Treasury: No $1 trillion coin

A Treasury Department spokesman announced today that the department will not mint a platinum coin to sidestep raising the federal government's borrowing limit, telling the Washington Post that "neither the Treasury Department nor the Federal Reserve believes that the law can or should be used to facilitate the production of platinum coins for the purpose of avoiding an increase in the debt limit."

The idea, which had gained traction among some congressional Democrats and political analysts as a way of defanging the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip, was that the Treasury Department could simply mint a platinum coin, declare the value at $1 trillion, and deposit it into the Federal Reserve to allow continued spending in the absence of a vote to raise the debt ceiling.

With the idea now buried by Treasury, the stage is set for a full-on fight about the debt ceiling. President Obama and congressional Democrats have signaled that they simply will not negotiate on a vote to raise the borrowing limit, saying that it is Congress's duty to pay bills it has already accrued.

But congressional Republicans have given every indication that they plan to use the debt limit as a bargaining chip to extract deep spending cuts from reluctant Democrats.

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Poisoned Lottery Winner's Kin Were Suspicious

Urooj Khan had just brought home his $425,000 lottery check when he unexpectedly died the following day. Now, certain members of Khan's family are speaking publicly about the mystery -- and his nephew told ABC News they knew something was not right.

"He was a healthy guy, you know?" said the nephew, Minhaj Khan. "He worked so hard. He was always going about his business and, the thing is: After he won the lottery and the next day later he passes away -- it's awkward. It raises some eyebrows."

The medical examiner initially ruled Urooj Khan, 46, an immigrant from India who owned dry-cleaning businesses in Chicago, died July 20, 2012, of natural causes. But after a family member demanded more tests, authorities in November found a lethal amount of cyanide in his blood, turning the case into a homicide investigation.

"When we found out there was cyanide in his blood after the extensive toxicology reports, we had to believe that ... somebody had to kill him," Minhaj Khan said. "It had to happen, because where can you get cyanide?"

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

Authorities could be one step closer to learning what happened to Urooj Khan. A judge Friday approved an order to exhume his body at Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago as early as Thursday to perform further tests.

Lottery Winner Murdered: Widow Questioned By Police Watch Video

Moments after the court hearing, Urooj Khan's sister, Meraj Khan, remembered her brother as the kind of person who would've shared his jackpot with anyone. Speaking at the Cook County Courthouse, she hoped the exhumation would help the investigation.

"It's very hard because I wanted my brother to rest in peace, but then we have to have justice served," she said, according to ABC News station WLS in Chicago. "So if that's what it takes for him to bring justice and peace, then that's what needs to be done."

Khan reportedly did not have a will. With the investigation moving forward, his family is waging a legal fight against his widow, Shabana Ansari, 32, over more than $1 million, including Urooj Khan's lottery winnings, as well as his business and real estate holdings.

Khan's brother filed a petition Wednesday to a judge asking Citibank to release information about Khan's assets to "ultimately ensure" that [Khan's] minor daughter from a prior marriage "receives her proper share."

Ansari may have tried to cash the jackpot check after Khan's death, according to court documents, which also showed Urooj Khan's family is questioning if the couple was ever even legally married.

Ansari, Urooj Khan's second wife, who still works at the couple's dry cleaning business, has insisted they were married legally.

She has told reporters the night before her husband died, she cooked a traditional Indian meal for him and their family, including Khan's daughter and Ansari's father. Not feeling well, Khan retired early, Ansari told the Chicago Sun-Times, falling asleep in a chair, waking up in agony, then collapsing in the middle of the night. She said she called 911.

"It has been an incredibly hard time," she told ABC News earlier this week. "We went from being the happiest the day we got the check. It was the best sleep I've had. And then the next day, everything was gone.

"I am cooperating with the investigation," Ansari told ABC News. "I want the truth to come out."

Ansari has not been named a suspect, but her attorney, Steven Kozicki, said investigators did question her for more than four hours.

