2 killed, 1 wounded in shooting at Ky. college

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A gunman firing into a vehicle killed two people and wounded a juvenile Tuesday as they sat in the parking lot of an eastern Kentucky community college.

The campus was locked down for more than an hour while police searched the two buildings of Hazard Community and Technical College in Hazard, Ky., to ensure there was no further danger before allowing students to leave, police told a news conference broadcast live on WYMT-TV's website.

College President Stephen Greiner said that at the time of the shooting, there were probably about 30 students on campus, which is based 90 miles southeast ofLexington, Ky.

Police recovered the weapon, a semiautomatic pistol, at the scene, Hazard Police Chief Minor Allensaid. He said a man who walked into an office of the Kentucky State Police in Hazard and said he knew something about the shooting was being questioned as a suspect. The man had not been charged with a crime and no other suspects had been identified at the time of the news conference, which was held about three hours after the shooting.

A male and female were already dead when police arrived about 6 p.m., Allen said. The wounded juvenile, a female, was taken to University of Kentucky Hospital, he said.

A hospital spokeswoman said she could not provide any information about the juvenile's condition without a name, which police did not release.

Police believe the shooting may have been the result of a domestic dispute, Allen said. He didn't know the relationship between the victims and the shooter.

In a statement released late Tuesday, college officials said they did not think the school was specifically targeted or that any of the people involved in the shooting were either students or employees of the college.

Conor Duff, the college's evening coordinator, said the outbreak of violence was startling.

"Everybody here's been pretty shook up," he said. "This is definitely something people around here are not used to. We have our fair share of problems, but normally this isn't one of them."

Classes had resumed Monday at the campus after the holiday break, according to the college's website, which also posted that there had been an incident and asked students to stay away from the main campus. The school called off classes for Wednesday.

The college's academic programs range from associate's degrees in arts and sciences to career-focused training in mining technology and heavy-equipment operation.

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Obama to unveil gun violence measures Wednesday

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's broad effort to reduce gun violence will include proposed bans on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips as well as more than a dozen executive orders aimed at circumventing congressional opposition to stricter gun control.

Obama was to announce the measures Wednesday at a White House event that will bring together law enforcement officials, lawmakers and children who wrote the president about gun violence following last month's shooting of 20 young students and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

The broad package Obama will unveil will also include efforts to stop bullying and boost availability of mental health services.

But Congress would have to approve the bans on assault weapons and ammunition magazines holding more than 10 bullets, along with a requirement for universal background checks on gun buyers. Some gun control advocates worry that opposition from Republicans and conservative Democrats, as well as the National Rifle Association, will be too great to overcome.

"We're not going to get an outright ban," Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said of limits on assault weapons. Still, McCarthy, a leading voice in Congress in favor of gun control, said she would keep pushing for a ban and hoped Obama would as well.

White House officials, seeking to avoid setting up the president for failure, have emphasized that no single measure — even an assault weapons ban — would solve a scourge of gun violence across the country. But without such a ban or other sweeping, congressionally-approved measures, it's unclear whether executive actions alone could make any noticeable difference.

"It is a simple fact that there are limits to what can be done within existing law," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "Congress has to act on the kinds of measures we've already mentioned because the power to do that is reserved by Congress."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday signed into law the toughest gun control law in the nation, and the first since the Connecticut school shootings. The law includes a tougher assault-weapons ban and provisions to try to keep guns out of the hands of mentally ill people who make threats.

According to a lobbyist briefed Tuesday, Obama will present a three-part plan focused on gun violence, education and mental health. He'll call for:

— A focus on universal background checks. Right now some 40 percent of gun sales take place without background checks, including by private sellers at gun shows or over the Internet, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

— A ban on assault weapons and limiting ammunition magazines to 10 rounds or fewer.

— A federal statute to stop "straw man" purchases of guns and crack down on trafficking rings.

— More anti-bullying efforts; more training for teachers, counselors and principals; and funding for schools for more counselors and resource officers.

Obama also will order federal agencies to conduct more research on gun use and crimes, the lobbyist said, something Republican congressional majorities have limited through language in budget bills.

