LOTTOMIKE's Blog

New Mexico police got more than they bargained for last fall when they responded to a call about a domestic dispute in a trailer park near Los Alamos National Laboratory. Not only had they stumbled on paraphernalia for making the drug crystal meth; they also found thousands of pages of highly classified documents detailing the designs of U.S. nuclear weapons.

"We're taking it (the security breach) very seriously," said a spokesman for the Energy Department, which controls the lab, soon after the incident was made public. He added that Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman "was personally disturbed" by the matter. As well he ought to have been: New details obtained by TIME offer an even more disturbing picture of security at the nation's nuclear inner sanctum than the one outlined last year in a no-nonsense investigation by the Department's Inspector General. In fact, according to government documents, the woman who made off with the weapons designs was herself engaged in chronic illegal drug use and other serious security breaches that have never been made public. Documents also show that the DOE is investigating separate drug use by at least 35 other lab workers who received security clearances around the same time.

Investigators don't believe powers hostile to the U.S. have exploited this latest round of security lapses, although they cannot be certain. But clearly, those with access to the nation's nuclear secrets would be priority targets of foreign intelligence services, and problems such as drug-abuse could make them vulnerable to manipulation.

"After years of security breaches at Los Alamos — and this shocking episode in the trailer last fall — you have to wonder, when will it end?" says Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent, non-partisan government watchdog group. "How can we continue to believe Department of Energy promises to end this brazen laxity in the handling of national security information?"

TIME has also obtained the report of a task force set up by Energy Secretary Bodman to examine some of the security issues in his department. Given the stakes involved in protecting nuclear secrets in a post 9/11 world, the report makes uncomfortable reading: It details not only more extensive drug use among staff at Los Alamos, but describes a systematic lack of accountability and weaknesses in the safeguards surrounding nuclear secrets.

Jessica Quintana, the woman who lived in the trailer, went to work as an archivist at Los Alamos at age 18, right out of high school. Accounts seen by TIME of the investigation that followed her arrest reveal that even before taking the job, she "self-reported acts of drug and alcohol abuse" in high school. By her own admission, she was using drugs (marijuana) and drinking while under age even during the period of her security screening. But after promising to stop taking drugs (although not alcohol), and signing a written pledge to submit to drug-testing, she received a clearance to handle some of America's most sensitive secrets. Despite the pledge, follow-up drug-tests were "never performed," a government document says, even as Quintana proceeded to commit multiple security violations with little supervision from the lab's security administrators.

It was only after several years on the job that she was caught with bomb designs in her trailer and fired. But the investigation reveals that Quintana had taken her cell phone into a vault filled with secret documents where she worked — another major security violation. She also had access to a high-speed classified printer, even though such access was "not required by her job," and used the device to run off hundreds of copies of classified documents that she also brought home. The young woman received inadequate supervision — government documents show that the security administrator responsible for Quintana's area was not around roughly half the time, because that person had "other duties." Quintana's lawyer, Stephen Aaron, told TIME that, on occasion, she would be locked into a secure vault to work until colleagues returned. "We hope that the lessons learned from this episode can be used to make the Lab more secure in the future," he added.

Quintana's motive for breaching the rules appears to have been benign: Falling behind on her work scanning paper copies of nuclear-weapons designs into a digital format, she would save highly-classified documents onto a "thumb drive" and then take the material home to work on after hours, she has said. The practice of inserting thumb drives was specifically forbidden by then DOE secretary Bill Richardson in 1999, but was apparently not uncommon at Los Alamos. Using thumb drives, and at least one wireless (WIFI) device that was improperly in the secure area, it would have been possible to transfer secret material from classified computers to non-classifed computers, a process known as "migration" . Since the discovery of Quintana's breach last fall, computer ports have been plugged with glue to prevent thumb drives being inserted.

