are expected to be high on the agenda at next week’s meeting in Washington of the U.S.-China Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade.

The 2012 notorious markets list includes Xunlei, which USTR described as a Chinese-based site that facilitates the downloading and distribution of pirated movies.

Baixe de Tudo, a website hosted in Sweden but targeted at the Brazilian market, was also put on the list along with the Chinese website Gougou.

Warez-bb, which USTR described as a hub for pre-release music, software and video games, was also included. The forum site is registered in Sweden but hosted by a Russian Internet service provider, USTR said.

The full report can be found on USTR’s website at: http://www.ustr.gov/sites/default/files/121312%20Notorious%20Markets%20List.pdf

(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Will Dunham, Dan Grebler and Jim Marshall)

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Tolkien class at Wis. university proves popular

MILWAUKEE (AP) — The vast collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts initially sold senior Joe Kirchoff on Marquette University, so when the school offered its first course devoted exclusively to the English author, Kirchoff wanted in. The only problem: It was full and he wasn't on the literature track.

Undaunted, the 22-year-old political science and history major lobbied the English department and others starting last spring and through the summer and "kind of just made myself a problem," he said. His persistence paid off.

"It's a fantastic course," said Kirchoff, a Chicago native. "It's a great way to look at something that's such a creative work of genius in such a way you really come to understand the man behind it."

He and the 31 other students can now boast of their authority about the author who influenced much of today's high fantasy writing. The course was taught for the first time this fall as part of the university's celebration of the 75th anniversary of "The Hobbit" being published. And class wrapped up just before the film, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," was released Friday.

The class, which filled up fast with mostly seniors who had first dibs, looked at Tolkien as a whole, not just the popular "Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit." Students took their final exam this week, and the course was so well received, Marquette is considering more in the future.

"It's the best class I've had in 27 years here ... for student preparation, interest and enthusiasm," said English professor Tim Machan. "And I can throw out any topic and they will have read the material and they want to talk about the material."

Marquette is one of the main repositories of Tolkien's drafts, drawings and other writings — more than 11,000 pages. It has the manuscripts for "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit," as well as his lesser-known "Farmer Giles of Ham" and his children's book "Mr. Bliss." Marquette was the first institution to ask Tolkien for the manuscripts in 1956 and paid him about $5,000. He died in 1973.

Other significant collections are at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University in England and Wheaton College in Illinois.

Though Tolkien classes aren't unusual nationwide, Marquette students had the added bonus of being able to visit Tolkien's revisions, notes, detailed calendars, maps and watercolors on site at the school's archive. And they got a lesson from the school's archivist Bill Fliss.

"One of the things we wanted to impress upon the students was the fact that Tolkien was a fanatical reviser," said Fliss said. "He never really did anything once and was finished with it."

Chrissy Wabiszewski, a senior English major, described Tolkien's manuscripts as art.

"When you get down and look at just his script and his artwork in general, it all kind of flows together in this really beautiful, like, cumulative form," Wabiszewski said. "It's cool. It is just really cool to have it here."

The class also looked at Tolkien's poetry, academic articles and translations of medieval poems; talked about the importance of his writers' group, the Inklings; and explored what it meant to be a writer at that time.

"We've ... tried to think about continuities that ran through everything he did," Machan said. His students were also required to go to three lectures that were part of Marquette's commemoration.

"The Hobbit," a tale of homebody Bilbo Baggins' journey, is set in Tolkien's fictional realm of Middle-earth and takes place 60 years before "The Lord of the Rings." The movie released Friday is the first of the trilogy, with "The Hobbit: There and Back Again" set for release on Dec. 13, 2013, and a third film to come out in the summer of 2014.

Most of the students were just finishing elementary school when the first "Lord of the Rings" film was released 11 years ago.

Kirchoff said he started reading "The Hobbit" and the "Lord of the Rings" when he was in fourth grade, before the movies came out. He said the movies have introduced others to Tolkien's ideas, making his love for Tolkien's fantasy worlds more socially acceptable.

"The movies were fantastic enough and engaging enough to coexist in my mind with the literature I really do love," he said.

Wabiszewski said it's clear her classmates weren't just taking the class as a filler.

"I definitely expected the enthusiasm from everybody but just the knowledge that everybody brought into the class, it's cool," she said. "We really have a smart group of people in that class who have a lot to offer."

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — After health care reform is complete, states that have the most illegal immigrants could be left with a disproportionate number of uninsured people — and a financial burden.

Two-thirds of the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants live in eight states. None of them is covered by President Barack Obama's reform law.

So when the plan is fully implemented, illegal immigrants could make up a quarter of the uninsured.

Over the past decade, many illegal immigrants sought care at community clinics. But those clinics will also have to care for the newly insured. Some observers fear they won't be able to do both.

Hospitals are concerned that many immigrants will instead go to emergency rooms just as government funding for that care is cut.

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South Korea: NKorea's satellite orbiting normally

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A satellite North Korea launched aboard a long-range rocket is orbiting normally, South Korean officials said Thursday, following a defiant liftoff that drew a wave of international condemnation.

Washington and its allies are pushing for punishment over the launch they say is nothing but a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

The launch of a three-stage rocket — similar in design to a model capable of carrying a nuclear-tipped warhead as far as California — raises the stakes in the international standoff over North Korea's expanding atomic arsenal. As Pyongyang refines its technology, its next step may be conducting its third nuclear test, experts warn.

The U.N. Security Council, which has punished North Korea repeatedly for developing its nuclear program, condemned Wednesday's launch and said it will urgently consider "an appropriate response." The White House called the launch a "highly provocative act that threatens regional security," and even the North's most important ally, China, expressed regret.

In Pyongyang, however, pride over the scientific advancement outweighed the fear of greater international isolation and punishment. North Koreans clinked beer mugs and danced in the streets to celebrate.

