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World briefly for July 23
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AURORA, Colo. (AP) — As the suspected gunman in the Colorado theater massacre heads to his first court appearance, authorities have disclosed that he is refusing to cooperate and that it could take months to learn what prompted the horrific attack on midnight moviegoers at a Batman film premiere.

James Holmes has been held in solitary confinement at an Arapahoe County detention facility but will be moved Monday to a next-door courtroom for a 9:30 a.m. MDT hearing, where the charges against him of suspicion of first degree murder will be read.

Holmes has been assigned a public defender and Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said that the 24-year-old former doctoral student has "lawyered up" since his arrest early Friday, following the shooting at an Aurora theater that left 12 dead and 58 wounded, some critically.

"He's not talking to us," the chief said.

Holmes has been held without bond at the lockup in Centennial, Colo., about 13 miles from the Aurora theater. He will be advised of the charges against him, and he could also face additional counts of aggravated assault and weapons violations.

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Colo. shooting suspect stockpiled arsenal via unregulated market — the Internet

DENVER (AP) — In a world where Amazon can track your next book purchase and you must register to buy allergy medicine, James Holmes spent months stockpiling thousands of bullets and head-to-toe ballistic gear without raising any red flags with authorities.

The suspect in the mass theater shooting availed himself of an unregulated online marketplace that allows consumers to acquire some of the tools of modern warfare as if they were pieces of a new wardrobe. The Internet is awash in sites ranging from BulkAmmo.com, which this weekend listed a sale on a thousand rifle rounds for $335, to eBay, where bidding on one armored special forces helmet has risen to $799.

"We're different than other cultures," said Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, which advocates for firearms owners' rights. "We do allow Americans to possess the accoutrements that our military generally has."

Gun rights activists like Brown celebrate that freedom, but even some involved in the trade are troubled by how easily Holmes stocked up for his alleged rampage.

Chad Weinman runs TacticalGear.com, which caters to police officers looking to augment their equipment, members of the military who don't want to wait on permission from the bureaucracy for new combat gear, and hobbyists like survivalists and paintballers. The site receives "thousands" of orders daily, sometimes from entire platoons that are about to deploy to war zones.

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NCAA vows 'corrective and punitive' sanctions for Penn State; program's future at stake

Now the NCAA gets its say on Penn State.

College sports' governing body was expected to deal a series of heavy blows to the Nittany Lions football program on Monday, less than two weeks after a devastating report accused coach Joe Paterno and other top university officials of concealing child sex abuse allegations against a retired assistant coach for years to avoid bad publicity. A news conference was scheduled for 9 a.m. in Indianapolis.

A multi-year bowl ban, lost scholarships, recruiting limits, probation and a multimillion-dollar fine all seem likely for the program Paterno built into a national power under the slogan of "success with honor." And the NCAA, heavily criticized for its sometimes-ponderous pace in deciding penalties as scandals mounted at Ohio State, Auburn, USC and elsewhere, acted with unprecedented swiftness in arriving at what it called "corrective and punitive" sanctions for a team that is trying to start over with a new coach and a new outlook.

The NCAA announced no details Sunday in serving notice that it would indeed weigh in on perhaps the worst scandal in American college sports history. President Mark Emmert cautioned last week that he had not ruled out the possibility of shutting down the football program altogether — the so-called death penalty, famously used against Southern Methodist a quarter-century ago — saying he had "never seen anything as egregious" as the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

The NCAA announcement Sunday came shortly after Penn State took down its famed statue of Paterno, six months to the day since his death from lung cancer. The university said leaving it up would be a "recurring wound" for Sandusky's victims. An accomplished defensive coordinator, Sandusky was convicted of molesting young boys over more than a decade.

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Obama, Romney resume campaigning after pause for nation to absorb shock of Colorado shooting

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The acrimonious presidential campaign eases back into action Monday after a weekend pause for the nation to absorb the shock of a horrific mass shooting at a Colorado movie theater.

The massacre stalled a race for the White House that has become increasingly heated in recent weeks. President Barack Obama, Republican rival Mitt Romney and their advisers are now weighing how soon after the shootings to resume their attacks or whether to temper the tenor of the campaign.

"There's not a playbook for this," said Jen Psaki, Obama's campaign spokeswoman. "Just like everybody, we're taking this day by day."

Both campaigns were keeping their largely negative television advertisements off the air in Colorado, a key battleground state in the November election. The Obama campaign said it would not advertise in Colorado for the rest of the week; Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the Republican's ads in the state would be down at least through Monday.

The campaigns pulled the ads Friday, part of a widespread dialing back of election year politicking after shootings that left 12 dead and dozens more injured. The candidates and their surrogates also canceled campaign events and media interviews for much of the weekend.

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Officials: Onslaught of shootings, bombings across Iraq kill 93 in bloodiest day of year

BAGHDAD (AP) — An onslaught of bombings and shootings killed 93 people across Iraq on Monday, officials said, in the nation's deadliest day so far this year.

The attacks come days after the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq declared a new offensive and warned in a statement that the militant group is reorganizing in areas from which it retreated before U.S. troops left the country last December.

Al-Qaida has been seeking to re-assert its might in the security vacuum left by the departing Americans, seizing on Baghdad's fragmented government and the surge of Sunni rebels in neighboring Syria to sow instability across Iraq.