Secretary Bodman's task force report shows, however, that security problems were not limited to Quintana or Los Alamos. Investigators examined more than 450 security clearances issued over 12 months beginning in June 2001, the period in which Quintana had been under review, and found two other cases in which clearances were granted to people with "indications of prior drug use within the month prior to the clearance being granted." A further 35 cases involved drug use within the year prior to requesting a security clearance.

Following its internal investigation, the DOE is proposing sweeping changes in security procedures and the issuance of clearances — and not just at Los Alamos. The report indicates that for the first time after years of security snafus, "Any proven or admitted drug involvement within the past 12 months" will be cause for "termination" of a security-clearance application. Other steps to tighten, centralize and refine security procedures and drug tests will also be implemented.

Secretary Bodman, who will testify Friday April 20 before a congressional oversight sub-committee on security issues, has already taken a number of steps of his own to deal with the problem. He not only commissioned the task force report, and reviewed the results of a DOE inspector general investigation, but in January fired the department's top official in charge of nuclear security in response to the latest Los Alamos and earlier incidents. As Bodman put it: "Unauthorized removal of the classified material from the Lab marks a significant breach of security protocol and of the public trust. Unfortunately, we cannot correct the errors of the past. But we will learn from this incident and we will do better."

By ADAM ZAGORIN/WASHINGTON/ TIME

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do you think the media makes tragic news seem like "entertainment"?  what i mean by that is do you think they take advantage of peoples overriding sense of fear and dread and make it into something that its not or also maybe feed on others feelings or weaknesses and turn into something they think people might be interested in seeing all in the name of ratings?

Their very different lives collided Monday when Cho targeted a classroom building where Jeremy and so many others were following their dreams. Cho shot and killed Herbstritt, police said, along with at least 29 others before taking his own life.

Images of the armed Cho, wearing black gloves and dressed in a khaki vest have been burned on the public consciousness, as has his screed of hateful words targeting the wealthy and privileged.

Jeremy's loved ones are fighting to replace those images with thoughts of their son and other victims of the massacre, by publicly celebrating his legacy.

"The rest of our life is going to be to celebrate his life, to say what he did good," said Jeremy's father, Mike, while fighting back tears. "Jeremy was a good boy, a good man, and we're going to love him forever."

Cho's hateful video message he sent to NBC on the day of the killing targeted people who had "everything" they wanted.

Jeremy's schoolmates offered a very different message of hope from their fallen colleague.

"That message is, 'be passionate, and be passionate about something,'" said Ken Stanton, a friend who lived in the same building as Jeremy. "We may have lost him, but I'll tell you what, his spirit is certainly with us."

Another schoolmate, Gaurav Bansal, said Jeremy "always had uplifting things to say."

They both appeared disgusted by Cho's video they'd seen plastered across the news media.

"It's a really sensitive topic, and I'd really rather not get into it," said Stanton. "We want to talk about Jeremy."

Friends said the 27-year-old civil engineering graduate student never had a bad thing to say about anyone.

But he did have many words to say. Friends and parents described him as talkative. "Jeremy had a lot of energy," said his mother Peggy Herbstritt.

"From the time he was born and even through graduate school, I don't think he slept more than a couple of hours a day. He loved life."

His father said Jeremy was a hiker and a biker and ran in marathons. He worked as a teaching assistant while pursuing his interest in helping the environment.

Students looked forward to class when they knew Jeremy would be there to teach, his father said.

Jeremy also worked in a program to search for mosquitoes carrying the dangerous West Nile Virus.

"If anybody ever asked Jeremy for some help," said his father, "Jeremy was there to help them."

BLACKSBURG, Va., April 17 — The police identified Cho Seung-Hui, a 23-year-old student, as the killer of 32 people in the shooting rampage at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, releasing new information on Tuesday about the troubled mind of a young man few people on campus knew.

Federal investigators said Mr. Cho — a South Korean immigrant who Americanized his name and preferred to be known as Seung Cho — left behind a note that they described as a lengthy, rambling and bitter list of complaints focusing on moral laxity and double-dealing he found among what he viewed as wealthier and more privileged students on campus.