"It's really good news," North Korean citizen Jon Il Gwang told The Associated Press as he and scores of other Pyongyang residents poured into the streets after a noon announcement to celebrate the launch by dancing in the snow. "It clearly testifies that our country has the capability to enter into space."

South Korea's Defense Ministry said Thursday the satellite is orbiting normally at a speed of 7.6 kilometers (4.7 miles) per second, though it's not known what mission it is performing. North Korean space officials say the satellite would be used to study crops and weather patterns.

Defense Ministry Spokesman Kim Min-seok said it usually takes about two weeks to determine whether a satellite works successfully after liftoff. He cited data from the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

Wednesday's launch was North Korea's fifth bid since 1998. An April launch failed in the first of three stages, raising doubts among outside observers whether North Korea could fix what was wrong in eight months, but those doubts were erased Wednesday.

The Unha rocket, Korean for "galaxy," blasted off from a launch pad northwest of Pyongyang just three days after North Korea indicated that technical problems might delay the launch.

South Korean navy ships found what appears to be debris from the first stage rocket at Yellow Sea and were trying to retrieve them on Thursday, defense officials said. The debris is believed to be a fuel container of the first stage rocket.

The officials said South Korea has no plans to return it to North Korea because the launch violated U.N. council resolutions.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command confirmed that "initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit."

The launch could leave Pyongyang even more isolated and cut off from much-needed aid and trade.

The U.N. imposed two rounds of sanctions following nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 and ordered the North not to conduct any launches using ballistic missile technology. Pyongyang maintains its right to develop a civilian space program, saying the satellite will send back crucial scientific data.

Pyongyang is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs, but experts believe the North lacks the ability to make a warhead small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States.

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Associated Press writers Kim Kwang Hyon and Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, North Korea; Foster Klug, Hyung-jin Kim and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea contributed to this report.

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U.S. federal agency to test RIM’s BlackBerry 10

TORONTO (Reuters) – Research In Motion said a U.S. federal agency, which recently outlined plans to move away from BlackBerry in favor of Apple Inc’s iPhone, is now set to begin testing RIM‘s new BlackBerry 10 platform and devices.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), will early next year begin a pilot program on RIM’s new line of BlackBerry 10 smartphones and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10), which allows corporations and government users to run the new devices on their networks, a RIM spokeswoman said late on Wednesday.

The news, which comes just as shares of the embattled company rallied to their highest close in seven months, signals that RIM’s BlackBerry 10 platform is gaining some traction ahead of its official launch next month.

RIM, a one-time pioneer in the smartphone industry, has lost market share in recent years to the iPhone and devices powered by Google Inc’s market-leading Android operating system, even among the business audience who once used BlackBerry devices exclusively.

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is now seeking to persuade both corporations and government users to stick with its smartphones, which have long been valued for their strong security features. It promises that its new line of devices, which will be powered by the BlackBerry 10 operating system, will be both smoother and faster than previous BlackBerry phones.

RIM is betting that these new devices – to be launched on January 30 – will revive its fortunes. But that may well depend to a large extent on the response from enterprise customers, many of whom have recently begun to flee to rival platforms.

ICE is one such example. The agency, in October, announced plans to end a long relationship with RIM, stating that its now aging line-up of BlackBerry devices could “no longer meet the mobile technology needs of the agency.

At the time, ICE outlined intentions to buy iPhones for more than 17,600 employees. It is not immediately clear whether the agency plans to revisit this plan or whether its intends to use RIM’s new BES 10 platform to manage both iPhones and BlackBerry devices. A spokeswoman for the agency was not immediately able to comment on the pilot program or the agency’s plans.

SHARES SURGE

The news comes soon after yet another rally in RIM shares on Wednesday, after Eric Jackson – a long-time bear on RIM’s stock – penned an opinion piece on his now bullish stance on the company.

Jackson, the founder of Ironfire Capital, in his piece, said parallels drawn by some analysts between RIM and its now-defunct rival Palm are flawed, as Palm never had the kind of installed subscriber base that RIM enjoys.

In his article, published on Wednesday on the TheStreet.com, Jackson contends that RIM’s new BlackBerry 10 devices have much better odds of success than Palm’s Pre device, which failed to capture a following despite positive reviews on the device and its operating system.

Jackson, who was short RIM’s stock for an extended period, argues that the positive sentiment building in RIM’s stock ahead of the launch of the make-or-break line of devices is unlikely to dissipate in a hurry, as a large portion of RIM’s 80 million subscribers are likely to upgrade to BB10 when the new devices are launched. Jackson said he now has a long position in RIM.

Shares in the company rose 5.6 percent to close at $ 13.31 on the Nasdaq – their highest close since May 1. Its Toronto-listed shares rose 5.8 percent to close at C$ 13.14.

The stock has more than doubled in price since September 24, when the shares were trading slightly above the $ 6 level in both New York and Toronto. The wave of optimism around BB10 has in recent weeks been bolstered by a number of analyst upgrades on the stock.

(Editing by Dan Grebler and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Familiar names line up for Golden Globe noms

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — A familiar lineup of Hollywood awards contenders are expected among Golden Globe nominations, whose prospects include past Oscar winners Daniel Day-Lewis, Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro and Sally Field.

Nominations come out Thursday morning for the 70th Globes ceremony, Hollywood's second-biggest film honors after the Academy Awards.

Among potential contenders are two-time Oscar winners Day-Lewis and Field for Steven Spielberg's Civil War saga "Lincoln," whose Globe possibilities also include past Oscar recipient Tommy Lee Jones.

Two-time Oscar winner De Niro is in the running for the lost-soul romance "Silver Linings Playbook," along with the film's lead performers, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

The field of contenders is loaded with other Oscar recipients such as Mirren and Anthony Hopkins for "Hitchcock," Philip Seymour Hoffman for "The Master," Helen Hunt for "The Sessions," Marion Cotillard for "Rust and Bone," Russell Crowe for "Les Miserables" and Alan Arkin for "Argo."