U.S. and Iraqi officials insist that the terror network's Iraqi wing, known as the Islamic State of Iraq, is nowhere as strong as it was when the nation threatened to fall into civil war between 2006 and 2008, and the Iraqi government is better established.

Still, the huge death toll Monday and an almost-daily drumbeat of killings last month show al-Qaida remains fully capable of creating chaos in the foreseeable future.

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After 3-year delay, jury selection to start in Drew Peterson's trial in wife's 2004 death

CHICAGO (AP) — Jury selection is to begin Monday in Drew Peterson's long-delayed murder trial, where prosecutors want the former suburban Chicago police officer's wives — one he's charged with slaying and another who has disappeared — to effectively testify from their graves through friends and relatives about his threatening to kill them.

Those picked for the jury are likely to hear witnesses describe statements that Peterson's third wife, Kathleen Savio, and his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, allegedly made. Such hearsay is usually barred. However, an appellate court ruled jurors can hear them.

Peterson, 58, is charged with killing Savio in 2004. Her body was found in a dry bathtub in her home, her hair soaked with blood. The ex-Bolingbrook police sergeant is also a suspect in the 2007 disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.

A judge will vet would-be jurors starting Monday. A 200-person jury has been waiting three years for a trial to get under way. It was put off because of appellate court battles over the Savio and Stacy Peterson statements.

"I've never heard of anything comparable to this — a jury pool waiting around for so long knowing what case they're going to be in and the reliance on hearsay," said Gal Pissetzky, a Chicago defense lawyer with no link to the case. "It's all very unusual."

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Authorities say at least 11 dead, 12 injured after pickup truck crashes in Texas

GOLIAD, Texas (AP) — At least 11 people died Sunday and another 12 were injured after a pickup truck loaded with passengers left the highway and crashed into trees in rural South Texas, authorities said.

State troopers and Goliad County sheriff's investigators were investigating what prompted the single-vehicle crash and did not immediately know the names and ages of the victims. Gerald Bryant, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press they were various ages and that he personally saw two young children among the dead at the scene.

"This is the most people I've seen in any passenger vehicle, and I've been an officer for 38 years," Bryant said, referring to the chaotic scene.

The white 2000 Ford F-250 pickup was heading north on U.S. 59 on Sunday evening when it traveled off the right side of the highway near the unincorporated community of Berclair in Goliad County and struck two large trees, Bryant said. The 23 people were loaded inside both the truck's cab and bed.

Six of those who died were still inside the truck when emergency crews arrived to find the mangled vehicle, Bryant said.

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Should all kids get cholesterol tests? Doctors can't agree on widespread screening guidelines

CHICAGO (AP) — Should all U.S. children get tested for high cholesterol? Doctors are still debating that question months after a government-appointed panel recommended widespread screening that would lead to prescribing medicine for some kids.

Fresh criticism was published online Monday in Pediatrics by researchers at one university who say the guidelines are too aggressive and were influenced by panel members' financial ties to drugmakers.

Eight of the 14 guidelines panel members reported industry ties and disclosed that when their advice was published in December. They contend in a rebuttal article in Pediatrics that company payments covered costs of evaluating whether the drugs are safe and effective but did not influence the recommendations.

It also is not uncommon for experts in their fields to have received some consulting fees from drug companies.

Even so, the ties pose a conflict of interest that "undermines the credibility of both the guidelines and the process through which they were produced," says the commentary by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. The authors are Dr. Thomas Newman, a researcher and former member of a Food and Drug Administration pediatrics advisory committee, and two heart disease researchers, Drs. Mark Pletcher and Stephen Hulley.

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Reports of blue, orange and other odd-colored lobsters on the rise as crustacean harvest grows

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — When a 100-pound shipment of lobsters arrived at Bill Sarro's seafood shop and restaurant last month, it contained a surprise — six orange crustaceans that have been said to be a 1-in-10-million oddity.

"My butcher was unloading them and said, 'Oh, my gosh, boss, they sent us cooked dead lobsters,'" said Sarro, owner of Fresh Catch Seafood in Mansfield, Mass. "He then picked one up and it crawled up his arm."

Reports of odd-colored lobsters used to be rare in the lobster fishing grounds of New England and Atlantic Canada. Normal lobsters are a mottled greenish-brown.

But in recent years, accounts of bright blue, orange, yellow, calico, white and even split lobsters — one color on one side, another on the other — have jumped. It's now common to hear several stories a month of a lobsterman bringing one of the quirky crustaceans to shore.

It's anybody's guess why more oddities are popping up in lobster traps, said Michael Tlusty, research director at the New England Aquarium in Boston.

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Scott etches his name among great collapses in golf, handing British Open to grateful Els

LYTHAM ST. ANNES, England (AP) — If this had been a normal British Open, Ernie Els would've been hanging out on the putting green hoping his work was done. Any other time, he wouldn't have welcomed a playoff to secure the title.

The Big Easy was willing to make an exception this time.

There was nothing normal about a wind-swept Sunday at Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

"Crazy, crazy, crazy," Els kept saying.

Crazy, indeed. And, for the guy who let it slip away, a gut-wrenching blow.

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