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Today on New Scientist: 11 January 2013

Largest structure challenges Einstein's smooth cosmos

One-twentieth the diameter of the observable universe, a group of galaxies dents the cherished idea that the cosmos is uniform at large scales

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Zoologger: Mouse eats scorpions and howls at the moon

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Astrophile: Zombie stars feed on Earth-like exoplanets

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Life will find a way, even in the midst of a hurricane

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Physics not biology may be key to beating cancer

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Your body's insights into life and cosmos

The Universe Within by Neil Shubin tells stories from your body about our species, planet and universe. PLUS: a cautionary tale of inspirational scientists

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Personal assistant for your emails streamlines your life

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DNA 'identichip' gives a detailed picture of a suspect

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Most fundamental clock ever could redefine kilogram

Physicists have created the first clock with a tick that depends on the hyper-regular frequency of matter itself

Nanomachine mimics nature's protein factory

An artificial ribosome that assembles proteins and peptides could make it much easier to manufacture antibiotics and exotic new materials

Muscle mimic pulls electricity from wet surface

A plastic film that repeatedly curls up and flips over when wet could power devices in remote areas or sensors embedded in sweaty clothing

Read More..

US study warns of extreme heat, more severe storms

WASHINGTON: A government report warned on Friday that the United States could face more frequent severe weather including heat waves and storms for decades to come as temperatures rise far beyond levels being planned for.

The draft Third National Climate Assessment, a scientific study legally mandated to advise US policymakers, made few bones that carbon emissions have been causing climate change -- a source of controversy among some lawmakers.

"Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," the study said. "The sum total of this evidence tells an unambiguous story: The planet is warming."

The study, which was submitted for public and expert review and could be revised, said there was "strong evidence" that human activity had already roughly doubled the probability of extreme heat of the kind seen in Texas and Oklahoma in the summer of 2011.

The assessment expected temperatures to keep rising and offered different scenarios for the future -- including temperatures rising between 2.8 and 5.6 degrees Celsius (5 and 10 degrees Fahrenheit) after 2050 if emissions climb further.

Such a rise would be far beyond the level anticipated by world leaders in UN-backed climate change negotiations, which have committed to holding warming to no more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

The report warned that climate change "threatens human health and well-being in many ways," including through more frequent storms, wildfires, diseases and worse air quality.

Rising sea levels have already damaged infrastructure and climate change could increasingly reduce the reliability of water supplies, particularly in the southern half of the United States and Great Plains, the report said.

While US agriculture will likely remain resilient in the next 25 years, yields of major crops could start declining by mid-century and warming oceans could threaten fish, the study said.

The draft assessment said that some additional climate change was "now unavoidable" but said that the United States still could decide how much to allow.

The draft assessment was released three days after the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2012 was easily the warmest year on record in the continental United States and ranked second for extreme weather.

Environmental advocates hoped that the release of the draft report would bring fresh momentum to efforts to tackle climate change.

"Climate change is taking its toll on people and their economies, and will only become more intense without a strong and rapid response here in the United States and around the globe," Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, said in a statement.

President Barack Obama has hinted he will make a new effort on climate change in the wake of his November 6 re-election and massive storm Sandy, which killed at least 120 people in the US Northeast.

Efforts by Obama's Democratic Party to mandate cuts in carbon emissions failed in 2010 in the Senate. Lawmakers of the rival Republican Party said that legislation would be too costly and voiced doubt over climate science.

Since then, the Obama administration has ordered higher standards for power plants. US emissions dropped in 2011, largely due to increased use of natural gas instead of coal.

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, who released a report in November that warned of potentially catastrophic 4.0 degree Celsius warming if no action is taken, said that evidence is "overwhelming" on climate change.

Speaking on Friday at a luncheon honouring Korean Americans, Kim voiced fear that his three-year-old son would live "a world that looks completely different from the world we have today" when he nears his father's age in 2060.

"If you have a three-year-old child, or if you have a three-year-old grandchild, what you've got to understand is, if we don't act aggressively on climate change, the world they live in will be daily fights over access to water, daily fights over access to food," he said.

- AFP/al

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Why death comes sooner in America

A report finds that Americans have "shorter lives and poorer health," coming in last in key areas behind 16 other rich nations

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Aaron Carroll: New study shows U.S. health and lifespan worst of 17 rich countries


• He says it's because of personal choices, systemic woes. Poverty high, health care uneven


• He says this particularly affects youth, plagued by sickness, violence, high mortality


• Carroll: Don't make it political. The richest country in the world must improve public health

Editor's note: Dr. Aaron E. Carroll is an associate professor of pediatrics at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the director of the university's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research. He blogs about health policy at The Incidental Economist and tweets at @aaronecarroll.

(CNN) -- A just-released report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council is making news by clearly illustrating that Americans have "shorter lives and poorer health." This is somewhat shocking, given how much we spend on health care each year — more than any of the 16 other rich countries surveyed in the study. What's even more upsetting is that this report focused quite heavily on people who are young. In the United States, even that group fared poorly.