One of the year's big action hits, the James Bond adventure "Skyfall," could bring the latest Globe nomination for past Oscar winner Javier Bardem, who elevates his super-villain role into one of the year's most entertaining performances.

Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 90 reporters covering Hollywood for overseas outlets, the Globes sometimes single out newcomers to Hollywood's awards scene. Hilary Swank's Globe win for 1999's "Boys Don't Cry" helped put her on the map on the way to winning her first Oscar.

The possibilities this time include veteran French performers Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, who star as an elderly couple in "Amour," and first-time actors Quvenzhane Wallis and Dwight Henry for the low-budget critical darling "Beasts of the Southern Wild."

Globe acting winners often go on to receive the same prizes at the Oscars. All four Oscar winners last season — lead performers Meryl Streep of "The Iron Lady" and Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" and supporting players Octavia Spencer of "The Help" and Christopher Plummer of "Beginners" — won Globes first.

The Globes have a spotty record predicting which films might go on to earn the best-picture prize at the Academy Awards, however.

The Globes feature two best-film categories, one for drama and one for musical or comedy. Last year's Oscar best-picture winner, "The Artist," preceded that honor with a Globe win for best musical or comedy.

But in the seven years before that, only one winner in the Globe best-picture categories — 2008's "Slumdog Millionaire" — followed up with an Oscar best-picture win.

Along with 14 film prizes, the Globes hand out awards in 11 television categories.

Jodie Foster, a two-time Oscar and Globe winner for "The Accused" and "The Silence of the Lambs," will receive the group's Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the Jan. 13 ceremony.

Tina Fey, a two-time Globe TV winner for "30 Rock," and Amy Poehler, a past nominee for "Parks and Recreation," will host the show, which airs live on NBC.

Fey and Poehler follow Ricky Gervais, who was host the last three years and rubbed some Hollywood egos the wrong way with sharp wisecracks about A-list stars and the foreign press association itself.

With stars sharing drinks and dinner, the Globes have a reputation as one of Hollywood's loose and unpredictable awards gatherings. Winners occasionally have been off in the restroom when their names were announced, and there have been moments of onstage spontaneity such as Jack Nicholson mooning the crowd or Ving Rhames handing over his trophy to fellow nominee Jack Lemmon.

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Online:

http://www.goldenglobes.org

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Congress examines science behind HGH test for NFL

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee has opened a hearing to examine the science behind a human growth hormone test the NFL wants to start using on its players.

Nearly two full seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal that set the stage for HGH testing.

The NFL Players Association won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse.

Among the witnesses before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday is Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus. In his prepared statement, Butkus writes: "Now, let's get on with it. The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable."

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Mall shooter quit job, was going to Hawaii

In the days before he stole a semiautomatic weapon and stormed into an Oregon shopping mall, killing two people in a shooting spree, Jacob Roberts quit his job, sold his belongings and began to seem "numb" to those closest to him.

Roberts' ex-girlfriend, Hannah Patricia Sansburn, 20, told ABC News today that the man who donned a hockey mask and opened fire on Christmas shoppers was typically happy and liked to joke around, but abruptly changed in the week before the shooting.

Roberts unleashed a murderous volley of gunfire on the second floor of the Clackamas Town Center on Tuesday while wearing the mask and black clothing, and carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon and "several" magazines full of ammunition. He ended his barrage by walking down to the first floor of the mall and committing suicide.

READ: Why Mass Shooters Wear Masks

"I don't understand," Sansburn said. "I was just with him. I just talked to him. I didn't believe it was him at all. Not one part of me believed it."

She said that in recent weeks, Roberts quit his job at a gyro shop in downtown Portland and sold all of his belongings, telling her that he was moving to Hawaii. He had even purchased a ticket.

She now wonders if he was really planning to move.

"He was supposed to catch a flight Saturday and I texted him, and asked how his flight went, and he told me, 'oh, I got drunk and didn't make the flight,'" she said. "And then this happens... It makes me think, was he even planning on going to Hawaii? He quit his job, sold all of his things."

Roberts described himself on his Facebook page as an "adrenaline junkie," and said he is the kind of person who thinks, "I'm going to do what I want."

Roberts, who attended Clackamas Community college, posted a picture of himself on his Facebook page firing a gun at a target. His Facebook photo showed graffiti in which the words "Follow Your Dreams" were painted over with the word "Cancelled."

Sansburn said the pair had dated for nearly a year but had broke up over the summer. Throughout their relationship, she had never seen him act violently or get angry.

"Jake was never the violent type. He didn't go out of his way to try to hurt people or upset people. His main goal was to make you laugh, smile, make you feel comfortable. I never would have guessed him to do anything like this ever," she said.

"You can't reconcile the differences. I hate him for what he did, but I can't hate the person I knew because it was nothing like the person who would go into a mall and go on a rampage. I would never associate the two at all."

The last time she saw him, which was last week, he "seemed numb," and she didn't understand why, she said.

"I just talked to him, stayed the night with him, and he just seemed numb if anything. He's usually very bubbly and happy, and I asked him why, what had changed, and said 'nothing.' He just had so much he had to do before he went to Hawaii that he was trying to distance himself from Portland," Sansburn said.

Sansburn said the last message she sent Roberts was a text, asking him to stay, and saying she didn't want him to leave. He replied "I'm sorry," with a sad face emoticon.

Police are still seeking information about what Roberts was doing in the days leading up to the shooting. They said today they believe Roberts stole the gun he used in the rampage from someone he knew. They have searched his home and his car for other clues into his motive.

Read ABC News' full coverage of the Oregon Mall Shooting

Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said earlier today on "Good Morning America" that he believes Roberts went into the mall with the goal of killing as many people as he could.