On mental health, Obama will focus on more availability of mental health services, training more school counselors and mental health professionals, and mental health first aid training for first responders, according to the lobbyist, who was not authorized to discuss the plan publicly before the president's announcement and requested anonymity.

The president's framework is based on recommendations from Vice President Joe Biden, who led a wide-ranging task force on gun violence. The vice president's proposals included 19 steps that could be achieved through executive action.

Obama also may order the Justice Department to crack down on people who lie on gun-sale background checks; only a tiny number are now prosecuted. Such a step has support from the National Rifle Association, which has consistently argued that existing laws must be enforced before new ones are considered.

And Obama may give schools flexibility to use grant money to improve safety.

Gun control proponent Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., who met with Biden on Monday, said the president is also likely to take executive action to ensure better state reporting of mental health and other records that go into the federal background check database. But he, too, acknowledged there were clear limits to what Obama can do without Congress' say-so.

"You can't change the law through executive order," Scott said.

White House officials signaled that Obama would seek to rally public support for the measures he puts forward, perhaps holding events around the country or relying on Organizing for America, his still-operational presidential campaign.

Still, it's unclear how much political capital Obama will exert in pressing for congressional action.

The White House and Congress will soon be consumed by three looming fiscal deadlines. And the president has also pledged to tackle comprehensive immigration reform early this year, another effort that will require Republicans' support and one in which Obama may be more likely to get their backing.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has warned the White House that it will be at least three months before the Senate considers gun legislation. And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said immigration, not gun control, is at the top of his priority list after the fiscal fights.

House Republican leaders are expected to wait for any action by the Senate before deciding how — or whether — to proceed with any gun measure.

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Tennessee declares state of emergency over ice storm

NASHVILLE (Reuters) - Tennessee officials declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as ice storms hit a swathe of territory in the mid-south of the United States and concerns grew about flooding and dangerous road conditions.

Freezing rain across the region from about mid-morning on Tuesday had caused ice accumulation of up to half an inch (12.7 mm) in Arkansas just southwest of Memphis, according to the National Weather Service.

As much as a quarter inch to half inch of ice could coat roadways and power lines across Tennessee, according to the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency, leading to the state of emergency.

"When you start putting that much ice on roadways and power lines, it's not going to be good," saidJeremy Heidt, a spokesman for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency.

The most treacherous spots from accumulated ice were on bridges and overpasses, said Corey Chaskelson, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Nashville.

Tennessee transportation officials have ordered all workers to stay on duty through the night because of the forecasts for icing, which would include 1,200 people and 250 trucks. The rain in eastern Tennessee is leading to flooding issues, Heidt said.

"We are not letting any crews go home," said Beth Emmons, Tennessee Transportation Department spokeswoman. "All the trucks are loaded and they'll start laying the salt as needed."

Memphis Police spokeswoman Alyssa Moore said the city began to see rain, sleet and freezing rain just as the evening rush hour was starting.

"The roads are beginning to get really slick," Moore said.

(Editing by David Bailey, Cynthia Johnston and Lisa Shumaker)

Al-Qaida carves out own country in Mali

Map provides an update of events in Mali

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic extremist fighters have been burrowing into the earth, erecting a formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially becomeal-Qaida's new country.

They have used the bulldozers, earth movers and Caterpillar machines left behind by fleeing construction crews to dig what residents and local officials describe as an elaborate network of tunnels, trenches, shafts and ramparts. In just one case, inside a cave large enough to drive trucks into, they have stored up to 100 drums of gasoline, guaranteeing their fuel supply in the face of a foreign intervention, according to experts.

Now that intervention is here. On Friday, France deployed 550 troops and launched air strikes against the Islamists in northern Mali, starting battle in what is currently the biggest territory in the world held by al-Qaida and its allies. But the fighting has been harder than expected, and the extremists boast it will be worse than the decade-old struggle in Afghanistan.

"Al-Qaida never owned Afghanistan," said former United Nations diplomat Robert Fowler, a Canadian kidnapped and held for 130 days by al-Qaida's local chapter, whose fighters now control the main cities in the north. "They do own northern Mali."

