Sub makes 2nd dive to search for Malaysian plane

Sub makes 2nd dive to search for Malaysian plane 

Relatives of Chinese passengers on board the missing Malaysia Airlines 370 walk out from a video-conference with Malaysian officials in protest at the difficulties of communications in Beijing, China, Wednesday, April 16, 2014. A robotic submarine looking for the lost Malaysian jet continued its second seabed search on Wednesday as up to 14 planes were to take to the skies for some of the final sweeps of the Indian Ocean for floating debris from the ill-fated airliner.

PERTH, Australia (AP) -- As a robotic submarine dived into the ocean to look for lost Flight 370, angry Chinese relatives stormed out of a teleconference meeting Wednesday to protest the Malaysian government for not addressing them in person.

The Bluefin 21 sub surfaced early for the second time in as many missions, this time after experiencing technical difficulties. It was sent back into the water after its data were downloaded but there's been no sign of the plane, according to the search coordinator.

As the search continued, more than 100 relatives of Chinese passengers on the plane walked out of a teleconference meeting with senior Malaysian officials, an act of defiance over a lack of contact with that country's government and for taking so long to respond to their demands.

The family members had gathered in a meeting room at a Beijing hotel where Malaysia Airlines had provided lodging and food. But they stood and filed out shortly before the call with Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, and others as it was about to start.

"These video conference meetings often don't work, the sound stops and it's constantly disrupted. Is that how we are going to communicate?" said Jiang Hui, one of the family members, after the walkout. "Do they need to waste our time in such a way?"

Jiang said the Malaysian government had not met demands the relatives had presented to them weeks ago in Malaysia - an apology for the way they've handled the matter along with meetings with the Malaysian government and airline officials. They also have requested to sit down with executives from Boeing and Rolls-Royce, the manufacturer of the plane and its engines.

The Boeing 777 vanished March 8 with 239 people on board while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Beijing. Radar and satellite data show it flew far off-course for an unknown reason and would have run out of fuel over the southern Indian Ocean west of Australia.

A ship-towed device detected four signals underwater that are believed to have come from the airliner's black boxes shortly before the beacons' batteries died. The sounds helped narrow the search area to the waters where the Bluefin 21 is now operating.

The U.S. Navy's unmanned sub cut short its first mission on Monday because it exceeded its maximum operating depth of 4,500 meters (15,000 feet). Searchers moved it away from the deepest waters before redeploying the sub to scan the seabed with sonar to map a potential debris field.

On the ocean surface, up to 14 planes and 11 ships were searching a 62,000-square-kilometer (24,000-square-mile) patch of sea about 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of Perth on Wednesday. The surface search is expected to end soon as not a single piece of debris connected to the plane has been found.

Investigators are also waiting on test results from an oil slick found about 5,500 meters (3.4 miles) from where the underwater sounds were detected.

In addition to finding the plane itself, investigators want to recover the black boxes in hopes the cockpit voice and flight data recorders contain answers to why the plane lost communications and flew so far off-course before disappearing.

New SAT: What will those questions look like?

New SAT: What will those questions look like? 

Graphic shows difference between new and old SAT college entrance exam;; 2c x 4 inches; 96.3 mm x 101 mm.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Calculate the foreign exchange rate a vacationing American would pay in India. 

Estimate from a random sample the number of 18- to 34-year olds who voted for a candidate. These are sample questions from the newly redesigned SAT, which aims for more real-world applications and analysis from students.

The College Board released the sample test questions on Wednesday, offering clues to how the revised college entrance exam, taken last year by 1.7 million students, will look when it rolls out in 2016.

One of the biggest changes is that relatively obscure vocabulary words such as "punctilious" and "lachrymose" are unlikely to appear on the test. Test takers will see words more likely to be used in classrooms or in the workplace, like "synthesis."

Instead of a wide range, the math section will concentrate on areas that "matter most for college and career readiness and success," the College Board said.

The essay section is becoming optional. And it now will require a student to read a passage and explain how the author constructed an argument instead of offering the student's own point of view on a specific issue.

Other changes to the SAT, first announced by the College Board last month, include making a computer-based version of the test an option, getting rid of the extra penalty for wrong answers, limiting the use of calculators to select sections and returning to a 1,600-point scale.

Another expectation: Each test will include a passage from the U.S. founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, or conversations they've inspired, the College Board has said.

To highlight that, one sample question released was adapted from a 1974 speech by Rep. Barbara Jordan, D-Texas, during the impeachment hearings of President Richard Nixon. Test takers must answer questions that best describe Jordan's stance and the main rhetorical effect of a part of the passage.

In the sample question pertaining to the U.S. traveler in India, the test taker must first determine what foreign 

exchange rate the traveler paid. Then, calculate charges on a prepaid card compared to a Traveler card.

In the sample question related to a political candidate, the test taker must first determine from a table which age group had the greatest number of people reporting they had voted. Then, compare the table to another survey to determine which of four statements about voter turnout is correct.

Cynthia Schmeiser, the College Board's chief of assessment, told reporters that reasoning is still an important component of the SAT, but it will be done in "applied contexts." She said there will be commonalities between the redesigned SAT and the Common Core standards being rolled out in most states, which emphasize critical thinking in English and math in the K-12 setting.

"What we're doing here is trying to distinguish the SAT in many important ways from the current SAT and frankly from other admissions exams to provide the why and the what are the fewer more important things that students need in order to be ready for college and to succeed in college," Schmeiser said.

The College Board said the sample questions are in draft form and subject to change.

"It is our goal that every student who takes the test will be well informed and will know exactly what to expect on the day of the test," Schmeiser and College Board President David Coleman said in a letter posted online.

The SAT was last upgraded in 2005, when analogy questions were removed and the essay portion was added.

Once the predominant college admissions exam, the SAT has been overtaken in popularity by the ACT.

The ACT, which already offers an optional essay, announced last year that it would begin making computer-based testing available. It said Monday that about 4,000 high school students had taken a digital version of the ACT two days earlier as part of a pilot.

Supremacist faces murder charges in Kansas deaths

Supremacist faces murder charges in Kansas deaths 

Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, appears at his arraignment in New Century, Kan., Tuesday, April 15, 2014. Cross is being charged for shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City on April 13. At right is Michelle Durrett, attorney with the public defender's office.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) -- A white supremacist charged in shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City was brought into a video conference room in a wheelchair Tuesday to make his first court appearance.