"I believe, at least from the information that's been provided to me at this point in time, it really was a killing of total strangers. To my knowledge at this point in time he was really trying, I think, to kill as many people as possible."

Sansburn said she has not talked to police.

Mall Shooter Told Ex-Girlfriend He Was Moving to Hawaii

Roberts' mother, Tami Roberts, released a statement through a friend today saying she had no explanation of her son's behavior.

"Tami Roberts wishes to express her shock and grief at the events at Clackamas Town Center Tuesday," the friend said, reading from a statement outside of Tami Roberts' home.

The friend noted that Tami raised Roberts, but was not his biological mother. Sansburn said that Roberts' biological mother had died when he was very young.

"She has no understanding or explanation for her son's behavior...It's so out of his character," the friend said.

Officials from the Oregon City School District, where Roberts graduated from Oregon City High School, were also surprised at the news.

"This news is very shocking to those who knew Jacob while at OCHS. He was known as a soft spoken and polite young man who was often eager to be helpful. The motive for such a horrific act is likely to remain a mystery to us all," the district said in a statement.

Roberts had attended the school for only his senior year. He spent three years at Milwaukie High School, where officials described him as an "average student with average grades."

He had no disciplinary record at the school, but chose to transfer for his senior year to Oregon City High School, according to Joe Krumm, an administrator at the North Clackamas School District. Krumm did not know why he transferred, and said that in all, Roberts did not stand out in memory for anything in particular.

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NKorea defies warnings, launches long-range rocket

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea successfully fired a long-range rocket on Wednesday, defying international warnings as the regime of Kim Jong Un took a big step forward in its quest to develop a nuclear missile.

While the rocket launch will enhance the credentials of young leader Kim, who took power after his father Kim Jong Il's death a year ago, it is also likely to bring fresh sanctions against the country and further complicate relations between North Korea, its neighbors, and the West.

The United States, South Korea and Japan were quick to condemn the morning launch, which they see as a test of technology needed to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile that could one day threaten the U.S. Pyongyang says it was merely a peaceful effort to put a satellite into orbit.

Even China, North Korea's closest ally, expressed "regret" that North Korea went ahead with the launch "in spite of the extensive concerns of international community," said Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei.

The White House called it a "highly provocative act that threatens regional security."

The timing of the launch came as something of a surprise after Pyongyang had indicated technical problems might delay it. That it succeeded after several failed attempts was an even greater surprise.

"North Korea will now turn its attention to developing bigger rockets with heavier payloads," said Chae Yeon-seok, a rocket expert at South Korea's state-run Korea Aerospace Research Institute. "Its ultimate aim will be putting a nuclear warhead on the tip."

The Unha-3 rocket fired just before 10 a.m. local time, and was detected heading south by a South Korean destroyer patrolling the Yellow Sea. Japanese officials said the first rocket stage fell into the Yellow Sea west of the Korean Peninsula; a second stage fell into the Philippine Sea hundreds of miles (kilometers) farther south.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, later confirmed that North Korea did appear to have put an object into space. "Initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit," NORAD said in a statement.

About two hours after the launch, North Korea's state media proclaimed it a success, prompting dancing in the streets of the capital. State media called it a "momentous event" in the country's scientific development.

Rocket tests are seen as crucial to advancing North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions. Pyongyang is thought to have a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs, but experts believe it lacks the ability to make a warhead small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States.

The success of this launch "allows the North Koreans to determine what kind of delivery vehicle they could use for a potential nuclear warhead," said retired Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a weapons expert and intelligence analyst.

The U.N. Security Council will hold closed-door consultations on the launch Wednesday, according to the U.N. Mission for Morocco, which holds the rotating council presidency.

North Korea has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range rocket.

Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. This is the fifth attempt at a long-range launch since 1998, when Pyongyang sent a rocket hurtling over Japan. Previous launches of three-stage rockets failed, although North Korea claims its 1998 and 2009 launches were successful. A similar North Korean launch in April broke apart shortly after liftoff.

David Wright, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said North Korea showed some technical capability getting the rockets stages to work Wednesday.

"Politically, however, it will certainly have an impact on the way other countries view North Korea," Wright said.

North Korea under new leader Kim has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy.

Kim took power after Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17 last year, and the launch is seen by some as an attempt to commemorate that. It also comes less than a week before presidential elections in South Korea and about a month before President Barack Obama is inaugurated for his second term.

North Korean television and radio broadcast word of the launch, and there were vehicles with loudspeakers driving around Pyongyang announcing the news. Customers in the coffee shop at Pyongyang's Koryo Hotel broke into applause during a special television broadcast, while elsewhere people danced and asked each other: "Have you heard the news?"

"It's really good news. It clearly testifies that our country has the capability to enter space," said Jon Il Gwang, a Pyongyang resident. "I think our country should continue launching man-made satellites in the future in order to further advance the position of our country as a science and technology power."

The launches Wednesday and in April came from a site on the west coast, in the village of Tongchang-ri, about 56 kilometers (35 miles) from the Chinese border city of Dandong, across the Yalu River from North Korea. The site is 70 kilometers (45 miles) from the North's main Yongbyon nuclear complex, and is said to have better roads and facilities than previous sites and to allow a southerly flight path meant to keep the rocket from flying over other countries.

Tensions are high between the rival Koreas. The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war, as the 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, and Washington stations nearly 30,000 troops in South Korea as a buttress against any North Korean aggression. Tens of thousands more are in nearby Japan.

This year is the centennial of the birth of national founder Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of Kim Jong Un. According to North Korean propaganda, 2012 is meant to put the North on a path toward a "strong, prosperous and great nation."

The launch also follows South Korea's recent cancellation, because of technical problems, of an attempt to launch its first satellite from its own territory. Two previous attempts by Seoul in 2009 and 2010 failed.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on North Korea following its nuclear tests, and a 2009 resolution orders the North not to conduct any launch using ballistic missile technology.