And new information emerged that may help explain a fateful two-hour delay by university officials in warning the campus of a gunman at large. According to search warrants and statements from the police, campus investigators had been busy pursuing what appears to have been a fruitless lead in the first of two shooting episodes Monday.

After two people, Emily Jane Hilscher, a freshman, and Ryan Clark, the resident adviser whose room was nearby in the dormitory, were shot dead, the campus police began searching for Karl D. Thornhill, who was described in Internet memorials as Ms. Hilscher’s boyfriend.

According to a search warrant filed by the police, Ms. Hilscher’s roommate had told the police that Mr. Thornhill, a student at nearby Radford University, had guns at his town house. The roommate told the police that she had recently been at a shooting range with Mr. Thornhill, the affidavit said, leading the police to believe he may have been the gunman.

But as they were questioning Mr. Thornhill, reports of widespread shooting at Norris Hall came in, making it clear that they had not contained the threat on campus. Mr. Thornhill was not arrested, although he continues to be an important witness in the case, the police said.

At the time of the dormitory shootings, Col. W. Steven Flaherty, the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said, “There was certainly no evidence or no reason to think that there was anyone else at that particular point in time.”

State officials continued to defend the actions of the campus authorities. John W. Marshall, the Virginia secretary of public safety, said Charles W. Steger, the president of Virginia Tech, and Chief Wendell Flinchum of the campus police “made the right decisions based on the best information that they had available at the time.”

At an afternoon news briefing, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said Dr. Steger had asked him to appoint a committee to examine the university’s response and try to answer some of the remaining questions about the gunman’s actions.

After the shootings, the state police executed another search warrant, this time for Mr. Cho’s dormitory room. The warrant said a bomb threat against the engineering school buildings was found near Mr. Cho’s body. The warrant mentioned two other bomb threat notes against the campus received over the past three weeks.

Mr. Cho had used two handguns, a 9-millimeter and a .22-caliber, to shoot dozens of rounds, leaving even those who survived with multiple bullet wounds, officials said. The guns were bought legally in March and April. Colonel Flaherty said that although one of those guns had been used in the dormitory shooting, investigators were not ready to conclude that the same gunman was responsible for both episodes. But he said there was no evidence of another gunman or an accomplice.

Among the central unknowns is what prompted the gunman to move to Norris Hall, which contains engineering and other classrooms, where all but the first two killings took place. The authorities said Mr. Cho’s preparations, including chaining the doors, suggested planning and premeditation, rather than a spontaneous event.

Bodies were found in four classrooms and the stairwell of the building, Colonel Flaherty said.

“You all have reported that this is the most horrific incident that’s occurred on a college campus in our country, and the scene certainly bore that out,” he said. “Personal effects were strewn about the entire second floor at Norris Hall. So it made it much more difficult for us to identify students and faculty members that were victims.”

Officers also found several knives on Mr. Cho’s body. They first identified him by a driver’s license found in a backpack near the scene of the shootings, although it was not clear at first whether the backpack belonged to the gunman. But the name was checked against a visa application, and when a fingerprint on one of the weapons matched a print on the visa application, the authorities made a positive identification. The print matched another print left in the first shooting location.

Prescription medications said to be related to treatment of psychological problems were found among Mr. Cho’s effects, but officials did not specify what drugs they were.

In addition, investigators were reviewing recent bomb threats at the university in an effort to determine whether the gunman might have been involved in them, as an effort to test the university’s emergency response procedures.

Lucinda Roy, an English professor, said Mr. Cho’s writing, laced with anger, profanity and violence, concerned several faculty members. In 2005, she sent examples to the campus police, the campus counseling service and other officials. All were worried, but little could be done, she said.

Ms. Roy said she would offer to go with Mr. Cho to counseling, just to talk. “But he wouldn’t say yes, and unfortunately I couldn’t force him to do it,” she said. Students were also alarmed that Mr. Cho was taking inappropriate pictures of women under desks, she said.