Wearing a dark, sleeveless anti-suicide smock, Frazier Glenn Cross stood under his own power to face the camera, crossing his arms and speaking only when answering routine questions from the judge in a Johnson County courtroom several miles away. He requested a court-appointed lawyer.

A Johnson County Sheriff's Office spokesman declined to say Tuesday why Cross was in a wheelchair. Prosecutors declined to answer questions about Cross' health Monday.

The 73-year-old is being held on $10 million bond and his next court appearance is scheduled for April 24.

Physician William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, were shot and killed outside of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. Both were Methodist. Moments later, Terri LaManno, a 53-year-old Catholic occupational therapist and mother of two, was gunned down outside Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement complex where she was visiting her mother.

Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said specific details about actions that led to the charges against Cross are contained in an affidavit, which under Kansas law is not considered public information. The criminal complaint released Tuesday describes the charges and includes a list of witnesses, but nothing else.

In Kansas, one of the narrow circumstances in which capital murder cases are pursued includes the intentional killing of more than one person in "the same act or transaction or in two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or course of conduct."

In this case, a single charge was applied to the deaths of Corporon and his grandson because the deaths occurred in a very short period of time as part of the same act, prosecutors said. LaManno's death doesn't meet the standard for capital murder, Howe said, but he would not provide details or evidence to explain.

Federal prosecutors say there's enough evidence to warrant putting the case before a grand jury as a hate crime, but U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Tuesday that federal charges were likely a week or more away. Cross' state case would have to be resolved before he could be moved to a federal trial.

"Our system is more nimble, we can move a little bit quicker than the federal system. ... This isn't about retribution, this is about seeking justice," Howe said.

Cross is a Vietnam War veteran from southwest Missouri who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party.

Cross shouted "heil Hitler" at television cameras as he was arrested after Sunday's killings, which shocked the city on the eve of Passover and refocused attention on the nation's problem with race-related violence.

The Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights made a presentation on white supremacists at the Jewish Community Center in August, the Kansas City, Mo.-based group's vice president Devin Burghart said. That discussion included a description of Cross as an example of dangerous anti-Semitic figures in the region.

It wasn't clear what, if any, steps were taken by the center to act on the information. Annette Fish, director of the "Day of Discovery" event during which the presentation was given, said she did not attend that session - one of 30 offered in what she called an educational program for the Jewish community.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors the activities of known white supremacists, says Cross also went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller. During the early 1980s, Cross was "one of the more notorious white supremacists in the U.S.," according to the Anti-Defamation League.

He was the target of a nationwide manhunt in 1987, and federal agents tracked him and three other men to a rural Missouri home stocked with hand grenades and automatic weapons. He was indicted on weapons charges and accused of plotting robberies and the assassination of the law center's founder. He served three years in federal prison.

Cross also ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010 in Missouri, each time espousing a white-power platform.

 

New York police end Muslim surveillance program

New York police end Muslim surveillance program 

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2013, file photo, visitors socialize after a Jumu'ah prayer service outside the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge and mosque in the Brooklyn borough of New York. The New York Police Department targeted the mosque as a part of a terrorism enterprise investigation beginning in 2003, spying on it for years. On Tuesday, April 15, 2014, the NYPD confirmed that it has disbanded the special unit that operated that surveillance program

NEW YORK (AP) -- A special New York Police Department unit that sparked controversy by tracking the daily lives of Muslims in an effort to detect terror threats has been disbanded, police officials said Tuesday.

NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis confirmed that detectives assigned to the unit had been transferred to other duties within the department's Intelligence Division.

An ongoing review of the division by new Police Commissioner William Bratton found that the same information collected by the unit could be better collected through direct contact with community groups, officials said.

In a statement, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, called the move "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys."

The Demographics Unit, conceived with the help of a CIA agent working with the NYPD, assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed. Plainclothes officers infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques, monitored sermons and cataloged Muslims in New York who adopted new, Americanized surnames.

After a series of stories by The Associated Press detailing the extent of the NYPD's surveillance of Muslims, two civil rights lawsuits were filed challenging the activities as unconstitutional because they focused on people's religion, national origin and race.

Former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly had defended the surveillance tactics, saying officers observed legal guidelines while attempting to create an early warning system for terrorism. But in a deposition made public in 2012, an NYPD chief testified that the unit's work had never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation in the previous six years.

Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, said she was among a group of advocates at a private meeting last week with police brass at which the department's new intelligence chief, John Miller, first indicated the unit - renamed the Zone Assessment Unit - wasn't viable. She applauded the decision but said there's still concern about the police use of informants to infiltrate mosques without specific evidence of crime.

"This was definitely a part of the big puzzle that we're trying to get dismantled," Sarsour said. But, she added, "This doesn't necessarily prove to us yet that these very problematic practices are going to end."

Another person at the meeting, Fahd Ahmed, legal and policy director of Desis Rising Up and Moving, called the decision "a small step." He questioned what had happened to the information gathered by the unit.

"The concern wasn't just about the fact that this data was being collected secretly - it was about the fact that this data was being collected at all," he said.

New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman hailed the decision, saying police-community relations took a blow from the unit's broad surveillance of all Muslims, not just people suspected 

of wrongdoing.

"We hope this means an end to the dragnet approach to policing that has been so harmful to police-community relations and a commitment to going after criminal suspicion, rather than innocent New Yorkers," said Lieberman, whose organization is involved in lawsuits over the practice.

In Washington, 34 members of Congress had demanded a federal investigation into the NYPD's actions. Attorney General Eric Holder said he was disturbed by reports about the operations, and the Department of Justice said it was reviewing complaints received from Muslims and their supporters.

The AP's reporting also prompted an investigation by the CIA's inspector general. That internal inquiry concluded that the CIA, which is prohibited from domestic spying, hadn't broken any laws, but it criticized the agency for allowing an officer assigned to the NYPD to operate without sufficient supervision.

The NYPD's decision to disband the unit was first reported in The New York Times.

 

3 dead after suburban Kansas City shooting

3 dead after suburban Kansas City shooting

A Kansas State Trooper stands near the location of a shooting at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kan., Sunday, April 13, 2014.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. (AP) -- A man in his 70s opened fire Sunday outside of a Jewish community center and nearby retirement community, killing three people, authorities said.

Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass said at a news conference Sunday evening that a person who had been reported to be in critical condition earlier was among three killed in the attacks, which apparently occurred minutes apart.

"Today is a sad and very tragic day," Douglass said. "As you might imagine we are only three hours into this investigation. There's a lot of innuendo and a lot of assertions going around. There is really very little hardcore information."

Shots were fired behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in a parking lot about 1 p.m., Douglass said. One male died at the scene, another male died at a hospital. The gunman then fled and opened fire at nearby Village Shalom, killing a female, before later being arrested near an elementary school. Two other people were shot at, but the gunfire missed them, Douglass said.

Douglass said it was too early in the investigation to determine if the shootings were hate crimes. The Jewish festival of Passover begins Monday.

"We know it was a vicious act of violence, and we know obviously it was at two Jewish facilities. One might make that assumption," Douglass said.

He described the suspect as a white man in his 70s who is not from Kansas. He said the suspect is being held at the Johnson County Detention Center, but did not provide further information.

"We have no indication he knew the victims," Douglass said, adding that the suspect was not known to Kansas City-area authorities before the shootings. Douglass said a shotgun was used, and investigators were trying to determine whether a handgun and assault-style rifle also were involved.

The Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park posted on its Facebook page Sunday afternoon that a "shooting incident" happened near its White Theater entrance.

"Everyone participating in JCC programming has been released to their homes," the center posted later Sunday.

There was a heavy police presence at the campus, which spans several acres in an affluent area of Johnson County, Kan. Police had also taped off the entrance to Village Shalom on Sunday afternoon, and several patrol cars and a crime scene unit van were parked in front.

St. Louis resident Kristy Straeb, 47, said her sister-in-law Stacie Ventimiglia was at the center's pool with a friend and four little girls under the age of 7 for a swimming lesson, which ended about 12:45 p.m. Straeb said they decided at the last minute to get the girls showered.

"They had just gotten the four babies naked, and somebody yelled into the family locker room, `We have an active shooter situation. You need to get safe,'" Straeb said.

The women got into a cubby area and were "ready to push the little girls into 4 empty lockers," Straeb said. She noted that the women and their children were not harmed and left the center about 2:45 p.m. Sunday.

Auditions for the KC SuperStar competition were scheduled to be held Sunday at the Jewish Community Center. On Sunday afternoon, the website for KC SuperStar, which is a singing competition for high school students, said the auditions were cancelled.

 

2-Week Easter Television Event

2-Week Easter Television Event

With no new signals, Aussie PM sees long jet hunt

With no new signals, Aussie PM sees long jet hunt

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaks during a press conference at a hotel in Beijing, China Saturday, April 12, 2014. Abbott told Chinese President Xi Jinping during their meeting on Friday that he was confident signals heard by an Australian ship towing a U.S. Navy device that detects flight recorder pings are coming from the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. Officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean off the west coast of Australia.

PERTH, Australia (AP) -- A day after expressing optimism about the hunt for the missing Malaysian jet, Australia's leader warned Saturday that the massive search would likely continue "for a long time."

"No one should underestimate the difficulties of the task still ahead of us," Prime Minister Tony Abbott said in Beijing, on the last day of his China trip.

Abbott appeared to couch his comments from a day earlier, when he met in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping to brief him on the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which was carrying 239 people - most of them Chinese - when it disappeared March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

After analyzing satellite data, officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down in the southern Indian Ocean off Australia's west coast.

Abbott said Friday that he was "very confident" signals heard by an Australian ship towing a U.S. Navy device that detects flight recorder pings were coming from the missing Boeing 777's black boxes.

He continued to express this belief Saturday, but with no new underwater signals detected in the past few days and electronic transmissions from the black boxes fading fast, Abbott said the job of finding the plane remained arduous. Recovering the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders is essential for investigators to try to piece together what happened to Flight MH370.

We have "very considerably narrowed down the search area, but trying to locate anything 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) beneath the surface of the ocean about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from land is a massive, massive task, and it is likely to continue for a long time to come," Abbott said.

"There's still a lot more work to be done and I don't want anyone to think that we are certain of success, or that success, should it come, is going to happen in the next week or even month. There's a lot of difficulty and a lot of uncertainty left in this," he said.

In Malaysia, Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein on Saturday refuted a front-page report in a local newspaper, the New Strait Times, that a signal from the mobile phone of co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid was picked up by a telecommunications tower near the Malaysian city of Penang shortly before the plane disappeared from radar. The newspaper report said the signal ended abruptly before contact was established.

Hishammuddin, who is also the acting transport minister, told the Malaysian national news agency Bernama that he should have been aware of the phone call earlier, but that wasn't the case.

"I cannot comment (on the newspaper report) because if it is true, we would have known about it much earlier," Hishammuddin said after praying at a mosque in southern Jofor state, according to Bernama.

He added that it was irresponsible for anyone to take the opportunity to make "baseless" reports.

In the southern Indian Ocean, search crews are scrambling because the batteries powering the flight recorders' locator beacons last only about a month, and that window has already passed. Finding the devices after the batteries die will be extremely difficult due to the extreme depth of the water in the search area.

Two sounds heard a week ago by the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which was towing the ping locator, were determined to be consistent with the signals emitted from the two black boxes. Two more pings were detected in the same general area Tuesday.

"Given that the signal from the black box is rapidly fading, what we are now doing is trying to get as many detections as we can so that we can narrow the search area down to as small an area as possible," Abbott said.

The underwater search zone is currently a 1,300-square-kilometer (500-square-mile) patch of the seabed, about the size of Los Angeles.

The searchers want to pinpoint the exact location of the source of the sounds - or as close as they can get - and then send down a robotic submersible to look for wreckage. But the sub will not be deployed until officials are confident that no other electronic signals are present.

The Bluefin 21 submersible takes six times longer to cover the same area as the ping locator, and will need about six weeks to two months to canvass the current underwater zone. The signals are also coming from 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) below the surface, which is the deepest the Bluefin can dive. The search coordination center has said it is considering options in case a deeper-diving sub is needed.

The surface area to be searched for floating debris has been narrowed to 41,393 square kilometers (15,982 square miles) of ocean extending from about 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) northwest of Perth. Up to 10 planes and 14 ships were searching Saturday.

 

MARKEIFF & MARCUS MORRIS TWINS PLAYMAKERS OF THE YEAR!