Aaron Carroll

Why is this?

Some of the reasons involve choices make at a personal level. We eat too much, abuse drugs too often, wear seat belts too rarely and commit violence against each other to often.

Systemic issues are also to blame. We have higher levels of poverty than comparable countries, and our safety net programs are less capable of catching people when they fall. And too many also have too much trouble accessing the health care system, resulting in inefficient, ineffective and often absent care.

It's far too easy to let these dreadful statistics become obscured in a politically charged argument. Let's avoid that. This report is so stark that it's going to take a concerted effort on the part of the government, the media, the health care system and everyday citizens to turn things around. Our personal choices are bad. Our safety nets are bad. Our health care system is bad. It's all bad. How bad?

When compared with peer countries, the United States was the absolute worst with respect to still births, infant mortality and low birth weight. Some have tried to blame this on "coding" differences. In other words, they will claim that other countries will refuse to define a premature birth as we do, resulting in artificially high numbers in the United States. But when this report recalculated the rates to exclude such births equally in all countries, we still ranked last.

Things don't get better after birth. The chance that a child in the United States will die before age 5 is higher than in any of the other 16 peer countries. Injuries are the most common cause of death, but the United States also has the highest rate of deaths caused by negligence or abuse.

And violence is decidedly an American problem. Homicide is the third most common cause of death in children age 1-4.

From age 5-19, the trend continues. Kids this age in the United States have the worst health ranking of the 17 studied countries. More than one-third of U.S. children age 5-17 are obese or overweight, the highest of any peer country. The adolescent pregnancy rate in the United States is about 3.5 times the average of others. Additionally, the rates of sexually transmitted infections, including syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are the worst compared to peer countries.

Nor are these children exempt from death. Injury deaths are more common in 15- to 19-year-olds in the United States than in any other studied country. Homicide claims the second highest number of lives in 15- to -24-year-olds, and 4 in 5 of those deaths involve guns. Males between the ages of 15 and 19 are five times as likely to die from violence in the United States than in other countries.

Even as young adults, ages 25-34, mortality remains consistently upsetting and preventable. Unintentional injuries remain the No. 1 cause of death. The risk of dying by violence remains seven times higher for males in the United States ages 20-24 than in other countries.

We have to work together to make these numbers better. Some of them can be improved with public health measures. We need to help Americans be less obese, to have fewer accidents and to commit less violence. There are lots of local studies and initiatives that propose ways to fix these things, but our public health system is woefully underfunded, and translating any promising findings to meaningful societal change poses a huge challenge.

We also need to improve our safety nets to help children at the lowest end of the socioeconomic ladder do better, even before they are born. Pregnant women, babies and children suffer from hunger and malnutrition far too often in the richest country in the world. Yet we still debate the merits of the federally funded WIC (Womens, Infants and Children) program, school lunches and food assistance to needy families.

Finally, we need to find a way to improve access to the health care system. The Medicaid program covers one in every three births and one in every three children in the United States, and it's still not enough. As some states balk at expanding Medicaid to cover many of the poorest uninsured, some are still talking about reducing funding to the already stretched program. There's no question that we have the capability, the knowledge and the resources to care for people. It's just a matter of doing it better.

There will be some who deny these results. Others will try to use them for political gain. That would be a mistake. We have to accept these findings and begin to work holistically to improve them. Being last just isn't the American way.

Follow us on Twitter @CNNOpinion.

Join us on Facebook/CNNOpinion.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Aaron Carroll.

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U.S. tells computer users to disable Java software

WASHINGTON The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is advising people to temporarily disable the Java software on their computers to avoid potential hacking attacks.

The recommendation came in an advisory issued late Thursday, following up on concerns raised by computer security experts.

Experts believe hackers have found a flaw in Java's coding that creates an opening for criminal activity and other high-tech mischief.

CNET's Topher Kessler writes:

"The malware has currently been seen attacking Windows, Linux and Unix systems, and while so far has not focused on OS X, may be able to do so given OS X is largely similar to Unix and Java is cross-platform.

Even though the exploit has not been seen in OS X, Apple has taken steps to block it by issuing an update to its built-in XProtect system to block the current version of the Java 7 runtime and require users install an as of yet unreleased version of the Java runtime.

Luckily with the latest versions of Java, users who need to keep it active can change a couple of settings to help secure their systems. Go to the Java Control Panel that is installed along with the runtime, and in the Security section uncheck the option to "Enable Java content in the browser," which will disable the browser plug-in. This will prevent the inadvertent execution of exploits that may be stumbled upon when browsing the Web, and is a recommended setting for most people to do. If you need to see a Java applet on the Web, then you can always temporarily re-enable the plug-in.

