Police: Wyo. murder-suicide happened during class

A man wielding a sharp-edged weapon killed one person in a Casper neighborhood Friday before killing a male teacher and himself in front of students in a community college classroom, causing a campus-wide lockdown as authorities tried to piece together what happened. Police found the suspect and teacher dead at a science building on the Casper College campus, which was locked down for about two hours, school and police officials said. The other victim, a woman, was found in a street about two miles away. Casper Police Chief Chris Walsh said the murder-suicide took place in a classroom with students present, but he didn't know how many students or what the class topic was. He said investigators were still trying to determine a motive. Walsh said an "edged weapon" was used it at least one of the killings, but he didn't offer specifics and it was unclear if the same or a similar weapon was used in all of the deaths. The attacker wasn't believed to be a Casper College student and it appeared he knew the victims, Walsh said. No names were released. "We're locating next of kin and working on notification absolutely as fast as we can," Walsh said. He added authorities didn't believe there was any further threat to the community. "I want to emphasize that this is a horrible tragedy," Walsh said. "And I want the city to ... just feel safe right now. There is no one at large." The attack at the two-year community college in Casper, about 250 miles northwest of Denver, occurred just before 9 a.m. in a classroom on the science building's third floor. All students and staff were evacuated from the building. The college sent out a campus-wide alert via text message and email within two minutes of receiving word of the attack at 9:06 a.m., school spokesman Rich Fujita said. The lockdown ended at about 11 a.m. after school officials received word that police were no longer searching for a suspect, Fujita said. There are fewer classes on Fridays than any other day of the week at Casper College, so only between 1,500 and 2,000 of the college's 5,000 students were there, he added. One of them, freshman Pearson Morgan, was in a math class on the first floor of the science building when his instructor relayed the news in a state of shock. "My teacher was just so sick, he said, 'You can just leave,'" Morgan said. Morgan walked outside his classroom to find a female student crying. He then turned to see two or three officers with assault rifles bounding up the stairs. Then, all the classrooms emptied and a crush of students carried him outside, but nobody panicked, Morgan said. "There was a large group of students behind me," he said. "There was a lot of confusion." Political science instructor Chris Henrichsen said he was showing the film "Frost/Nixon" to his Wyoming and U.S. government class when he stepped into the hall to get something for a student and was told a homicide had occurred on campus. He went back to his classroom, where students were getting messages about the campus lockdown on their phones. "We locked the door and waited for further instruction," Henrichsen said. The students were later sent home, but some who parked near a different campus building where the attack occurred had to leave their cars there, Henrichsen said. About two miles away, Dave Larsen said he was headed to the gym when he drove past a body in a gutter with two people standing over it, one talking on a cellphone. Larsen lives about a block from the location of the body, a well-kept neighborhood of mostly single-story houses. Emergency vehicles had the street blocked off Friday afternoon. Police provided some details in a news conference streamed live by the Casper Star-Tribune (http://trib.com/). Walsh said 33 law enforcement officers from different agencies responded to the college after receiving reports of the attack. He said authorities first thought it might have been an "active-shooter-type situation." "We quickly contained the building and started a sweep through the building," he said. Walsh said that within minutes of the initial call, there was another report of a traumatic injury about two miles southwest of campus. That victim was...More

Read more »

Why Obama is pushing for stimulus in 'fiscal cliff' deal

How about a little government economic stimulus? That may sound incongruous considering the budget deficit and the push from Republicans to cut government spending. But President Obama’s first offer to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff" holds out the hope of at least some stimulus. This would include extending the 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut, boosting a tax incentive to businesses, establishing a $50 billion bank for long-term infrastructure projects, and extending unemployment benefits. RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered The total bill: about $255 billion out of the federal government's pocket – an amount the GOP would likely say needs to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere. The argument in favor of such stimulus? The tax measures, at least, could minimize the drag on the economy from Mr. Obama's proposed tax increases on the wealthy. “The increases in the top two income tax brackets would put a drag on consumption, so I think, from the Obama point of view, the spending or tax cuts are designed to offset that drag to consumption,” says Michael Brown, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C. But to some budget experts, Obama’s list seems more like an opening round of negotiations, where he has asked for a lot more than he will get. “It looks to me like these are bargaining chips,” says Pete Davis of Davis Capital Ideas, which advises Wall Street firms. “Even most Democrats had given up on the prospect of getting the payroll tax cut extended.” Mr. Davis considers the odds of most of the stimulus proposals passing Congress “very low.” What's needed most, say others, is just buckling down and negotiating an end to the fiscal cliff. “Cancelling the fiscal cliff is economic stimulus,” says Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications in Washington. If Obama's stimulus were passed, however, here is a look at the impact the four elements might have. SOCIAL SECURITY PAYROLL TAX CUT The largest chunk of the Obama plan is the extension of the payroll tax cut. This is the money that comes out of an individual’s paycheck as a contribution to Social Security. Two years ago, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress decreased the individual contribution from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The employer’s contribution of 6.2 percent remained unchanged. The Obama administration estimates extending the cuts would cost the government as much as $115 billion in revenue. The argument for extending the tax cut is that it helps lower-income workers who live paycheck to paycheck. “The difference in the paycheck might be the ability to pay the electric bill for someone or the chance to go to a sit-down restaurant once a month,” says Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS in Lexington, Mass. The argument against continuing the cut is that it is weakening the Social Security Trust Fund. In order to make up for the loss of contributions, the government taps the general tax revenues, says Pamela Tainter-Causey, a spokeswoman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

Read more »