Al-Qaida's affiliate in Africa — al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM— has been a shadowy presence for years in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger. Last year the terror syndicate and its allies took advantage of political instability in Mali to push out of their hiding place and into the towns, taking over an enormous territory larger than France or Texas — and almost exactly the size of Afghanistan.

The catalyst for the Islamic fighters was a military coup nine months ago by disgruntled soldiers, which transformed Mali from a once-stable nation to the failed state it is today. The fall of the nation's democratically elected government at the hands of junior officers destroyed the military's command-and-control structure, creating the vacuum which allowed a mix of rebel groups to move in.

After the international community debated for months over what to do, the United Nations Security Council called for a military intervention on condition that an exhaustive list of pre-emptive measures be taken, starting with training the Malian military. All that changed in a matter of hours last week, when French intelligence services spotted two rebel convoys heading south toward the towns of Segou and Mopti. Had either town fallen, many feared the Islamists would advance toward the capital, Bamako.

Over the weekend, Britain authorized sending several transport planes to bring in French troops. Other African nations have authorized sending troops, and the U.S. has pledged communications and logistical support.

The area under the rule of the Islamist fighters is mostly desert and sparsely populated, but analysts say that due to its size and the hostile nature of the terrain, rooting out the extremists here could prove even more difficult than it did in Afghanistan. Mali's former president has acknowledged, diplomatic cables show, that the country cannot patrol a frontier twice the length of the border between the United States and Mexico.

AQIM operates not just in Mali, but in a corridor along much of the northern Sahel. This 7,000-kilometer (4,300-mile) long ribbon of land runs across the widest part of Africa, and includes sections of Mauritania, Niger, Algeria, Libya, Burkina Faso and Chad.

"One could come up with a conceivable containment strategy for the Swat Valley," said Africa expert Peter Pham, an adviser to the U.S. military's African command center, referring to the region of Pakistan where Taliban fighters once dominated. "There's no containment strategy for the Sahel, which runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea."

The Islamists in northern Mali had been preparing for battle long before the French announcement, according to elected officials and residents in Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao, including a day laborer hired by al-Qaida's local chapter to clear rocks and debris for one of their defenses. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear for their safety at the hands of the Islamists, who have previously accused those who speak to reporters of espionage.

The al-Qaida affiliate, which became part of the terror network in 2006, is one of three Islamist groups in northern Mali. The others are the Movement for the Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, based in Gao, and Ansar Dine, based in Kidal. Analysts agree that there is considerable overlap among the groups, and that all three can be considered sympathizers, even extensions, of al-Qaida.

The Islamic fighters have stolen equipment from construction companies, including more than $11 million worth from a French company called SOGEA-SATOM, according to Elie Arama, who works with the European Development Fund. The company had been contracted to build a European Union-financed highway in the north between Timbuktu and the village of Goma Coura. An employee of SOGEA-SATOM in Bamako declined to comment.

The official from Kidal said his constituents have reported seeing Islamic fighters with construction equipment riding in convoys behind 4-by-4 trucks draped with their signature black flag. His contacts among the fighters, including friends from secondary school, have told him they have created two bases, around 200 to 300 kilometers (120 and 180 miles) north of Kidal, in the austere, rocky desert.

The first base is occupied by al-Qaida's local fighters in the hills of Teghergharte, a region the official compared to Afghanistan's Tora Bora.

"The Islamists have dug tunnels, made roads, they've brought in generators, and solar panels in order to have electricity," he said. "They live inside the rocks."

Still further north, near Boghassa, is the second base, created by fighters from Ansar Dine. They, too, have used seized explosives, bulldozers and sledgehammers to make passages in the hills, he said.

In addition to creating defenses, the fighters are amassing supplies, experts said. A local who was taken by Islamists into a cave in the region of Kidal described an enormous room, where several cars were parked. Along the walls, he counted up to 100 barrels of gasoline, according to the man's testimony to New York-based Human Rights Watch.