In all, 33 people died Monday, including Mr. Cho and at least four faculty members. The victims’ names were not officially released, but most appeared to be in their late teens or early 20s. They included Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, and Reema Samaha, a freshman and a devoted dancer. Ms. Hilscher wanted to be a veterinarian; Mr. Clark was a member of the marching band. “This is a grief that does not know an international boundary,” Governor Kaine said.

By Tuesday afternoon there were still 14 injured victims at four hospitals, out of 28 initially transported from the scene, two of whom died. The 14 included two at a Level 1 trauma center in Roanoke, one in critical condition and the other in serious condition.

One of the luckier ones was Kevin Sterne, a senior who will graduate in a few weeks. He was hit twice in the right thigh, piercing an artery.

Mr. Sterne grabbed an electrical cord and fashioned a tourniquet until help arrived. “I think there’s a good chance he would have died,” said Dr. David B. Stoeckle of Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg.

Classes at Virginia Tech were canceled for the rest of the week, and Dr. Steger announced that Norris Hall would remain closed for the rest of the semester.

Thousands of students and faculty and staff members gathered Tuesday afternoon at Cassell Coliseum, the university’s basketball arena, for a solemn convocation. President Bush and Laura Bush attended the gathering and then spent much of the afternoon consoling members of the university family.

“This is a day of mourning for Virginia Tech, and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation,” Mr. Bush said in his remarks.

The president said that Monday began like any other school day, but then took a dark turn.

“By the end of the morning,” he said, “it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history — and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.”

But Mr. Bush’s consoling words, and those of various campus religious leaders and the poet Nikki Giovanni, could not silence the questions of at least some of the stricken families.

“I guess we’re a little curious as to why it took so long” to lock down the campus after the first two fatal shootings, said Kim Tate, the mother of a sophomore. Ms. Tate contrasted Monday’s response to the rapid closing of the entire campus last summer after an incident involving an escaped convict in the area.

Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them.

“My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”

Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students had left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children on Tuesday afternoon and take them home.

Dr. Steger, the university president, has been at the center of this week’s trauma, which he described as a horrible nightmare from which he hoped to awake. Friends said that despite his stoic demeanor, the campus deaths had exacted a heavy toll on a man who has spent his entire adulthood at Virginia Tech, as a student, professor, dean and administrator.

“I think he’s grieving beyond belief,” said Alan Merten, the president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., who described himself as a colleague and old friend. “I think he’s suffering beyond belief.”

(April 17) - The USA's younger generation is being wooed by the flashy hip-hop lifestyle, which has gone increasingly mainstream - from baggy fashions and bejeweled 'grillz' to 'pimp and ho' slang. But a growing chorus of cultural critics is wondering "At what cost?"

Journalist Cora Daniels stumbled on the first raw material for her new book quite literally on her Brooklyn doorstep, where teenagers found it terrifically fun and "ghetto" to play cards, drink beer and cuss into the wee hours on school nights.

Several months and a few thousand miles later, she argues in Ghettonation that a "ghetto" mind-set - which she says celebrates the worst of human nature - has taken hold coast to coast.

"Ghetto" styles, from wearing gaudy jewelry to using the n-word in ordinary conversation, have caught on with teens and young adults who aren't black, yet who seem to enjoy imitating famous hip-hop artists such as 50 Cent  and Three 6 Mafia.

The "ghetto-ization" of America, which includes everything from baggy clothes to racial slurs and slacker attitudes, is triggering concern far beyond urban neighborhoods. Last week, white radio host Don Imus lost his job at CBS after he used "ho" (hip-hop slang for "whore") on the air, and drew widespread condemnation.

Meanwhile, some worry that white youth are getting too comfortable adopting hip-hop norms, which, in the wrong hands, seem to mock the culture of poor blacks.

Daniels, who is 35 and black, worries about a downward cultural spiral where suburban boys work as pimps, middle-class girls aspire to dance like strippers and dropping out of school is often seen as a badge of honor.