The council condemned the failed North Korean launch in April and ordered seizure of assets of three North Korean state companies linked to financing, exporting and procuring weapons and missile technology.

North Korea has capable short- and medium-range missiles, but long-range launches in 1998, 2006, 2009 and in April of this year ended in failure. North Korea is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least half a dozen bombs, according to U.S. experts. In 2010 it revealed a uranium enrichment program that could provide a second source of material for nuclear weapons.

Six-nation negotiations on dismantling North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for aid fell apart in early 2009.

A February deal for the United States to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid in exchange for a freeze in nuclear and missile activities collapsed after the North's April launch.

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Associated Press writers Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, Peter Enav in Taipei, Taiwan, Matthew Pennington and Noel Waghorn in Washington, and Mari Yamaguchi and Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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Proper jailbreak for iOS 6 reportedly coming December 22nd

The speed at which a jailbreak for a new iOS device is released has slowed down considerably over the last few years. A tethered jailbreak  for devices running iOS 6 has been out September, but most people have been holding out for the untethered version – a hack that doesn’t erase everything upon reboot. A new jailbreak developer called “Dream JB” claims he will release a proper untethered jailbreak for devices running iOS 6 or 6.0.1 including the iPhone 5, iPad mini and iPad 4 on December 22nd. Dream JB also promises to release a video on Wednesday as proof. According to his website’s FAQ page, the jailbreak will be a one-click process and will differ from previous jailbreak methods in the past by using a prepared “Webkit exploit” and “userland exploit.” After it’s all done, Cydia, the App Store’s alternative for jailbroken smartphones, can be installed on the device. Unfortunately, the jailbreak won’t support Apple TV boxes.

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DA investigating Texas' troubled $3B cancer agency

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Turmoil surrounding an unprecedented $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas worsened Tuesday when its executive director offered his resignation and the state's chief public corruption prosecutor announced an investigation into the beleaguered agency.

No specific criminal allegations are driving the latest probe into the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, said Gregg Cox, director of the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit. But his influential office opened a case only weeks after the embattled agency disclosed that an $11 million grant to a private company bypassed review.

That award is the latest trouble in a tumultuous year for CPRIT, which controls the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars. Amid the mounting problems, the agency announced Tuesday that Executive Director Bill Gimson had submitted his letter of resignation.

"Unfortunately, I have also been placed in a situation where I feel I can no longer be effective," Gimson wrote in a letter dated Monday.

Gimson said the troubles have resulted in "wasted efforts expended in low value activities" at the agency, instead of a focused fight against cancer. Gimson offered to stay on until January, and the agency's board must still approve his request to step down.

His departure would complete a remarkable house-cleaning at CPRIT in a span of just eight months. It began in May, when Dr. Alfred Gilman resigned as chief science officer in protest over a different grant that the Nobel laureate wanted approved by a panel of scientists. He warned it would be "the bomb that destroys CPRIT."

Gilman was followed by Chief Commercialization Officer Jerry Cobbs, whose resignation in November came after an internal audit showed Cobbs included an $11 million proposal in a funding slate without a required outside review of the project's merits. The lucrative grant was given to Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics, a biomedical startup.

Gimson chalked up Peloton's award to an honest mistake and has said that, to his knowledge, no one associated with CPRIT stood to benefit financially from the company receiving the taxpayer funds. That hasn't satisfied some members of the agency's governing board, who called last week for more assurances that no one personally profited.

Cox said he has been following the agency's problems and his office received a number of concerned phone calls. His department in Austin is charged with prosecuting crimes related to government officials; his most famous cases include winning a conviction against former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2010 on money laundering charges.

"We have to gather the facts and figure what, if any, crime occurred so that (the investigation) can be focused more," Cox said.

Gimson's resignation letter was dated the same day the Texas attorney general's office also announced its investigation of the agency. Cox said his department would work cooperatively with state investigators, but he made clear the probes would be separate.

Peloton's award marks the second time this year that a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant authorized by CPRIT instigated backlash and raised questions about oversight. The first involved the $20 million grant to M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston that Gilman described as a thin proposal that should have first been scrutinized by an outside panel of scientific peer-reviewers, even though none was required under the agency's rules.

Dozens of the nation's top scientists agreed. They resigned en masse from the agency's peer-review panels along with Gilman. Some accused the agency of "hucksterism" and charting a politically-driven path that was putting commercial product-development above science.

The latest shake-up at CPRIT caught Gilman's successor off-guard. Dr. Margaret Kripke, who was introduced to reporters Tuesday, acknowledged that she wasn't even sure who she would be answering to now that Gimson was stepping down. She said that although she wasn't with the agency when her predecessor announced his resignation, she was aware of the concerns and allegations.

"I don't think people would resign frivolously, so there must be some substance to those concerns," Kripke said.

Kripke also acknowledged the challenge of restocking the peer-review panels after the agency's credibility was so publicly smeared by some of the country's top scientists. She said she took the job because she felt the agency's mission and potential was too important to lose.

Only the National Institutes of Health doles out more cancer research dollars than CPRIT, which has awarded more than $700 million so far.

Gov. Rick Perry told reporters in Houston on Tuesday that he wasn't previously aware of the resignation but said Gimson's decision to step down was his own.

Joining the mounting criticism of CPRIT is the woman credited with brainstorming the idea for the agency in the first place. Cathy Bonner, who served under former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, teamed with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong in selling Texas voters in 2007 on a constitutional amendment to create an unprecedented state-run effort to finance a war on disease.

Now Bonner says politics have sullied an agency that she said was built to fund research, not subsidize private companies.

"There appears to be a cover-up going on," Bonner said.

Peloton has declined comment about its award and has referred questions to CPRIT. The agency has said the company wasn't aware that its application was never scrutinized by an outside panel, as required under agency rules.