Markieff and Marcus Morris Twins- Suns:  The Ready-Made Forward Playmakers.

Obama offers solace to nation at Fort Hood

Obama offers solace to nation at Fort Hood 
 

President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrive for a memorial ceremony, Wednesday, April 9, 2014, at Fort Hood Texas, for those killed there in a shooting last week. President Barack Obama is reprising his role as chief comforter as he returns once again to a grief-stricken corner of America to mourn with the families of those killed last week at Fort Hood and offer solace to the nation.

FORT HOOD, Texas (AP) -- President Barack Obama returned to the grieving Army post Wednesday where he first took on the job as the nation's comforter five years ago, mourning with families and uniformed comrades of those killed during last week's Fort Hood shooting spree. "We somehow bear what seems unbearable," he declared.

It was yet another sad observance for a president who has had to deliver words of consolation across the country many times. At Fort Hood, the ceremony was made more poignant as a remembrance for soldiers who didn't die in wars abroad but in the safety of their own compound.

"They were members of a generation that has borne the burden of our security for more than a decade of war," Obama said on a breezy, sun washed day in central Texas.

Three soldiers died and 16 others were wounded in the rampage last Wednesday by another soldier, who killed himself.

Obama and first lady Michelle Obama arrived late Wednesday morning at Fort Hood, where the camouflage fatigues of troops standing to salute his passing motorcade almost blended in with a patch of desert-like terrain. Flags were lowered to half-staff at the sprawling Army post, where Obama met with victims' relatives before offering his public condolences.

The memorial took place at the same spot where Obama eulogized victims of another mass shooting in 2009.

Three battle crosses, helmet-topped rifles above combat boots, stood in front of the speakers' platform, representing the three soldiers shot and killed - Sgt. Carlos Lazaney-Rodriguez, Sgt. Timothy Owens, Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Ferguson.

Officials say they died following a shooting rampage by Army Spc. Ivan Lopez, who took his own life. Four of those shot remain in hospitals, officials said.

Obama praised Ferguson for keeping the gunman from pushing into a room where others could have been killed. "Danny held the door shut, saving the lives of others while sacrificing his own," he said. Owens was known for counseling fellow soldiers, the president said, and "gave his life walking toward the gunman, trying to calm him down."

Obama was the only speaker to mention that four soldiers were lost, including Lopez. As the president finished an address in which he repeated the phrase "love never ends," one soldier in the audience brushed away tears. The president exited the stage with his head down.

Fort Hood is a major post from which troops have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. As Obama has wound down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing troops back from the warzone, it seemed all the more jarring to have their sense of safety upended at their home base.

"It hurts. It hurts in the middle of the night. It hurts in the middle of the day. It hurts in the middle of your stomach. It hurts to lose someone you love," Chaplain Col. Goff said, following the president's address. "The reason it hurts so much is because we love so much."

Toward the end of the ceremony, soldiers stood for a roll call. The fallen soldiers' names were bellowed out by a sergeant three times. After no answer, in accordance with military tradition, their names were stricken from the roll. A line of seven soldiers pointed their rifles to the sky and shot three times. A solemn trumpeter played taps.

Time and again, Obama has been called on find ways to give meaning to senseless death. Tucson, Ariz. Aurora, Colo., Newtown, Conn., Boston, the Washington Navy Yard - communities now synonymous with tragedy. And now Fort Hood - for a second improbable time.

Adding complexity to the president's response were questions about whether Lopez's wartime service precipitated his actions. Although Lopez did a short stint in Iraq in 2011 and said he suffered a traumatic brain injury, Fort Hood officials have said his mental condition was not a "direct participating factor" in the shooting. Still, the 34-year-old was undergoing treatment for depression and anxiety while being evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder, base officials said.

"We must honor these men by doing more to care for our fellow Americans living with mental illness, civilian and military," Obama said. "Today four American soldiers are gone. Four Army families are devastated. As commander in chief, I'm determined that we will continue to step up our efforts to reach our troops and veterans who are hurting, to deliver to them the care that they need and to make sure we never stigmatize those who have the courage to seek help."

For Obama, who tried unsuccessfully to turn the school tragedy of Newtown into a call for new gun controls, the Fort Hood shooting was less about pledging new policies than it was to simply do more with the tools in hand.

"In our open society, in advanced bases like this, we can never eliminate every risk, but as a nation, we can do more to help counsel those with mental health issues, to keep firearms out of the hands of those who are having such deep difficulties," he said. "As a military, we must continue to do everything in our power to secure our facilities and spare others this pain."

In attendance were members of the Texas congressional delegation, including Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also attended. The military brass included Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Secretary John McHugh, and Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army's top commander.

To be sure, Obama is not the first president called on to help Americans in their grief. Ronald Reagan had the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, Bill Clinton had Oklahoma City and George W. Bush had 9/11, to say nothing of the wars that American troops have fought overseas.

Those close to Obama say he sees his role after a tragedy as fulfilling a ministerial function for the nation. Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser and longtime friend, said although it's painful for Obama, he understands the importance for the president to show leadership, empathy and strength in times of crisis, and for him to spend time with each family member affected.

"It's hard because it's deeply personal for him," Jarrett said in an interview. "He identifies as a father, as a husband, as a son, as a family member."

 

Teen stabs 22 at Pittsburgh-area high school

Teen stabs 22 at Pittsburgh-area high school

Alex Hribal, the suspect in the multiple stabbings at the Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pa., is escorted by police to a district magistrate to be arraigned on Wednesday, April 9, 2014, in Export, Pa. Authorities say Hribal has been charged after allegedly stabbing and slashing at least 19 people including students in the crowded halls of his suburban Pittsburgh high school Wednesday

  

MURRYSVILLE, Pa. (AP) -- Flailing away with two kitchen knives, a 16-year-old boy with a "blank expression" stabbed and slashed 21 students and a security guard in the crowded halls of his suburban Pittsburgh high school Wednesday before an assistant principal tackled him.

At least five students were critically wounded, including a boy whose liver was pierced by a knife thrust that narrowly missed his heart and aorta, doctors said. Others also suffered deep abdominal puncture wounds.

The rampage - which came after decades in which U.S. schools geared much of their emergency planning toward mass shootings, not stabbings - set off a screaming stampede, left blood on the floor and walls, and brought teachers rushing to help the victims.