In the regional capital of Gao, a young man told The Associated Press that he and several others were offered 10,000 francs a day by al-Qaida's local commanders (around $20), a rate several times the normal wage, to clear rocks and debris, and dig trenches. The youth said he saw Caterpillars and earth movers inside an Islamist camp at a former Malian military base 7 kilometers (4 miles) from Gao.

The fighters are piling mountains of sand from the ground along the dirt roads to force cars onto the pavement, where they have checkpoints everywhere, he said. In addition, they are modifying their all-terrain vehicles to mount them with arms.

"On the backs of their cars, it looks like they are mounting pipes," he said, describing a shape he thinks might be a rocket or missile launcher. "They are preparing themselves. Everyone is scared."

A university student from Gao confirmed seeing the modified cars. He said he also saw deep holes dug on the sides of the highway, possibly to give protection to fighters shooting at cars, along with cement barriers with small holes for guns.

In Gao, residents routinely see Moktar Belmoktar, the one-eyed emir of the al-Qaida-linked cell that grabbed Fowler in 2008. Belmoktar, a native Algerian, traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s and trained in Osama bin Laden's camp in Jalalabad, according to research by the Jamestown Foundation. His lieutenant Oumar Ould Hamaha, whom Fowler identified as one of his captors, brushed off questions about the tunnels and caves but said the fighters are prepared.

"We consider this land our land. It's an Islamic territory," he said, reached by telephone in an undisclosed location.

He added that the Islamists have recruited new fighters, including from Western countries.

In December, two U.S. citizens from Alabama were arrested on terrorism charges, accused of planning to fly to Morocco and travel by land to Mali to wage jihad, or holy war. Two French nationals have also been detained on suspicion of trying to travel to northern Mali to join the Islamists. Hamaha himself said he spent a month in France preaching his fundamentalist version of Islam in Parisian mosques after receiving a visa for all European Union countries in 2001.

Hamaha indicated the Islamists have inherited stores of Russian-made arms from former Malian army bases, as well as from the arsenal of toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, a claim that military experts have confirmed.

Those weapons include the SA-7 and SA-2 surface-to-air missiles, according to Hamaha, which can shoot down aircrafts. His claim could not be verified, but Rudolph Atallah, the former counterterrorism director for Africa in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, said it makes sense.

"Gadhafi bought everything under the sun," said Atallah, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, who has traveled extensively to Mali on defense missions. "His weapons depots were packed with all kinds of stuff, so it's plausible that AQIM now has surface-to-air missiles."

Depending on the model, these missiles can range far enough to bring down planes used by ill-equipped African air forces, he said. However, they will be far less effective against the forces of the West, with their better equipment.

Another factor in the success of military intervention will be the reaction of the people, who, unlike in Afghanistan, have little history of extremism. Malians have long practiced a moderate form of Islam, where women do not wear burqas and few practice the strict form of the religion. The Islamists are imposing a far more severe form of Islam on the towns of the north, carrying out amputations in public squares, flogging women for not covering up and destroying world heritage sites.

The Islamists' recent advances draw on al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb's near decade of experience in Mali's northern desert, where Fowler and his fellow U.N. colleague were held captive for four months in 2008, an experience he recounts in his recent book, "A Season in Hell."

Originally from Algeria, the fighters fled across the border into Mali in 2003, after kidnapping 32 European tourists. Over the next decade, they used the country's vast northern desert to hold French, Spanish, Swiss, German, British, Austrian, Italian and Canadian hostages, raising an estimated $89 million in ransom payments, according to Stratfor, a global intelligence company.

During this time, they also established relationships with local clans, nurturing the ties that now protect them. Several commanders have taken local wives, and Hamaha, whose family is from Kidal, confirmed that Belmoktar is married to his niece.

Fowler described being driven for days by jihadists who knew Mali's featureless terrain by heart, navigating valleys of identical dunes with nothing more than the direction of the sun as their map. He saw them drive up to a thorn tree in the middle of nowhere to find barrels of diesel fuel. Elsewhere, he saw them dig a pit in the sand and bury a bag of boots, marking the spot on a GPS for future use.

In his four-month-long captivity, Fowler never saw his captors refill at a gas station, or shop in a market. Yet they never ran out of gas. And although their diet was meager, they never ran out of food, a testament to the extensive supply network which they set up and are now refining and expanding.