Others have noticed a blurring of urban and suburban youth cultures: A 2004 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research report concluded that "suburban public high school students have sex, drink, smoke, use illegal drugs, and engage in delinquent behavior as often as urban" students.

Daniels believes "the bar has dropped so low (for acceptable behavior) that we don't even know where it is anymore." She emphasizes that "this is not a black thing. It's a national thing."

"This behavior is celebrated. It's now something folks don't have shame about," Daniels says. "Our expectations have gotten too low."

Beyond the media spotlight, Daniels argues, "ghetto" is a staple of many youth subcultures. What troubles certain onlookers is when youthful fans not only listen to the urban sound of hip-hop but also borrow from certain rappers' attitudes and lyrics, freely using words such as "mofo," "ho" and numerous unprintable others.

Ramon Ramirez knows the phenomenon firsthand. Growing up in South Austin, he and his friends listened to hip-hop, and Hispanic kids routinely addressed each other by the n-word.

Even now, as a senior at the University of Texas-Austin, Ramirez says non-black students will playfully call out, "hos in the back!" when jumping in a car with women. Nobody takes offense, he says, because they're just joking around.

"Most people take rap with a grain of salt," says Ramirez, music editor of The Daily Texan, the campus newspaper. When they talk or act like rappers, he says, "it's very much tongue-in-cheek."

But at times, white college students have crossed into racially offensive territory. For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, held a party where they dressed in faux gang apparel, ate fried chicken and drank from 40-ounce malt liquor bottles in paper bags. Similar events have taken place at other schools.

Undercurrents of racism and class prejudice are never far away when middle-class people dress and behave like poor blacks who've briefly tasted a type of success through hip-hop, says William Jelani Cobb, a professor of American history at Spelman College. "Periodically, American popular culture gets back to its minstrel roots (when whites) take an exaggerated caricature of black folks and play it up," he says.

Others, however, see less harmful dynamics at work. Bakari Kitwana, author of Why White Kids Love Hip Hop and a convener of campus dialogues on hip-hop culture, says suburban kids forge their own identities through hip-hop culture and often mean no offense by claiming "ghetto" styles.

What's more, he says, today's youth and young adults reflect strong moral values in surveys and life. His example: out-of-wedlock births have declined with this generation. Even so, he says, people have never been perfect, and now their foibles are on display because young people today are generally less inhibited than their parents.

"I think the values have always been there and were suppressed" before hip-hop made it OK to celebrate materialism, Kitwana says. As a society, "we've taught young people that money is more important than anything else. Then we expect them not to act like that?"

Some worry that a younger generation is setting itself up for disaster by failing to heed traditional norms for respect and restraint. Theology professor Anthony Bradley, for instance, wants young people to recognize the link between self-control and dignity.

"This generation has no moral compass to see that this ('ghetto' style) is not good for them," says Bradley, of Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis. Institutions such as marriage, education and the church "are no longer valued."

Yet where institutions may be absent, hip-hop devotees are stepping up with an encouraging word. Jerod Couch, a senior at the University of Texas-Austin, uses his public access TV show ATX Most Wanted to discuss hip-hop culture - and offer moral correctives when necessary.

"My biggest concern is how hip-hop degrades women and makes them seem like objects," says Couch, who is white. "I've encouraged people to treat every woman as if she was the best woman on earth - as if she was your mother, deserving of respect."

SYDNEY, Australia (April 18) - The Virginia Tech  shootings sparked criticism of U.S. gun control laws around the world Tuesday. Editorials lashed out at the availability of weapons, and the leader of Australia - one of America's closest allies - declared that America's gun culture was costing lives.

South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hoped Monday's shootings, allegedly carried out by a 23-year-old South Korean native, would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation."

While some focused blame only on the gunman, world opinion over U.S. gun laws was almost unanimous: Access to weapons increases the probability of shootings. There was no sympathy for the view that more guns would have saved lives by enabling students to shoot the assailant.

"We took action to limit the availability of guns and we showed a national resolve that the gun culture that is such a negative in the United States would never become a negative in our country," said Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who staked his political career on promoting tough gun laws after a gunman went on one of the world's deadliest killing sprees 11 years ago.