The second setting is to increase the security level of the Java runtime, which can also be done in the same Security section of the Java Control Panel. The default security level is Medium, but you can increase this to High or Very High. At the High level, Java will prompt you for approval before running any unsigned Java code, and at the Very High level all Java code will require such approval, regardless of whether or not it is signed."

Java is a widely used technical language that allows computer programmers to write a wide variety of Internet applications and other software programs that can run on just about any computer's operating system.

Oracle Corp. bought Java as part of a $7.3 billion acquisition of the software's creator, Sun Microsystems, in 2010.

Oracle, which is based in Redwood Shores, Calif., had no immediate comment late Friday.

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Muscle mimic pulls electricity from wet surface

Electricity has been squeezed from a damp surface for the first time, thanks to a polymer film that curls up and moves – a bit like an artificial muscle – when exposed to moisture. The film could be used to run small, wearable devices on nothing but sweat, or in remote locations where conventional electricity sources aren't available.

When a dry polymer absorbs water, its molecular structure changes. This can, in principle, be converted into larger-scale movement, and in turn electricity. But previous attempts at creating a material powered by a moisture gradient – the difference in chemical potential energy between a wet region and a dry region - failed to produce a useful level of force.

These unsuccessful tries used a polymer called polypyrrole. Now Robert Langer and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have turned to the material again, embedding chains of it within another material, polyol-borate. This more complex arrangement mimics structures found in muscles as well as in plant tissues that bend in response to changes in humidity.

Flipping film

The result looks like an ordinary piece of thin black plastic, but when placed on a wet surface, something extraordinary happens. As the material absorbs water, its end curls away from the surface and the film becomes unstable, so it flips over. The ends have now dried out, so they are ready to absorb more water, and the whole process repeats itself. This continuous flipping motion lets the film travel across a suitably moist surface unaided.

Langer found that a 0.03-millimetre-thick strip, weighing roughly 25 milligrams, could curl up and lift a load 380 times its mass to a height of 2 millimetres. It was also able to move sideways when carrying a load about 10 times its mass.

To extract energy from this effect, Langer's team added a layer of piezoelectric material – one which produces electricity when squeezed. When this enhanced film, weighing about 100 milligrams, flipped over, it generated an output of 5.6 nanowatts – enough to power a microchip in sleep mode.

Electricity from sweat

Though the output is small, it is proof that electricity can be extracted from a water gradient. "To the extent of our knowledge, we are the first to utilise a water gradient, without a pressure gradient, to generate electricity," says Langer.

Large-scale energy harvesting is unlikely as the size of the device needed would be impractical, but it could be used to power small devices such as environmental monitoring systems in remote locations. "It will be interesting for applications where the amount of energy needed may be low but where access to energy may be difficult," says Peter Fratzl at the Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, who was not involved in the work.

Another application, Langer suggests, would be to place the film inside the clothing of joggers or athletes. The evaporation of sweat could generate enough electricity to power sensors monitoring blood pressure and heart rate.

Journal reference: Science, DOI 10.1126/science.1230262

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US flu outbreak claims at least 18 lives

WASHINGTON: The United States was in the grip Thursday of a deadly influenza outbreak that has hit harder and earlier than in previous years, and has claimed the lives of at least 18 children.

"It looks like the worst year we had since 2003-2004," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Fauci said this year's influenza strain, which has sickened thousands across the country, is particularly severe.

"The type of flu is one that generally is more serious. It's the H3N2 variety, which is historically more serious than we see with other types of virus," he said.

The epidemic, which broke out at the beginning of December, has caused some 2,200 hospitalizations across the United States, federal health officials said.

Particularly hard hit has been the northeastern city of Boston, where officials have declared a public health emergency.

City officials there said there so far have been about 700 confirmed cases of flu, almost 10 times the number from this time last year.

"This is the worst flu season we've seen since 2009, and people should take the threat of flu seriously," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said in a statement.

"I'm urging residents to get vaccinated if they haven't already. It's the best thing you can do to protect yourself and your family. If you're sick, please stay home from work or school," he said.

Joe Bresee, chief of the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Influenza division, said officials don't yet know how much worse this year's outbreak will get.

"While we can't say for certain how severe this season will be, we can say that a lot of people are getting sick with influenza and we are getting reports of severe illness and hospitalizations," he said.