___

Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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Gunman kills 2, then self at Oregon mall

A masked gunman opened fire today at Clackamas Town Center, a mall in suburban Portland, Ore., killing two people, injuring one, and then killing himself.

"I can confirm the shooter is dead of an apparent self inflicted gunshot wound," Lt. James Rhodes of the Clackamas County, Ore., Sheriff's Department said today. "By all accounts there were no rounds fired by law enforcement today in the mall."

Police have not released the names of the deceased. Rhodes said authorities are in the process of notifying victims' families. The injured victim has been transported to a local hospital.

Rhodes described the shooter as an adult male.

Witnesses from the shooting rampage said that a young man in a white hockey mask and bulletproof vest tore through the Macy's, food court, and mall hallways firing rounds at shoppers beginning around 3:30 p.m. PT today.

Hundreds of people were evacuated from the busy mall full of holiday shoppers after the shooting began.

READ: Guns in America: A Statistical Look

The gunman entered the mall through a Macy's store, ran through the upper level of Macy's and opened fire near the mall food court, firing multiple shots, one right after another, with what is believed to be a black, semiautomatic rifle, according to witness reports.

Amber Tate said she was in the parking lot of the mall when she saw the shooter run by, wearing a mask and carrying a machine gun, headed for the Macy's.

"He looked like a teenager wearing a gun, like a bullet-proof vest and he had a machine, like an assault rifle and a white mask and he looked at me," she said.

Witnesses described the shooter as being on a mission and determined, looking straight ahead. He then seemed to walk through the mall toward the other end of the building, shooting along the way, according to witness reports.

Those interviewed said that Macy's shoppers and store employees huddled in a dressing room to avoid being found.

"I was helping a customer in the middle of the store, her and her granddaughter and while we were looking at sweatshirts we heard five to seven shots from a machine gun fire just outside my store," Jacob Rogers, a store clerk, told ABC affiliate KATU-TV in Portland.

"We moved everyone into the back room where there's no access to outside but where there's a camera so we can monitor what's going on out front," Rogers said.

Evan Walters, an employee at a store in the mall, told ABC News Radio that he was locked in a store for his safety and he saw two people shot and heard multiple gunshots.

"It was over 20, and it was kind of surreal because we hear pops and loud noises," he said. "We're next to the food court here and we hear pops and loud noises all the time, but we don't -- nothing like that. It was very definite gunshots."

Police are tracing the weapon used in the shooting.

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Meeting delay a sign of cooling US-Vietnam ties

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — The U.S. and Vietnam, former enemies who share concerns about China's rise, are finding that one issue — human rights — is keeping them from becoming closer friends.

Stress between the nations is clear from a delay in an annual meeting between Washington and Hanoi on human-rights concerns. Such consultations have been held every year since 2006, but the last ones in November 2011 produced little, and a senior State Department official said the two sides were still working to "set the parameters" of the next round so it would yield progress.

The U.S. is frustrated over Vietnam's recent crackdown on bloggers, activists and religious groups it deems a threat to its grip on power, and over the detention of an American citizen on subversion charges that carry the death penalty.

"We have not seen the improvements that we would like," the State Department official said last week on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly. "We would very much like to see concrete actions."

The delay in holding the meeting, to be hosted by Hanoi, could just be a matter of weeks. But it underscores how Vietnam's worsening treatment of dissidents over the last two years has complicated efforts to strengthen its ties with the U.S.

Vietnam's foreign affairs ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said the human rights dialogues had "contributed to enhancing trust" between the two countries and that both sides were in discussion on the timing of the next round. A U.S. Embassy spokesman also said the countries were discussing when to hold the talks.

Like Washington, Vietnam wants deeper trading and security relations, but the U.S. says it must be accompanied by improvements in human rights. Some influential members of Congress are also pressing the Obama administration to get tougher on Hanoi's suppression of dissent and religious freedom.

Vietnam's relationship with the U.S. has improved greatly in recent years, largely because of shared concerns over China's increasing assertiveness in Southeast Asia. Their shared strategic interests are reflected most clearly in U.S. diplomacy in the South China Sea, where Beijing's territorial claims clash with those of Vietnam and four other countries in the region.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Vietnam has opened its economy but has been unwilling to grant religious or political freedom to its 87 million people. The U.S. and Vietnam restored diplomatic relations in 1995, 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War, and their rapprochement has accelerated as President Barack Obama has prioritized stronger ties with Southeast Asia.

Vietnam's crackdown on dissent follows a downturn in its once-robust economy. Analysts say Hanoi's leadership is defensive about domestic criticism of its economic policies, corruption scandals and infighting, much of it being spread on the Internet, out of their control.

Last year, Vietnam locked up more than 30 peaceful activists, bloggers and dissidents, according to Human Rights Watch. This year, 12 activists have been convicted in short, typically one-day trials, and sentenced to unusually long prison terms. Seven others are awaiting trial. The country is also preparing laws to crackdown on Internet freedoms.

"The internal party ructions have trumped everything," said Carl Thayer, an expert on Vietnam from the University of New South Wales. "They are so paranoid about criticism they don't care about the U.S."

The detention and looming trial of American democracy activist Nguyen Quoc Quan may be the clearest example of Hanoi's unwillingness to listen to American concerns over human rights.

Quan, 59, was arrested at Ho Chi Minh City airport in April soon after arriving on a flight from the United States, where he has lived since fleeing Vietnam by boat as a young man. Quan's family and friends say he is a leading member of Viet Tan, a nonviolent pro-democracy group that the Vietnamese authorities have labeled a terrorist outfit. He was detained in 2007 in Vietnam for six months.

Authorities initially accused Quan of terrorism, but he is now charged with subversion against the state, which carries a punishment ranging from 12 years in prison to death.