The tragedy in a Tasmanian tourist resort left 35 people dead. Afterward, Australia's gun laws were changed to prohibit automatic weapons and handguns and toughen licensing and storage restrictions.

Handguns are also banned in Britain - a prohibition that forces even the country's Olympic pistol shooting team from practicing on its own soil. In Sweden, civilians can acquire firearm permits only if they have a hunting license or are members of a shooting club and have no criminal record. In Italy, people must have a valid reason for wanting one. Firearms are forbidden for private Chinese citizens.

Still, leaders from Britain, Germany, Mexico, China, Afghanistan  and France stopped short of criticizing President Bush  or U.S. gun laws when they offered sympathies to the families of Monday's victims.

Editorials were less diplomatic.

"Only the names change - And the numbers," read a headline in the Times of London. "Why, we ask, do Americans continue to tolerate gun laws and a culture that seems to condemn thousands of innocents to death every year, when presumably, tougher restrictions, such as those in force in European countries, could at least reduce the number?"

The French daily Le Monde said the regularity of mass shootings across the Atlantic was a blotch on America's image.

"It would be unjust and especially false to reduce the United States to the image created, in a recurrent way, from the bursts of murderous fury that some isolated individuals succumb to. But acts like this are rare elsewhere, and tend to often disfigure the 'American dream.'"

Police started identifying the victims Tuesday. One was a Peruvian student identified as Daniel Perez Cueva, 21, according to his mother Betty Cuevas, who said her son was studying international relations.

Professors from India, Israel and Canada also were killed.

Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer, tried to stop the gunman from entering his classroom by blocking the door before he was fatally shot, his son said Tuesday from Tel Aviv.

"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu said. His father, a Holocaust survivor, immigrated to Israel from Romania, and was on sabbatical in Virginia.

Indian-born G.V. Loganathan, 51, a lecturer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, was also among the dead, his brother G.V. Palanivel told Indian media.

"We all feel like we have had an electric shock. We do not know what to do," Palanivel said.

Canadian Jocelyn Couture-Nowak, a French instructor, also died in the shootings, said her husband Jerzy Nowak, head of the university's horticulture department. "We're mourning," Nowak said.

The killings also hit a nerve for Virginia Tech alumni abroad.

"I think if this does prompt a serious and reflective debate on gun issues and gun law in the States, then some good may come from this woeful tragedy," said British Home Office Minister Tony McNulty, who graduated in 1982.

Britain's 46 homicides involving firearms last year was the lowest since the late 1980s. New York City, with 8 million people compared to 53 million in England and Wales, recorded 590 homicides last year.

"If the guns are harder to get a hold of, fewer people will do it," said Michael Dent, a 65-year-old construction worker in London. "You can't walk up to a supermarket or shop and buy a gun like in the States."

But even in Germany, where gun-control laws are strict, a teenager in 2002 shot and killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two students and a police officer at a high school. The shooter was a gun club member licensed to own weapons. The attack led Germany to raise the age for owning recreational firearms from 18 to 21.

"The instant I saw the pictures and heard the commentary, it immediately brought back our own experience," Gutenberg high school director Christiane Alt said of the Virginia Tech killings.

The Swedish daily Goteborgs-Posten said without access to weapons, the killings at Virginia Tech may have been prevented.

"What exactly triggered the massacre in Virginia is unclear, but the fundamental reason is often the perpetrator's psychological problems in combination with access to weapons," it wrote.

The shootings drew intense media coverage in China, in part because the school has a large Chinese student body.

"This incident reflects the problem of gun control in America," Yuan Peng, an American studies expert in China, was quoted as saying by state-run China Daily.

Only 7 percent of the more than 26,000 students at Virginia Tech are foreign, according to the school Web site. But Chinese make up nearly a third of that.