Among the many challenges an invading army will face is the inhospitable terrain, Fowler said, which is so hot that at times "it was difficult to draw breath." A cable published by WikiLeaks from the U.S. Embassy in Bamako described how even the Malian troops deployed in the north before the coup could only work from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m., and spent the sunlight hours in the shade of their vehicles.

Yet Fowler said he saw al-Qaida fighters chant Quranic verses under the Sahara sun for hours, just one sign of their deep, ideological commitment.

"I have never seen a more focused group of young men," said Fowler, who now lives in Ottawa, Canada. "No one is sneaking off for R&R. They have left their wives and children behind. They believe they are on their way to paradise."

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Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed contributed to this report from Bamako and Mopti, Mali.

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Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi

Baba Ahmed can be reached at www.twitter.com/Babahmed1

Death toll from Syria university blasts reaches 87

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria closed universities and suspended classes for college students across the country Wednesday as anti-regime activists reported that the death toll from two massive blasts that ravaged a campus in the city of Aleppo reached 87.

The opposition and the government have blamed each other for the explosions, which marked a major escalation in the struggle for control of Aleppo — Syria's largest city and once the country's main commercial hub.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the number of those killed in Tuesday's blasts at Aleppo Universitycould rise even further because medics have collected unidentified body parts and some of the more than 150 injured are in critical condition.

It remains unclear what caused the blasts, which hit the campus as students took exams, setting cars alight and blowing the walls off dormitory rooms.

Activists said forces loyal to President Bashar Assad launched two airstrikes on the area at the time of the blasts, while Syrian state media said a "terrorist group" — the government's shorthand for rebels — hit it with two rockets.

Either way, the explosions shattered the relative calm of the sprawling, tree-lined campus, signaling that Syria's civil war has reached areas that were mostly spared the violence that has killed more than 60,000 people and reduced entire neighborhoods all across the nation to rubble.

Syria's Ministry of Higher Education suspended classes and exams at all Syrian universities on Wednesday, "in mourning for the souls of the heroic martyrs who were assassinated by the treacherous terrorist hand," the state news service reported.

The SANA report quoted the minister of higher education, Mahmoud Mualla, as saying that Assad had ordered the reconstruction of Aleppo University "with the utmost speed."

The competing narratives about what caused the blasts highlighted the difficulty of confirming reports from inside Syria.

The Syrian government bars most media from working in the country, making independent confirmation of events difficult. Both anti-regime activists and the government sift the information they give to journalists to boost their cause. And civilians stuck in the middle avoid talking to the media, fearing reprisals from both sides for speaking their minds.

Aleppo has been the focus of a violent struggle for control since rebel forces, mostly from rural areas north of the city, pushed in and began clashing with government troops last summer.

The university is in the city's west, a sector still controlled by the government. Both activists and the Assad regime said those killed in Tuesday's blasts were mostly students taking their mid-year exams and civilians who sought refuge in the university dorms after fleeing violence elsewhere.

Activists said a government warplane carried out two airstrikes on the university. To support their claim, they circulated a video they said showed a small trail of smoke left by a jet. They could not explain why the government would strike an area controlled by its forces.

"We have no idea why the plane hit there, but it was very clear that it was a plane that struck," said an Aleppo activist reached via Skype who spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

Syria's state news agency said a "terrorist group" — government shorthand for rebels — fired two rockets at the university from an area further north. It did not give numbers for the dead and wounded.

The scale of destruction appeared inconsistent with the rockets the rebels are known to possess.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of contacts inside Syria, said 87 people were killed in the blast, though it had documented the names of only 11 of them.

On Tuesday, Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari told a Security Council meeting on combatting terrorism that "a cowardly terrorist act targeted the students of Aleppo University" as they sat for their mid-terms. He said 82 students were killed and 152 were wounded.

Syria's crisis began with political protests in March 2011 but quickly descended into a full-blown civil war, with scores of rebel groups across the country fighting Assad's forces. The U.N. said this month that more than 60,000 people have been killed in the violence.