With the investigation now complete, his trial could be near. Court dates are typically released only a few days in advance.

According to a copy of the indictment obtained by The Associated Press, Quan met with fellow Vietnamese activists in Thailand and Malaysia between 2009 and 2010 and discussed Internet security and nonviolent resistance. The indictment said he traveled to Vietnam under a passport issued under the name of Richard Nguyen in 2011, when he recruited four other members of Viet Tan.

His wife doesn't deny that Quan wants to change Vietnam's political system.

"He wanted to talk to the young people and bring up the idea of democracy in Vietnam," Huong Mai Ngo, said in an interview with The Associated Press by phone from Sacramento. "He has lived in the U.S., he has had freedom here and he wants them to have the same."

Congress members with large Vietnamese-American constituencies are pressuring the Obama administration.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a leading critic, maintains the government has neglected human rights as it looks to forge economic and security ties. With three Republican colleagues, the Virginia congressman has demanded the sacking of U.S. Ambassador David Shear, accusing him of failing to invite democracy and rights activists to the July 4 celebration at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi after giving assurances he would.

"The administration's approach has been a disaster. All they care about are economic and defense issues," said Wolf, who also took aim at Shear for failing to visit Quan in prison. "Human rights and religious freedom should be the number one priority."

U.S. officials have visited Quan five times in jail, mostly recently in late September.

"We believe no one should be imprisoned for peacefully expressing their political views or their aspirations for a freer, more democratic and prosperous future," embassy spokesman Christopher Hodges said. "We continue to call on the government of Vietnam to quickly and transparently resolve this case."

Wolf and other lawmakers interested in Vietnam do not have much say in setting policy, but can make life awkward for the Obama administration. Wolf hinted that he could propose amendments to budget legislation to put more pressure on the administration over its Vietnam policy. Wolf is a senior member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, which oversees much of the federal budget.

The U.S. has some leverage if it wishes to try and get Vietnam to improve its human rights record: Vietnam is one of the largest recipients of American aid in Asia and is currently negotiating a free trade deal with Washington and seven other countries.

The Vietnamese government declined to comment on the charges against Quan, but Hanoi is aware of U.S. sensitivities in this case. Many observers say Quan is likely to be convicted but sentenced to time served and quickly expelled, though even that is likely to raise congressional pressure on the White House to tie the trade deal and aid to progress on human rights.

"It would be a disaster for Vietnam if they come down on U.S. citizen with an extreme sentence for peacefully advocating human rights," said Linda Malone, a professor at William and Mary Law School who is advising Quan's local counsel on his defense. "They will lose tremendous ground on what they seek to advance themselves."

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Matthew Pennington reported from Washington.

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Royal phone scandal highlights new media risks

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Back in 2007, as investigations were gathering strength into the UK phone hacking scandal involving journalists working under the umbrella of the Murdoch media empire, a comedy show based around prank telephone calls made a low-key debut in Britain.

‘Fonejacker’ proved such a hit with the British public that the next year the program, in which a masked caller bamboozles hapless victims, won a coveted BAFTA award for best comedy, underscoring the attraction of the prank call amid a blurring of a ceaseless news cycle with social media and entertainment.

But just such a prank telephone call, to a London hospital where Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate was being treated, has sparked a firestorm in traditional and social media after the apparent suicide by the nurse who put the call through.

Much of the fury has been directed at laying blame for the nurse’s death on the Australian DJs who made the prank call, or the media in general, with the most vitriolic comments appearing on the public domains of Facebook and Twitter.

The social media outrage has become a story of its own, outlasting the original news value of a prank call, and has seen advertising pulled from the program which broadcast the hoax call and the suspension of the two radio announcers.

Shares in radio station 2DayFM’s owner, Southern Cross Austero fell 5 percent on Monday as the public backlash gathered strength.

Media commentators and analysts warn the rapidly changing traditional and social media worlds may have given people greater freedom of expression, but can unleash a genie which can have destructive or negative repercussions, without responsible behavior by both mainstream and social media operators.

“It’s all changing so fast that societal norms have retreated in confusion,” said veteran newspaper columnist Jennifer Hewett in the Australian Financial Review.

“What is clear is that we will soon look back to count the mounting costs and destructive force, as well as the great benefits, of the explosion of communication in an all-media, all-in, all-the-time world,” Hewett said.

Jacintha Saldanha, 46, was found dead in staff accommodation near London’s King Edward VII hospital on Friday after putting the hoax call through to a colleague who unwittingly disclosed details of Kate’s morning sickness to 2DayFM’s presenters.

Her death, still being investigated, followed still simmering outrage in Britain over phone hacking, as well as Australian anger over the power of radio announcers to plump ratings with a diet of shock, including a 2Day announcer who sparked fury by calling a woman journalist rival a “fat slag”.

And while in Britain the popular press were quick to seize the moral high ground and point the finger “Down Under”, Australian commentators pointed blame the other way, or at confusion over the changing role of media and voracious public demand for not only information, but increasingly titillation.

Australian newspaper columnist Mike Carlton said while 2Day FM and its parent company made good money by “entertaining simple minds”, for tabloid British papers to point “Down Under” over a ‘gotcha’ news genre they created was “towering hypocrisy”.

CHANGING MEDIA ETHICS

The social media condemnation of Saldanha’s death should prompt a re-think of ethics in the era of celebrity news, said Jim Macnamara, a media analyst from Australia’s University of Technology, Sydney.

“There is a lesson in this for media organizations everywhere, and for journalists and media personalities, and that is that they need to look at community standards and better self regulate,” said Macnamara.

The tragic fallout from the radio stunt has rekindled memories of the death of William’s mother Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997 and threatens to cast a pall over the birth of his and Kate’s first child.

Public amusement at the prank started turning when British media reported the call as a major security breach of the royal family’s privacy, despite the call never reaching Kate’s room and the information revealed by a nurse was already public.