Police shed little light on the motive.

The suspect, Alex Hribal, was taken into custody and treated for a minor hand wound, then was brought into court in shackles and a hospital gown and charged with four counts of attempted homicide and 21 counts of aggravated assault. He was jailed without bail, and authorities said he would be prosecuted as an adult.

At the brief hearing, District Attorney John Peck said that after he was seized, Hribal made comments suggesting he wanted to die.

Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey described him as a good student who got along with others, and asked for a psychiatric examination.

The attack unfolded in the morning just minutes before the start of classes at 1,200-student Franklin Regional High School, in an upper-middle-class area 15 miles east of Pittsburgh.

It was over in about five minutes, during which the boy ran wildly down about 200 feet of hallway, slashing away with knives 8 to 10 inches long, police said.

Nate Moore, 15, said he saw the boy tackle and knife a freshman. He said he going to try to break it up when the boy got up and slashed Moore's face, opening a wound that required 11 stitches.

"It was really fast. It felt like he hit me with a wet rag because I felt the blood splash on my face. It spurted up on my forehead," Moore said.

The attacker "had the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part," he said. "He wasn't saying anything. He didn't have any anger on his face. It was just a blank expression."

Assistant Principal Sam King finally tackled the boy and disarmed him, and a Murrysville police officer who is regularly assigned to the school handcuffed him, police said.

King's son told The Associated Press that his father was treated at a hospital, though authorities said he was not knifed.

"He says he's OK. He's a tough cookie and sometimes hides things, but I believe he's OK," Zack King said. He added: "I'm proud of him."

In addition to the 22 stabbed or slashed, two people suffered other injuries, authorities said. The security guard, who was wounded after intervening early in the melee, was not seriously hurt.

"There are a number of heroes in this day. Many of them are students," Gov. Tom Corbett said during a visit to the stricken town. "Students who stayed with their friends and didn't leave their friends."

As for what set off the attack, Murrysville Police Chief Thomas Seefeld said investigators were looking into reports of a threatening phone call between the suspect and another student the night before. Seefeld didn't specify whether the suspect received or made the call.

The FBI went to the boy's house, where authorities planned to confiscate and search his computer.

"They are a very, very nice family. A great family. We never saw anything out of the ordinary," said John Kukalis, a next-door neighbor for about 13 years.

His wife, Sonya Kukalis, said: "It should be an eye-opener for everybody. Everyone always thinks it's the other neighborhood, the other town. We need to be kinder and show compassion to more people. 

Something must have been going on for him to do this."

While several bloody stabbing rampages at schools in China have made headlines in the past few years, schools in the U.S. have concentrated their emergency preparations on mass shootings.

Nevertheless, there have been at least two major stabbing attacks at U.S. schools over the past year, one at a community college in Texas last April that wounded at least 14 people, and another, also in Texas, that killed a 17-year-old student and injured three others at a high school in September.

On Wednesday, Mia Meixner, 16, said the rampage touched off a "stampede of kids" yelling, "Run! Get out of here! Someone has a knife!"

The boy had a "blank look," she said. "He was just kind of looking like he always does, not smiling, not scowling or frowning."

Meixner and Moore called the attacker a shy boy who largely kept to himself, but they said he was not an outcast and they had no reason to think he might be violent.

"He was never mean to anyone, and I never saw people be mean to him," Meixner said. "I never saw him with a particular group of friends."

Michael Float, 18, said he had just gotten to school when he saw "blood all over the floor" and smeared on the wall near the main entrance. Then he saw a wounded student.

"He had his shirt pulled up and he was screaming, `Help! Help!'" Float said. "He had a stab wound right at the top right of his stomach, blood pouring down."

Float said he saw a teacher applying pressure to another student's wound.

About five minutes elapsed between the time the campus police officer summoned help over the radio at 7:13 a.m. and the boy was disarmed, the police chief said.

Someone, possibly a student, pulled a fire alarm during the attack, Seefeld said. Although that created chaos, the police chief said, it emptied out the school more quickly, and "that was a good thing that that was done."

Also, a girl with "an amazing amount of composure" applied pressure to a schoolmate's wounds and probably kept the victim from bleeding to death, said Dr. Mark Rubino at Forbes Regional Medical Center.

Public safety and school officials said an emergency plan worked as well as could be expected. The district conducted an emergency exercise three months ago and a full-scale drill about a year ago.

"We haven't lost a life, and I think that's what we have to keep in mind," said county public safety spokesman Dan Stevens.

Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison

Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison

Jonathan Fleming, hugs his attorney Anthony Mayol while his other attorney Taylor Koss applaud in Brooklyn's Supreme court, after a judge declared him a free man on Tuesday April 8, 2014 in New York. Fleming, who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder, was cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation in 1989.

 

NEW YORK (AP) -- From the day of his 1989 arrest in a deadly New York City shooting, Jonathan Fleming said he had been more than 1,000 miles away, on a vacation at Disney World. Despite having documents to back him up, he was convicted of murder.

Prosecutors now agree with him, and Fleming left a Brooklyn court as a free man Tuesday after spending nearly a quarter-century behind bars.

Fleming, now 51, tearfully hugged his lawyers as relatives cheered, "Thank you, God!" after a judge dismissed the case. A key eyewitness had recanted, newly found witnesses implicated someone else and prosecutors' review of authorities' files turned up documents supporting Fleming's alibi.

"After 25 years, come hug your mother," Patricia Fleming said, and her only child did.

"I feel wonderful," he said afterward. "I've always had faith. I knew that this day would come someday."

The exoneration, first reported by the Daily News, comes amid scrutiny of Brooklyn prosecutors' process for reviewing questionable convictions, scrutiny that comes partly from the new district attorney, Kenneth Thompson. He said in a statement that after a months-long review, he decided to drop the case against Fleming because of "key alibi facts that place Fleming in Florida at the time of the murder."

From the start, Fleming told authorities he had been in Orlando when a friend, Darryl "Black" Rush, was shot to death in Brooklyn early on Aug. 15, 1989. Authorities suggested the shooting was motivated by a dispute over money.

Fleming had plane tickets, videos and postcards from his trip, said his lawyers, Anthony Mayol and Taylor Koss. But prosecutors at the time suggested he could have made a quick round-trip plane jaunt to be in New York, and a woman testified that she had seen him shoot Rush. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison and was due to have his first parole hearing soon.