US states, particularly in the northeast of the country, have seen a sharp spike in emergency room visits from patients reporting flu-like symptoms, according to the federal CDC in Atlanta.

In Allentown, Pennsylvania, one hospital had to erect a large outdoor tent to admit and treat the large number of flu sufferers.

Health officials said that the flu vaccine is a good match for the strain of influenza circulating around the nation, and confers about 60 per cent to 65 per cent protection against the illness.

"You might get the flu but it will likely be less severe if you are vaccinated," Fauci said.

- AFP/ck

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Beheading exposes exploitation

(File photo) Sri Lankan women protest outside the Saudi Arabia embassy in Colombo on November 9, 2010.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Saudi authorities beheaded Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan woman


• She was convicted of killing a baby of the family employing her as a housemaid


• This was despite Nafeek's claims that the baby died in a choking accident


• Becker says her fate "should spotlight the precarious existence of domestic workers"

Jo Becker is the Children's Rights Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch and author of 'Campaigning for Justice: Human Rights Advocacy in Practice.' Follow Jo Becker on Twitter.

(CNN) -- Rizana Nafeek was a child herself -- 17 years old according to her birth certificate -- when a four-month-old baby died in her care in Saudi Arabia. She had migrated from Sri Lanka only weeks earlier to be a domestic worker for a Saudi family.

Although Rizana said the baby died in a choking accident, Saudi courts convicted her of murder and sentenced her to death. On Wednesday, the Saudi government carried out the sentence in a gruesome fashion, by beheading Rizana.

Jo Becker

Read more: Outrage over beheading of Sri Lankan woman by Saudi Arabia

Rizana's case was rife with problems from the beginning. A recruitment agency in Sri Lanka knew she was legally too young to migrate, but she had falsified papers to say she was 23. After the baby died, Rizana gave a confession that she said was made under duress -- she later retracted it. She had no lawyer to defend her until after she was sentenced to death and no competent interpreter during her trial. Her sentence violated international law, which prohibits the death penalty for crimes committed before age 18.

Rizana's fate should arouse international outrage. But it should also spotlight the precarious existence of other domestic workers. At least 1.5 million work in Saudi Arabia alone and more than 50 million -- mainly women and girls -- are employed worldwide according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Read more: Indonesian maid escapes execution in Saudi Arabia

Again according to the ILO, the number of domestic workers worldwide has grown by more than 50% since the mid-1990s. Many, like Rizana, seek employment in foreign countries where they may be unfamiliar with the language and legal system, and have few rights.

When Rizana traveled to Saudi Arabia, for example, she may not have known that many Saudi employers confiscate domestic workers' passports and confine them inside their home, cutting them off from the outside world and sources of help.

It is unlikely that anyone ever told her about Saudi Arabia's flawed criminal justice system, or that while many domestic workers find kind employers who treat them well, others are forced to work for months or even years without pay, and subjected to physical or sexual abuse.

Passport photo of Rizana Nafeek

Read more: Saudi woman beheaded for 'witchcraft and sorcery'

Conditions for migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are among some of the worst, but domestic workers in other countries rarely enjoy the same rights as other workers. In a new report this week, the International Labour Organization says that nearly 30% of the world's domestic workers are completely excluded from national labor laws. They typically earn only 40% of the average wage of other workers. Forty-five percent aren't even entitled by law to a weekly day off.

Last year, I interviewed young girls in Morocco who worked 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for a fraction of the minimum wage. One girl began working at age 12 and told me: "I don't mind working, but to be beaten and not to have enough food, this is the hardest part."

Many governments have finally begun to recognize the risks and exploitation domestic workers face. During 2012, dozens of countries took action to strengthen protections for domestic workers. Thailand, and Singapore approved measures to give domestic workers a weekly day off, while Venezuela and the Philippines adopted broad laws for domestic workers ensuring a minimum wage, paid holidays, and limits to their working hours. Brazil is amending its constitution to state that domestic workers have all the same rights as other workers. Bahrain codified access to mediation of labor disputes.

Read more: Convicted killer beheaded, put on display in Saudi Arabia

Perhaps most significantly, eight countries acted in 2012 to ratify -- and therefore be legally bound by -- the Domestic Workers Convention, with more poised to follow suit this year. The convention is a groundbreaking treaty adopted in 2011 to guarantee domestic workers the same protections available to other workers, including weekly days off, effective complaints procedures and protection from violence.

The Convention also has specific protections for domestic workers under the age of 18 and provisions for regulating and monitoring recruitment agencies. All governments should ratify the convention.