But news of Saldanha’s death is what sparked the Internet firestorm, that once unleashed could not be controlled.

Hypocritically, some of the harshest criticism was on Twitter and Facebook, where people unleashed fury on Australian and British media, after having themselves publish news of Saldanha’s error under a Twitter topic #royalprank, which was repeated more than 15,000 times.

“When the twitterverse goes into meltdown, we all react with a chain reaction any nuclear plant would be proud of. I hope, in time, the world will learn to splash cold water on itself when these stories break and cool down, before we all get dragged into the mud of our own making,” Tristan Stewart-Robertson, a Glasgow-based journalist wrote in a blog on www.firstpost.com

(Editing by Michael Perry)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Luke Bryan cleans up at ACAs with 9 awards

Luke Bryan didn't want the American Country Awards to end.

He cleaned up during the fan-voted show, earning nine awards, including artist and album of the year. His smash hit "I Don't Want This Night To End" was named single and music video of the year.

Miranda Lambert took home the second most guitar trophies with three. Jason Aldean was named touring artist of the year. Carrie Underwood won female artist of the year, and a tearful Lauren Alaina won new artist of the year.

Bryan, Aldean, Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum and Trace Adkins with Lynyrd Skynrd were among the high-energy performances.

The third annual ACAs were held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas Monday night.

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Online: http://www.theACAs.com

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Follow http://www.twitter.com/AP_Country for the latest country music news from The Associated Press.

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New tests could hamper food outbreak detection

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's about to get faster and easier to diagnose food poisoning, but that progress for individual patients comes with a downside: It could hurt the nation's ability to spot and solve dangerous outbreaks.

Next-generation tests that promise to shave a few days off the time needed to tell whether E. coli, salmonella or other foodborne bacteria caused a patient's illness could reach medical laboratories as early as next year. That could allow doctors to treat sometimes deadly diseases much more quickly — an exciting development.

The problem: These new tests can't detect crucial differences between different subtypes of bacteria, as current tests can. And that fingerprint is what states and the federal government use to match sick people to a contaminated food. The older tests might be replaced by the new, more efficient ones.

"It's like a forensics lab. If somebody says a shot was fired, without the bullet you don't know where it came from," explained E. coli expert Dr. Phillip Tarr of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that losing the ability to literally take a germ's fingerprint could hamper efforts to keep food safe, and the agency is searching for solutions. According to CDC estimates, 1 in 6 Americans gets sick from foodborne illnesses each year, and 3,000 die.

"These improved tests for diagnosing patients could have the unintended consequence of reducing our ability to detect and investigate outbreaks, ultimately causing more people to become sick," said Dr. John Besser of the CDC.

That means outbreaks like the salmonella illnesses linked this fall to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter might not be identified that quickly — or at all.

It all comes down to what's called a bacterial culture — whether labs grow a sample of a patient's bacteria in an old-fashioned petri dish, or skip that step because the new tests don't require it.

Here's the way it works now: Someone with serious diarrhea visits the doctor, who gets a stool sample and sends it to a private testing laboratory. The lab cultures the sample, growing larger batches of any lurking bacteria to identify what's there. If disease-causing germs such as E. coli O157 or salmonella are found, they may be sent on to a public health laboratory for more sophisticated analysis to uncover their unique DNA patterns — their fingerprints.

Those fingerprints are posted to a national database, called PulseNet, that the CDC and state health officials use to look for food poisoning trends.

There are lots of garden-variety cases of salmonella every year, from runny eggs to a picnic lunch that sat out too long. But if a few people in, say, Baltimore have salmonella with the same molecular signature as some sick people in Cleveland, it's time to investigate, because scientists might be able narrow the outbreak to a particular food or company.

But culture-based testing takes time — as long as two to four days after the sample reaches the lab, which makes for a long wait if you're a sick patient.

What's in the pipeline? Tests that could detect many kinds of germs simultaneously instead of hunting one at a time — and within hours of reaching the lab — without first having to grow a culture. Those tests are expected to be approved as early as next year.

This isn't just a science debate, said Shari Shea, food safety director at the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

If you were the patient, "you'd want to know how you got sick," she said.

PulseNet has greatly improved the ability of regulators and the food industry to solve those mysteries since it was launched in the mid-1990s, helping to spot major outbreaks in ground beef, spinach, eggs and cantaloupe in recent years. Just this fall, PulseNet matched 42 different salmonella illnesses in 20 different states that were eventually traced to a variety of Trader Joe's peanut butter.

Food and Drug Administration officials who visited the plant where the peanut butter was made found salmonella contamination all over the facility, with several of the plant samples matching the fingerprint of the salmonella that made people sick. A New Mexico-based company, Sunland Inc., recalled hundreds of products that were shipped to large retailers all over the country, including Target, Safeway and other large grocery chains.

The source of those illnesses probably would have remained a mystery without the national database, since there weren't very many illnesses in any individual state.

To ensure that kind of crucial detective work isn't lost, the CDC is asking the medical community to send samples to labs to be cultured even when they perform a new, non-culture test.

But it's not clear who would pay for that extra step. Private labs only can perform the tests that a doctor orders, noted Dr. Jay M. Lieberman of Quest Diagnostics, one of the country's largest testing labs.

A few first-generation non-culture tests are already available. When private labs in Wisconsin use them, they frequently ship leftover samples to the state lab, which grows the bacteria itself. But as more private labs switch over after the next-generation rapid tests arrive, the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene will be hard-pressed to keep up with that extra work before it can do its main job — fingerprinting the bugs, said deputy director Dr. Dave Warshauer.

Stay tuned: Research is beginning to look for solutions that one day might allow rapid and in-depth looks at food poisoning causes in the same test.

"As molecular techniques evolve, you may be able to get the information you want from non-culture techniques," Lieberman said.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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