The eyewitness recanted her testimony soon after Fleming's 1990 conviction, saying she had lied so police would cut her loose for an unrelated arrest, but Fleming lost his appeals.

The defense asked the district attorney's office to review the case last year.

Defense investigators found previously untapped witnesses who pointed to someone else as the gunman, the attorneys said, declining to give the witnesses' or potential suspect's names before prosecutors look into them. The district attorney's office declined to comment on its investigative plans.

Prosecutors' review produced a hotel receipt that Fleming paid in Florida about five hours before the shooting - a document that police evidently had found in Fleming's pocket when they arrested him. 

Prosecutors also found an October 1989 Orlando police letter to New York detectives, saying some employees at an Orlando hotel had told investigators they remembered Fleming.

Neither the receipt nor the police letter had been provided to Fleming's initial defense lawyer, despite rules that generally require investigators to turn over possibly exculpatory material.

Patricia Fleming, 71, was with her son in Orlando at the time of the crime and testified at his trial.

"I knew he didn't do it, because I was there," she said. "When they gave my son 25 to life, I thought I would die in that courtroom."

Still, she said, "I never did give up, because I knew he was innocent."

Thompson took office in January, after unseating longtime District Attorney Charles "Joe" Hynes with a campaign that focused partly on questionable convictions on Hynes' watch. Hynes had created a special conviction integrity unit to review false-conviction claims, but some saw the effort as slow-moving and defensive.

Thompson has agreed to dismiss the murder convictions of two men who spent more than 20 years in prison for a triple homicide. He also dropped his predecessor's appeal challenging the 2013 release of another man who had served 22 years in prison on a questioned murder conviction.

On Tuesday, Jonathan Fleming left court with an arm around his mother's shoulders and the process of rebuilding his life ahead of him.

Asked about his plans, he said: "I'm going to go eat dinner with my mother and my family, and I'm going to live the rest of my life."

 

Pistorius wails while recalling shooting

Pistorius wails while recalling shooting 

Oscar Pistorius, leaves the high court in Pretoria, South Africa, Tuesday, April 8, 2014. Pistorius is charged with murder for the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentines Day in 2013.

PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) -- A subdued Oscar Pistorius on Tuesday described dinner at home, chatting and looking at cell phone photos with Reeva Steenkamp on the last night of her life. Then he erupted in anguished howls and heaving sobs while testifying at his murder trial about the moments when he says he realized he shot his girlfriend through a closed toilet door.

The shocking spectacle of what appeared to be a tormented man highlighted the drama of Pistorius' inspirational rise and sudden fall. The South African double-amputee runner captured the world's attention when he successfully fought for permission to run in the 2012 Olympics on his carbon-fiber prostheses. The very next year, he was facing charges for killing the woman he said he loved.

The court in Pretoria, the South African capital, adjourned because of the star athlete's breakdown, ending a day in which Pistorius spoke of the loving aspects of his relationship with Steenkamp in testimony designed to counter a prosecution picture of him as temperamental and overbearing, and then outlined his version of the final hours before the shooting.

"I sat over Reeva and I cried," Pistorius said, telling how he broke open the stall door in his bathroom in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013 to discover his bloodied girlfriend slumped in the cubicle. "I don't know how long I was there for."

Pistorius has said in statements that he shot Steenkamp after mistaking her for an intruder in his bathroom. 

Tuesday marked the first time he has spoken publicly about the details of the fatal shooting. Prosecutors call Pistorius' story an intricate lie and maintain he intentionally killed his 29-year-old girlfriend, a model and reality TV show star, after an argument.

The 27-year-old Olympian faces a life sentence with a minimum of 25 years before parole if convicted of premeditated murder. The judge, Thokozile Masipa, will deliver the verdict because South Africa does not have a jury system.

Pistorius has often shown emotion while listening to testimony since the trial began March 3, burying his head in his hands, weeping and even vomiting on a couple of occasions. Tuesday's outburst on the witness stand was his most demonstrative, and it forced a brief adjournment. Pistorius didn't stand up when the judge left, and also started to wail as he slumped in his seat. His brother and sister went over to comfort him. After a while he left the courtroom through a side door, still crying.

When Masipa returned, she ended proceedings for the day. Pistorius had by that time come back, jaw clenched, to the witness box. He was composed when he left the court and walked to a waiting vehicle. The trial was to reconvene on Wednesday.

Led by defense lawyer Barry Roux for the second day of his testimony, the runner provided more detail about his timeline of events leading up to the shooting. He said the couple had dinner about 7 p.m. and later sat chatting in the bedroom with the television on, and that Steenkamp showed him some photographs on her phone. He said he fell asleep between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. and woke up early the next morning.

At that point, he said, Steenkamp asked him: "Can't you sleep?"

`"No, I can't,'" Pistorius said he replied. Then he said stepped out to the balcony to get fans, and when he returned to the darkened bedroom he heard a noise from the bathroom.

"That's the moment that everything changed," Pistorius testified.

Pistorius said he felt fearful and vulnerable as he moved to the bathroom, walking only on his stumps because he had removed his prosthetic legs before going to bed. He said he was screaming for Steenkamp to call the police.

"I wasn't sure if someone was going to come out the toilet and attack me," he said. He also testified he heard a door slam, which he said he took as "confirmation" that there was an intruder in the bathroom, and fired four shots at the toilet cubicle with his 9 mm pistol.

After the shots, Pistorius said, he searched for Steenkamp in his bedroom, patting the bed where he says he thought she was in the dark, searching on the floor next to it where he thought she might be hiding, and also behind the curtains.

"It was at that point ... that it first dawned on me that maybe it was Reeva in the toilet," Pistorius said. He said he screamed for help.

Neighbors of Pistorius who were called by the prosecution have testified that they heard a woman's terrified screams before and during what they thought were gunshots. Some also said they thought they heard a man's voice. The defense has suggested that the neighbors heard only Pistorius screaming and not a woman.

In earlier testimony Tuesday, Pistorius denied three other charges against him relating to firing a gun in public on two occasions, and illegal possession of ammunition.

He said he wasn't to blame for a shot going off in a busy Johannesburg restaurant because a friend handed him an "unsafe" gun with a bullet in the chamber under the table. He also said he wasn't guilty of illegally possessing .38-caliber ammunition in his home because he was safekeeping it for his father and he had no intention to use it.