Many reforms are needed to prevent another tragic case like that of Rizana Nafeek. The obvious one is for Saudi Arabia to stop its use of the death penalty and end its outlier status as one of only three countries worldwide to execute people for crimes committed while a child.

Labor reforms are also critically important. They may have prevented the recruitment of a 17 year old for migration abroad in the first place. And they can protect millions of other domestic workers who labor with precariously few guarantees for their safety and rights.

Read more: Malala, others on front lines in fight for women

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jo Becker.

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Student shot at Calif. high school by classmate

Updated at 8:33 p.m. ET

TAFT, Calif. A 16-year-old student armed with a shotgun walked into class in a rural California high school on Thursday and shot one student, fired at another but missed, and then was talked into surrendering by a teacher and another staff member, officials said.

The teen victim was in critical but stable condition, Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood told a press conference. The sheriff said the teacher suffered a minor pellet wound to the head but declined treatment.

The gunman had as many as 20 rounds of ammunition in his pocket, the sheriff said.

The attack there came less than a month after a gunman massacred 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, then killed himself.

That shooting prompted President Barack Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said in a statement that her father had attended Taft Union and she has visited the school over the years.

"At this moment my thoughts and prayers are with the victims, and I wish them a speedy recovery," Feinstein said. "But how many more shootings must there be in America before we come to the realization that guns and grievances do not belong together?"

When the shots were fired, the teacher tried to get the more than two dozen students out a back door and also engaged the shooter in conversation to distract him, Youngblood said. A campus supervisor responding to a call of shots fired also began talking to the gunman.

"They talked him into putting that shotgun down. He in fact told the teacher, `I don't want to shoot you,' and named the person that he wanted to shoot," Youngblood said.

"The heroics of these two people goes without saying. ... They could have just as easily ... tried to get out of the classroom and left students and they didn't," the sheriff said. "They knew not to let him leave the classroom with that shotgun."

The shooter didn't show up for first period then interrupted the class of 28 students.

Investigators had not yet had a chance to interview the student and so had no immediate word on a motive or whether the attacker had a previous disciplinary record. Nor did they know where he got the shotgun.

The wounded student was flown to a hospital in Bakersfield. Officials said a female student was hospitalized with possible hearing damage because the shotgun was fired close to her ear, and another girl received minor injuries during the scramble to flee when she fell over a table.

Officials said there's usually an armed officer on campus but the person wasn't there because he was snowed in. Taft police officers arrived within 60 seconds of first reports.

The shooting happened on the second floor of the school's science building around 9 a.m., according to CBS affiliate KBAK in Bakersfield.

As word spread, Dayna Hopper rushed to the school to pick up her son Joseph Sorensen, 16, and daughter, Cheryle Pryor, 15, who had called from Cheryle's cellphone.

"I panicked. I wanted to puke and just get here," Dayna Hopper told The Bakersfield Californian.

KERO-TV Bakersfield reported that the station received phone calls from people inside the school who hid in closets.

The bell had just rung at a nearby school when teachers began shouting for students to get inside buildings, and the principal used an intercom to tell students to stay inside, Felicity Reich, 13, a student at Lincoln Junior High School, told the newspaper.

Shaken, she held the hand of her mother, Ellie Reich, as she spoke.

About 900 students are enrolled at the high school, which includes 9th through 12th grades. Authorities went room by room through the school and expected to spend the day checking backpacks to make sure no other weapons were on campus.

Masses of parents headed to the school football field to find their children, and officials at other schools took action to protect their students as well, the newspaper said.

Wilhelmina Reum, whose daughter Alexis Singleton is a fourth-grader at a nearby elementary school, got word of the attack while she was about 35 miles away in Bakersfield and immediately sped back to Taft.

"I just kept thinking this can't be happening in my little town," she told The Associated Press.

"I was afraid I was going to get hurt," Alexis said. "I just wanted my mom to get here so I could go home."

The Taft shooting came less than a month after a gunman massacred 20 children and six women at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., then killed himself.

That shooting prompted President Barack Obama to promise new efforts to curb gun violence. Vice President Joe Biden, who was placed in charge of the initiative, said he would deliver new policy proposals to the president by next week.

At the state Capitol, Assembly Speaker John Perez, D-Los Angeles, said the thoughts and prayers of legislators were with the people at the Taft school.

"It really is just another very sad moment as we deal with the ongoing reality of gun violence that has captured so much of our attention this last year," Perez said.

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