World/Nation Briefs April 3, 2012
Gunman kills 7, hurts 3 at small Christian college
OAKLAND, Calif. - A 43-year-old former student of a small Christian university in California opened fire at the school Monday, killing at least seven people and setting off an intense, chaotic manhunt that ended with his capture at a nearby shopping center, authorities said.
Police Chief Howard Jordan said One L. Goh surrendered about an hour after the shooting at Oikos University. Jordan initially reported that authorities recovered the weapon used during the rampage, but later clarified that police only recovered enough ballistics evidence to determine that a handgun was used in the rampage.
"It's going to take us a few days to put the pieces together," Jordan said. "We do not have a motive."
Police first received a 911 call at 10:33 a.m. reporting a woman on the ground bleeding. As more calls came in from the school, the first arriving officer found a victim suffering from a life-threatening gunshot wound, he said.
It was an "extremely chaotic scene," Jordan said.
Obama makes his personal case to Supreme Court
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama on Monday issued a rare, direct challenge to the Supreme Court to uphold his historic health care overhaul, weighing in with a vigorous political appeal for judicial restraint. He warned that overturning the law would hurt millions of Americans and amount to overreach by the "unelected" court.
Obama predicted that a majority of justices would uphold the law when the ruling is announced in June. But the president, himself a former law professor, seemed intent on swaying uncertain views in the meantime, both in the court of public opinion and in the minds of the justices about not overstepping the high court's bounds.
"Ultimately, I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress," Obama said at a Rose Garden news conference.
The majority he referenced was not quite that strong; Congress approved the law two years ago in hard-fought party-line votes after a divisive national debate. Republican presidential contenders say they will make sure it is repealed if the Supreme Court doesn't throw it out first.
For a president to weigh in so forcefully about a case currently under deliberation by the Supreme Court is unusual, and it speaks to the stakes at hand.
Romney halfway to winning GOPdelegate total
WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney is halfway to clinching the Republican nomination for president.
The former Massachusetts governor inched up to 572 delegates on Monday - exactly half the 1,144 needed - after the Tennessee Republican Party finalized delegate totals from its March 6 primary. Results in several congressional districts were too close to call on election night, leaving three delegates unallocated.
Romney got all three delegates. He also picked up an endorsement from a New Hampshire delegate who had been awarded to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Huntsman dropped out of the race in January and endorsed Romney.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, meanwhile, won a Minnesota delegate over the weekend that had been allocated to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum won two delegates and Paul won one at Minnesota's 7th Congressional District convention.
Santorum had been projected to win all three delegates, based on the results of local caucuses in February.
Calderon, Obama trade comments on drug violence
WASHINGTON - The explosion of drug-fueled violence along Mexico's border with the United States could harm relations between the two nations, President Barack Obama said Monday; Mexico's leader retorted that much of the problem of drugs and guns begins on the U.S. side of the line.
In the thick of political contests in both the United States and Mexico, Obama and Mexican President Felipe Calderon traded unusually direct claims about the cause and effect of the drug violence that has consumed a swath of northeastern Mexico. They were cordial and complimentary to one another, but did not hide the degree of worry on both sides about a six-year spasm of violence that has killed more than 47,000 people.
Seventy-year-old data paralyzes Archive website
NEW YORK - Interest in the newly released 1940 U.S. census is so great that the government website with the information was nearly paralyzed shortly after the records became available to the public for the first time.
Miriam Kleiman, spokeswoman for the U.S. National Archives, said the site registered more than 22 million hits in just four hours on Monday, from almost 2 million users. Archives officials said as of 5 p.m., the website had received 37 million hits since the information was released at 9 a.m.
- The Associated Press