Teen pleads guilty

Teen pleads guilty

CHARDON

A teenager charged with killing three students at an Ohio high school pleaded guilty to all charges Tuesday, the eve of the first anniversary of the shooting rampage.

T.J. Lane, now 18, pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of attempted aggravated murder and a single count of felonious assault.

The anniversary today in Chardon, a tight-knit community east of Cleveland, will be marked with a memorial walk and service activities at the school.

Senate OKs Hagel

WASHINGTON

A deeply divided Senate voted Tuesday to confirm Republican Chuck Hagel to be the nation’s next defense secretary, handing President Barack Obama’s choice the top Pentagon job just days before billions of dollars in automatic, across-the-board budget cuts hit the military.

The vote was 58-41, with four Republicans joining the Democrats in backing the contentious choice.

Advanced cancer up in young women

chicago

Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease still is uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads about possible reasons.

The results potentially are worrisome because young women’s tumors tend to be more aggressive than older women’s, and they’re much less likely to get routine screening for the disease.

Still, that doesn’t explain why there would be an increase in advanced cases, and the researchers and other experts say more work is needed to find answers.

Balloon accident kills 19 in Egypt

LUXOR, Egypt

The terror lasted less than two minutes: Smoke poured from a hot-air balloon carrying sightseers on a sunrise flight over the ancient city of Luxor, it burst in a flash of flame and then plummeted about 1,000 feet to earth. A farmer watched helplessly as tourists trying to escape the blazing gondola leaped to their deaths.

Nineteen people were killed Tuesday in what appeared to be the deadliest hot-air ballooning accident on record. A British tourist and the Egyptian pilot, who was badly burned, were the sole survivors.

The tragedy raised worries of another blow to the nation’s vital tourism industry, decimated by two years of unrest since the 2011 revolution that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Associated Press