Pistorius was born without fibula bones because of a congenital defect, and his legs were amputated when he was 11 months old. He ran on carbon-fiber blades and is a multiple Paralympic medalist. He competed at the London Olympics but didn't win a medal.

In a dramatic scene before the packed courtroom Tuesday, Pistorius left briefly at one point to change out of his dark suit and into a white shirt and shorts, similar to the clothes he was wearing when he killed Steenkamp.

Prompted by his lawyer, Pistorius then took off his prosthesis and stood on his stumps by the bullet-marked toilet door, which has remained in the courtroom for much of the trial. It appeared to be an effort by the defense to illustrate what they describe as the Olympian's vulnerability at the time of the shooting.

'Promising lead' emerges in hunt for Flight 370

'Promising lead' emerges in hunt for Flight 370

The chief coordinator of the Joint Agency Coordination Center retired Chief Air Marshall Angus Houston shows a map to the media during a press conference about the on going search operations for wreckage and debris of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in Perth, Australia, Monday, April 7, 2014. Houston reported the towed pinger locator deployed from the Ocean Shield has detected two signals consistent with those emitted by an in flight back box recorder, in the northern part of the current search area in the southern Indian Ocean.

PERTH, Australia (AP) -- After a month of failed hunting and finding debris that turned out to be ordinary flotsam, an Australian ship detected faint pings deep in the Indian Ocean in what an official called the "most promising lead" yet in the search for Flight 370.

Officials coordinating the multinational search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet still urged caution Monday after a weekend that also brought reports of "acoustic noise" picked up by a Chinese vessel also trying to solve the aviation mystery.

The Boeing 777 vanished March 8 while flying from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing with 239 people on board.

The focus of the search changed repeatedly since contact was lost with the plane between Malaysia and Vietnam. It began in the South China Sea, then shifted toward the Strait of Malacca to the west, where Malaysian officials eventually confirmed that military radar had detected the plane.

An analysis of satellite data indicated the plane veered far off course for a still-unknown reason, heading to the southern Indian Ocean, where officials say it went down at sea. They later shifted the search area closer to the west coast of Australia.

"We are cautiously hopeful that there will be a positive development in the next few days, if not hours," Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said in the capital of Kuala Lumpur.

But Angus Houston, the retired Australian air chief marshal who heads the search operation, added: "We haven't found the aircraft yet."

The Ocean Shield, an Australian ship towing sophisticated U.S. Navy listening equipment, detected two distinct, long-lasting sounds underwater that are consistent with the pings from an aircraft's "black boxes" - the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, Houston said.

Navy specialists were urgently trying to pick up the signal detected Sunday by the Ocean Shield so they can triangulate its position and go to the next step of sending an unmanned miniature submarine into the depths to look for any plane wreckage.

Geoff Dell, discipline leader of accident investigation at Central Queensland University in Australia, said it would be "coincidental in the extreme" for the sounds to have come from anything other than an aircraft's flight recorder.

"If they have a got a legitimate signal, and it's not from one of the other vessels or something, you would have to say they are within a bull's roar," he said. "There's still a chance that it's a spurious signal that's coming from somewhere else and they are chasing a ghost, but it certainly is encouraging that they've found something to suggest they are in the right spot."

And in "very deep oceanic water," Houston said, "nothing happens fast."

"Clearly, this is a most promising lead," he said in Perth. "And probably in the search so far, it's probably the best information that we have had."

Houston said the signals picked up by the Ocean Shield were stronger and lasted longer than faint signals a Chinese ship reported hearing about 555 kilometers (345 miles) south in the remote search zone off Australia's west coast.

The British ship HMS Echo was using sophisticated sound-locating equipment to determine whether two separate sounds heard by the Chinese patrol vessel Haixun 01 were related to Flight 370. The Haixun detected a brief "pulse signal" on Friday and a second signal Saturday.

The Chinese reportedly were using a sonar device called a hydrophone dangled over the side of a small boat - something experts said was technically possible but extremely unlikely. The equipment aboard the British and Australian ships is dragged slowly behind each vessel over long distances and is considered far more sophisticated.

Little time is left to locate the flight recorders, whose locator beacons have a battery life of about a month. 

Tuesday marks exactly one month since the Malaysia Airlines plane disappeared.

China's official Xinhua News Agency reported late Saturday that the signal detected by the Haixun crew was pulsing at 37.5 kilohertz - the same frequency emitted by flight data recorders. Malaysia's civil aviation chief, Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, confirmed the frequency emitted by Flight 370's black boxes was 37.5 kilohertz.

The Ocean Shield picked up its signals late Saturday night and early Sunday morning.

The first lasted two hours and 20 minutes before it was lost. The ship then turned around and picked up a signal again - this time recording two distinct "pinger returns" that lasted 13 minutes, Houston said.

"Significantly, this would be consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder," Houston said.

The frequency used by aircraft flight recorders was chosen because no other devices use it, and because nothing in the natural world mimics it, said William Waldock, a search-and-rescue expert who teaches accident investigation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.

"They picked that so there wouldn't be false alarms from other things in the ocean," he said.

But these signals are being detected by computer sweeps, and "not so much a guy with headphones on listening to pings," said U.S. Navy spokesman Chris Johnson. So until the signals are fully analyzed, it's too early to say what they are, he said.

"We'll hear lots of signals at different frequencies," he said. "Marine mammals. Our own ship systems. Scientific equipment, fishing equipment, things like that. And then of course there are lots of ships operating in the area that are all radiating certain signals into the ocean."-

The Ocean Shield is dragging a ping locator at a depth of 3 kilometers (1.9 miles). It is designed to detect signals at a range of 1.8 kilometers (1.12 miles), meaning it would need to be almost on top of the recorders to detect them if they were on the ocean floor, which is about 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) deep.

"It's like playing hot and cold when you're searching for something and someone's telling you you're getting warmer and warmer and warmer," U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews said. "When you're right on top of it, you get a good return."

While Matthews said the signals picked up by the Ocean Shield were both 33.3 kilohertz, the manufacturer indicated the frequency can drift in older equipment.

If they pick up the signal again, the crew will launch an underwater vehicle to investigate, Matthews said. The Bluefin 21 autonomous sub can create a sonar map of the area to chart any debris on the sea floor. If it maps out a debris field, the crew will replace the sonar system with a camera unit to photograph any wreckage.

