National and State News-Wednesday, April 18th

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - A former classmate says he and other students were seriously worried about whether Cho Seung-Hui "could be a school shooter." The man suspected of
killing 32 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself is described as a loner whose writings were violent and twisted.

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - With classes canceled the rest of the week, many Virginia Tech students have left Blacksburg. But thousands remembered the shooting victims last night, gathering to hold candles skyward. Some students wept and a few in the crowd sang Amazing Grace. Trumpeters played taps.

UNDATED (AP) - More vigils for the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre will take place at colleges across the country in the coming days. There have been many already, including 300 people who turned out at Miami University in Ohio to place candles around a reflecting pool.

BAGHDAD (AP) - U-S troops have carried out a raid in Iraq's Anbar province, killing five suspected insurgents and capturing 30 others. The military also has revealed it seized three-thousand gallons of nitric acid in a Baghdad warehouse last week. The acid can be used to make explosives.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Some extra headaches for late tax filers. Many had to wait hours yesterday for confirmation that their returns had been successfully e-filed before the deadline. A flood of returns swamped the computer servers of a company that makes the popular TurboTax and ProSeries tax software.


BELLEFONTE, Pa. (AP) - Twenty-seven-year-old Jeremy Herbstritt of Centre County was among the 33 people killed at Virginia Tech. The 1998 Bellefonte Area High School and Penn State graduate was studying civil engineering, according to the student directory. His death was confirmed by Penn State's Office of Physical Plant, where his father, Mike Herbstritt, works.
Also killed was a New Jersey man from Dumont who attended a private boarding school in Pennsylvania from 1999 to 2005, according to the school and Dumont police. Twenty-year-old Matthew La Porte had credited the Carson Long Military Institute in New Bloomfield with turning his life around, he said in a graduation speech printed in the school yearbook. Twenty-two-year-old Kevin Sterne of Eighty-four was among the dozens of students shot. He is in stable condition. Doctors say the former Eagle Scout kept enough cool to fashion a tourniquet from an electrical cord after a bullet gashed the femoral artery of his right leg. A picture of Sterne, sprawled and bloody, in the arms of others who struggled to carry him to safety captured the horror of the situation. A woman from suburban Pittsburgh was also wounded. She is 19-year-old Hilary Strollo, a Pine-Richland High graduate.

PITTSBURGH (AP) - A judge has dismissed charges against a woman accused of shooting her ex-husband to death 21 years ago. Allegheny County Judge Lawrence J-O'Toole issued the ruling yesterday after a preliminary hearing. He says prosecutors did not present enough evidence to order Diana Rader to stand trial for the February 1986 murder of 47-year-old Raymond Marzoch, a state prison guard. Rader wept when O'Toole dismissed the charges, saying she had always believed in the justice system. Prosecutors had accused 62-year-old Rader of North Huntingdon of shooting Marzoch in the head as he sat in the driver's seat of a
car in a downtown Pittsburgh parking garage. The district attorney declined comment through a spokesman.

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - State Auditor General Jack Wagner says his office will do an audit of Pennsylvania's college-loan agency -- and a major reason is the news reports about lavish spending at the agency. Officials say the audit of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency will focus on its performance in improving access to higher education. It will include an evaluation of the state grant program as well as compensation, benefits and expenses.
PHEAA spokesman Keith New says the agency is audited more than 40 times a year by its own auditors and those of its business partners. He says the agency will cooperate fully with the
state auditors. The audit, which will look back as far as July 2004, is expected to take months to complete.

FORT BRAGG, N.C. (AP) - Whether a former National Guardsman charged with killing two officers could face the death penalty may depend on whether or not the U-S is "at war" according to a military description for courts-martial. Staff Sergeant Alberto Martinez faces two counts of murder in the June 2005 deaths of Captain Phillip Esposito of New York and
First Lieutenant Louis Allen of Milford, Pennsylvania. He's accused of setting off an explosive in the window of a room the two men were in. Defense attorneys for Martinez raised the question of whether the United States is at war during a pretrial hearing yesterday. They also sought to postpone an August 13th start of the court-martial. The "time of war" designation was one of four reasons cited for making the court-martial a capital case. But a prosecutor says three other reasons were cited, including that officers were killed, that more than one person was killed and that other people were endangered.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Two groups that lost bids to get the state's last harness racing license have taken their case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The state racing commission denied licenses to Centaur Incorporated and a group led by businessman Carmen Shick. Both
proposed sites northwest of Pittsburgh near the Ohio border. The commission says it rejected Centaur's Valley View Downs in Beaver County because of site problems. But Valley View says the panel changed its rules midway through the game. Shick's Bedford Downs in Lawrence County was rejected because the commission found that his late grandfather had apparently
loaned four (m) million dollars to mob figures. But Shick's lawyer, Victor Stabile, says the group should not be punished for "sins of the father."

EASTON, Pa. (AP) - An expulsion hearing is scheduled today for a Bangor Area High School student who had a knife in his luggage on a class trip. Cody Gonzales' mother says her son had the knife in his bag from a camping trip several years ago and had forgotten about it. The
district superintendent says he believes that, but even if a student has a knife by accident, it still violates the district's weapons policy. Gonzales was on a band trip to Great Britain when airport inspectors found the knife in his luggage.