In Italy, there are three types of licenses for gun ownership: for personal safety, target practice and skeet shooting, and hunting. Authorization is granted by the police. To obtain a gun for personal safety, the owner must be an adult and have a "valid" reason.

Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera's main story on the shootings was an opinion piece entitled "Guns at the Supermarket" - a critical view of the U.S. gun lobby and the ease with which guns can be purchased. State-run RAI radio also discussed at length what it said were lax standards for gun ownership in the United States.

"The latest attack on a U.S. campus will shake up America, maybe it will provoke more vigorous reactions than in the past, but it won't change the culture of a country that has the notion of self-defense imprinted on its DNA and which considers the right of having guns inalienable," Corriere wrote in its front-page story.

Several Italian graduate students at Virginia Tech recounted how they barricaded themselves inside a geology department building not far from the scene of the shooting.

In Mexico, radio commentators criticized the availability of firearms in the U.S. Others renewed Mexico's complaint that most guns in Mexico are smuggled in from the United States.

The killings led newspapers' front pages, with Mexico City's Dario Monitor reporting: "Terror returns to the U.S.: 32 assassinated on university campus." The tabloid Metro compared Mexico's death toll Monday from drug violence to the number of people killed at Virginia Tech, in a front-page headline that read: "U.S. 33, Mexico 20."

what is the world coming to??

this mass killing at a school where kids are trying to better themselves?

the race issues brought on by don imus radio commentary

the online predators who prey on children

the nuclear threats by iran,north korea,etc.

the political divisions and scandals we hear about everyday

the beating up on elderly population

the useless war that shows no signs of ending

the global warming thats killing off species and threatening ways of life

i'm really concerned for my children.they are two and one years old.i feel so sorry for what they will face later in life.having to worry about not only gangs,drugs and violence but also world wars,global warming and rising prices that will make their world a very harsh,evil,scary place to live.i'll be nearing 50 when they graduate high school........

BLACKSBURG, Va. (April 17) - A gunman massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history Monday, cutting down his victims in two attacks two hours apart before the university could grasp what was happening and warn students.

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everything is cool but i think its time i give others a chance to post topics,threads,ideas,etc. i think i've thought up some pretty good stuff but now i'm going to sit back and take a breather and see what others can come up with.i'm happy and i love it here but i think i need to give others a chance to shine too.i'm going to stick with predicting for a while because that is where my real talent shows is in the numbers......

The development means Iran could have enough material for a nuclear bomb by 2009, sources familiar with the dramatic upgrade tell ABC News.

The sources say the unexpected expansion is taking place at Iran's nuclear enrichment plant outside the city of Natanz, in a hardened facility 70 feet underground.

A spokesperson for the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, declined to comment citing the "extreme sensitivity" of the situation with Iran.

Iran has already declared its above-ground operations at Natanz have some 320 centrifuges.

The addition of 1,000 new centrifuges, which are not yet operational, means Iran is expanding its enrichment program at a pace much faster than U.S. intelligence experts had predicted.

"If they continue at this pace, and they get the centrifuges to work and actually enrich uranium on a distinct basis," said David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, "then you're looking at them having, potentially having enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 2009."

Previous predictions by U.S. intelligence had cited 2015 as the earliest date Iran could develop a weapon.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly predicted his country would have 3,000 centrifuges installed by this May, but few in the West gave his claim much credence, until now.

"I think we have all been caught off guard. Ahmadinejad said they would have these 3,000 installed by the end of May, and it appears they may actually do it," Albright said.

The new centrifuges are in open defiance of the U.N. Security Council which last week imposed a new set of sanctions on Iran for refusing to halt enrichment.

Iran maintains its enrichment facilities are only meant to produce fuel for nuclear power reactors.

But the uranium they are enriching could not be used in the Russian nuclear power reactor they are currently building.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment on the details of Iran's new centrifuges but told ABC News, "This kind of expansion of Iran's centrifuge capability is why we went to the U.N. Security Council and pushed for a stronger resolution and stronger sanctions."

Brian Ross and Christopher Isham Report For ABC NEWS