North Korea vows to test long-range rocket soon

North Korea said Saturday it will launch a long-range rocket between Dec. 10 and Dec. 22, a move likely to heighten already strained tensions with Washington and Seoul ahead of a South Korean presidential election on Dec. 19. This would be North Korea's second launch attempt under leader Kim Jong Un, who took power following his father Kim Jong Il's death nearly a year ago. The announcement comes several weeks after President Barack Obama was elected to a second term in the United States and ahead of his January inauguration. Washington considers North Korea's rocket tests to be veiled covers for tests of long-range missile technology banned by the United Nations. An unnamed spokesman for the Korean Committee for Space Technology said North Korea had "analyzed the mistakes" made in a failed April launch and improved the precision of the rocket and satellite, according to the official Korean Central News Agency. The April launch broke up shortly after liftoff, but quickly drew condemnation from the United Nations, Washington, Seoul and other capitals. The North's statement said a rocket carrying a polar-orbiting earth observation satellite will blast off southward from its northwest coastal space center. The United States has criticized North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as a threat to Asian and world security. North Korea under its young leader has pledged to bolster its nuclear arsenal unless Washington scraps what Pyongyang calls a hostile policy.

Read more »

NKorean soldier defects to SKorea across border

A North Korean soldier killed two of his superiors Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries' heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said. The soldier shot his platoon and squad leaders before crossing the western side of the Demilitarized Zone at around noon, a Defense Ministry official said, citing the soldier's statement after he was taken into custody by South Korean border guards. The official, who declined to be named because questioning by authorities was ongoing, had earlier said one of the killed North Korean troops was a company commander but later corrected it, saying the information was mishandled in the first couple of hours of the development. He said South Korean guards heard six gunshots before the North Korean soldier crossed the border. He also said the soldier used a loudspeaker to let South Korean guards know his intention to defect after the killings. The official said the motive behind the defection was unclear. No unusual military movement was detected from the North Korean side of the border after the crossing, but South Korea immediately instructed its border troops to step up their guard, a South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff official said. He also declined to be named, citing office rules. There was no immediate comment from communist North Korea's state-run media. Defections across the land border are rare, though North Koreans occasionally come to the South by boat. Last year, a North Korean civilian defected to the South across the land border. The last defection across the Demilitarized Zone by a North Korean soldier occurred in 2010, officials said. Another soldier and an officer also defected to the South across the border in two separate crossings in 2008. The vast majority of North Koreans fleeing their homeland travel through China and Southeast Asia before arriving in the South. More than 24,000 North Koreans have arrived in the South since the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a cease-fire, not a peace treaty. The area where Saturday's defection took place is along the route to a South Korean-financed industrial complex in the North Korean border town of Kaesong, officials said. Border security has been tighter than usual along the border in the past few years as military and political tensions between the rival Koreas soared. In 2010, a South Korean naval ship sank and 46 of its sailors died in an incident blamed on North Korea, though Pyongyang denies involvement. Later that year, North Korea bombarded a South Korean front-line island, killing two marines and two civilians.

Read more »

Steroid-related meningitis cases rise to 47

As the tally from a deadly meningitis outbreak rose Friday, health officials identified the medical clinics across the country that received steroid shots for back pain now linked to the illnesses. Authorities took the step to help identify everyone who may have gotten sick — or may still get sick — in the outbreak. "All patients who may have received these medications need to be tracked down immediately," said Dr. Benjamin Park of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It is possible that if patients with infection are identified soon and put on appropriate antifungal therapy, lives may be saved," he said in a statement. The CDC said the number of cases of the rare fungal meningitis reached nearly 50 cases, and spread to a seventh state Friday. The number of deaths in the outbreak remained at five. Investigators have focused on a steroid medication made by a specialty pharmacy in Massachusetts. All the outbreak patients had gotten shots of the steroid for back pain, a common treatment, and inspectors found at least one sealed vial contaminated with fungus. On Friday, officials said they have found fungal infections in nine sick patients. They weren't able to identify what types of fungus in every one of those patients, but did distinguish at least two types — Aspergillus and Exserohilum. In all, 47 people have contracted fungal meningitis, the CDC said. Michigan became the seventh state to report cases, with four. Tennessee's cases now total 29; Virginia, six; Indiana, 3; two each in Maryland and Florida and one in North Carolina. Three people have died in Tennessee and one in Virginia and Maryland. The first known case in the meningitis outbreak was diagnosed about two weeks ago in Tennessee, and the steroid was recalled last week by the pharmacy, New England Compounding Center in Framingham, Mass. About 17,700 single-dose vials of the steroid were covered in the recall. On Friday, the government released the names of about 75 facilities in 23 states that got recalled doses between July and September. It's not clear how many were sent to clinics, how many were used, or even whether everyone who got one will get sick. Once infected, it can take as long as a month for symptoms to appear. At the prompting of government officials, clinics are notifying all the patients who got shots from the recalled lots. "There's a massive effort to contact all the patients," said Marsha Thiel, the chief executive officer of MAPS, a company that owns surgery center clinics in Minnesota. She added, "If there's any question at all, they're being directed to go to their physician." As a precaution, the Food and Drug Administration urged doctors not to use any of the company's products, and released a list Friday that included other steroids, anesthetics and a blood pressure medicine. The company, which is now closed, said in a statement Thursday that despite the FDA warning, "there is no indication of any potential issues with other products." The steroid is known as preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, which the compounding pharmacy creates by combining a powder with a liquid. There are FDA-approved versions of the drug, sold by the brand name Depo-Medrol, in good supply. So patients who need the medicine should not encounter a shortage, the FDA said Friday. Most of the anxiety now involves patients who got steroid shots for back pain and are worried about becoming seriously ill. "Our phone is ringing off the hook this morning. Patients are calling. Of course, they're concerned,"(...)More.

Read more »