The water depth there is right at the limits of the sub's capability.

Meanwhile, the search effort continued on the surface.

Twelve planes and 14 ships scoured three designated zones, one of which overlaps with the Ocean Shield's underwater search. All of the previous surface searches have found only fishing equipment or other sea trash, something that gave Houston pause.

"I would want more confirmation before we say this is it," he said. "Without wreckage, we can't say it's definitely here. We've got to go down and have a look."

 

Mormon leader outlines opposition to gay marriage

Mormon leader outlines opposition to gay marriage

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A top Mormon leader reiterated the church's opposition to gay marriage during the church's biannual general conference.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' stance on homosexuality has softened in recent years, but this marks the second consecutive conference in which leaders took time to emphasize the faith's insistence that marriage should be limited to unions between a man and a woman, as God created.

"While many governments and well-meaning individuals have redefined marriage, the Lord has not," Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve said Saturday. "He designated the purpose of marriage to go far beyond the personal satisfaction and fulfillment of adults, to more importantly, advancing the ideal setting for children to be born, reared and nurtured."

In the October 2013 church conference, Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum said human laws cannot "make moral what God has declared immoral."

The church sent a letter to local leaders that includes that message, Andersen said Saturday. "As the world slips away from the Lord's law of chastity, we do not," he said.

During the first day of the weekend conference, LDS leaders on Saturday also encouraged missionaries to stay strong amid the inevitable personal abuse they will encounter and parents to shelter their children from the damaging effects of pornography.

 

People walk pass a unidentified protester with a bible on their way from the Conference Center.

A demonstration outside an all-male meeting by a Mormon women's group advocating for gender equality was uneventful, despite a contentious lead up to the event.

The conference brings more than 100,000 Latter-day Saints to Salt Lake City to find out church news and soak up words of guidance and inspiration from the faith's top leaders. Thousands more will listen or watch from around the world in 95 languages on television, radio, satellite and Internet broadcasts. More than half of all 15 million Latter-day Saints live outside of the U.S., church figures show.

The conference is widely followed and analyzed on social media, with many using the Twitter hash tag, "#LDSconf."

Gay marriage has been an especially hot topic in Utah since December, when a federal judge overturned Utah's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. More than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples married until the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay on marriages pending a ruling from a federal appeals court in Denver. A hearing is set there for Thursday.

Andersen encouraged church members not to buckle under the pressure of a growing movement on social media and elsewhere by advocates who want to make gay marriage legal. He offered the example of a woman who articulated her support for "traditional marriage" on Facebook and refused to take it down despite backlash.

Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve speaks during the 184th Annual General Conference.

Andersen is a member of the church's Quorum of the Twelve, which is the second-highest governing body of the church. Modeled after Jesus Christ's apostles, the 12 men serve under the church president and his two counselors.

Andersen said church members who "struggle with same-sex attraction" should be of special concern. He said he admires people who confront this "trial of faith and stay true to the commandments of God."

"But everyone, independent of their decisions and beliefs, deserves our kindness and consideration," Andersen said.

The church teaches that while same-sex attraction itself isn't a sin, succumbing to it is.

The church's message on homosexuality has evolved since it was one of the leading forces behind California's Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage. A website launched last year encouraged more compassion toward gays, implored them to stay in the faith and clarified that church leaders no longer "necessarily advise" gays to marry people of the opposite sex in what used to be a widely practiced Mormon workaround for homosexuality.

 

People gather inside the Conference Center during the 184th Annual General Conference.

In May, church leaders backed the Boy Scouts' policy allowing gays in the ranks. Some gay Mormons who left or were forced out of the church say they are now being welcomed back — even though they remain in same-sex relationships.

It may seem like negligible progress to outsiders, but Mormon scholars said 2013 was landmark year for the religion on gay and lesbian issues.

Jeffrey Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve delivered a message Saturday directed at the faith's nearly 85,000 missionaries, more than any time in church history.

He relayed the story of a young woman who was spit on and had food thrown at her during her mission by a man who didn't want to hear their message. He highlighted the fact that she resisted the urge to retaliate.

"If you haven't already, you will one day find yourself called upon to defend your faith or even endure some personal abuse," Holland said. "Such moments will require both courage and courtesy on your part."

 

People walk pass a unidentified protester on their way from the Conference Center.

The spike in missionaries was triggered by the lowering of the minimum age for missionaries in the fall of 2012. Men can begin serving at 18, instead of 19, and women at 19, instead of 21. That has led to new, younger missionaries joining older ones.

Holland told missionaries that it's worth it to serve and remain faithful despite a world around them where many people are drawn to comfortable gods who demand little of them.

"It is obvious that the bumper-sticker query, 'What would Jesus do,' will not always bring a popular response," Holland said.

Church president Thomas Monson opened the morning session by talking about the progress of temple construction around the world. He said a new one in Gilbert, Ariz., became the 142nd temple and that there will be 170 when construction is completed on all the current projects.

No new temples were announced.

 

People look on during opening session of the two-day Mormon church conference Saturday, April 5, 2014.

Linda Reeves, one of the three highest-ranking female leaders in the church, urged parents and leaders to help prevent children from falling into "Satan's trap of pornography." Reeves is the second counselor in the general presidency of the church's Relief Society, the organization for women.

"They need to know the dangers of pornography and how it overtakes lives, causing loss of the spirit, distorted feelings, deceit, damaged relationships, loss of self-control, and nearly total consumption of time, thought and energy," Reeves said. "Pornography is more vile, evil and graphic than ever before."

Outside the 21,000-seat conference center, a potentially acrimonious showdown between church officials and a Mormon's women group pushing the church to allow females in the priesthood was avoided.

Despite earlier threats to bar the women from entering Temple Square to stand in line for an all-male priesthood session, church officials allowed hundreds of men and women in the square Saturday afternoon, only barring news media that wanted to follow them in.

Women went one-by-one to the door of the Tabernacle and asked to be allowed in to the priesthood meeting, reprising a demonstration they did at the general conference last October. They were told no, as expected.

The women said they still consider the event a success. Not only did they have double the number of participants, they showed church leaders they are serious about the issue.

"We are not invisible," Kate Kelly, the group's founder, told the group before they marched to Temple Square. "We will be reverent, we will be respectful, but we will not be silenced."