Mark Memmott

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Killing Of Fla. Teen Trayvon Martin Becomes National Story About Race.

-- Apple To Buy Back $10B In Shares; Pay Dividend Of $2.65 Per Share.

The Associated Press just moved this alert:

"Apple says it will use its cash to start paying dividend of $2.65, buy back $10B in shares."

Here are some of the latest developments concerning the March 11 killings of 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan and the U.S. Army staff sergeant, Robert Bales, who is suspected of carrying out the massacre:

-- Defense attorney John Henry Browne will today "have his first face-to-face meeting with the 10-year Army veteran, who is being held in an isolated cell at Fort Leavenworth's military prison in Kansas," The Associated Press reports.

Now that 911 recordings show how a white Florida man continued to follow a 17-year-old black boy even after police advised him not to — and captured the sound of the man killing the unarmed youth with a shot to the chest — Trayvon Martin's family wants the FBI to take over the investigation into his killing.

The gunman says it was an act of self defense during a Neighborhood Watch patrol.

There are fears in France today that the killings of at least four people outside a Jewish school in the city of Toulouse are linked to earlier murders of three soldiers and that the victims were targeted because they belonged to ethnic or religious minorities.

The "family friend" who told The Oregonian that its editorial page editor was in his car on Saturday when he died of a heart attack turns out to have been another editor at the newspaper. She says she was trying to protect Caldwell's family from the public embarrassment that would come with the truth: that he had been in the apartment of a young woman with whom he was allegedly having sex.

Some of the documents seized last May after U.S. Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan show that the al-Qaida leader "boldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Barack Obama and Gen.

Dharun Ravi, the former Rutgers University student "accused of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate's love life has been convicted of bias intimidation and invasion of privacy in a case that exploded into the headlines when the victim of the snooping committed suicide" in September, 2010, The Associated Press writes.

The 20-year-old "could face 10 years in prison when he's sentenced," the AP adds.

The student council at the University of California Irvine approved a resolution Thursday demanding that Dr. Hazem Chehabi, Syria's honorary consul in Southern California, be removed from the post of chair at the UC Irving Foundation, which supports the school and is trying to raise $1 billion for it.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Karzai At 'End Of The Rope,' Says Witnesses Dispute U.S. Account Of Killings.

-- Soldier Accused Of Massacre 'Just Snapped,' Official Says.

Saying that Sunday's murders of 16 civilians has him at "the end of the rope," Afghan President Hamid Karzai "lashed out at the United States" today, The Associated Press reports.

Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent in February from January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported. The increase — the largest in the past 10 months — was mostly fueled by higher prices for gasoline.

Excluding the food and energy sectors, prices rose 0.1 percent. That's a sign that the so-called core rate of inflation remains in check.

According to BLS:

-- Gas prices spiked 6 percent last month and were up 12.6 percent from February 2011.

While American sports fans focus on college basketball, there's big cricket news that's making headlines in much of the rest of the world:

"Sachin Tendulkar Scores his 100th International Century For India." (BBC News)

If you had defending national champions Connecticut making it out of the first round in your NCAA men's basketball championship bracket, we're sorry to say that the Huskies lost on Thursday to Iowa State by a score of 77-64.

It's not a huge upset, since Iowa State was seeded No. 8 in the South region and Connecticut was seeded No. 9. But still, it's a quick exit for last year's top team.

We're learning more about the U.S. Army staff sergeant accused in Sunday's massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children:

Rowan Williams, who as archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader for more than 70 million Anglicans around the world, announced today that he will step down at the end of the year to become Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University.

"Researchers from the University of Rochester and North Carolina State University have for the first time sent a message using a beam of neutrinos — nearly massless particles that travel at almost the speed of light," U of R reports.

And they pushed the message — which simply spelled out the world "Neutrino" — through "240 meters of stone" (787 feet).

An alert for all those who were caught up in the excitement last year when the Decorah Eagle Cam was streaming as a pair of bald eagles in Iowa watched over their three eggs and as the eaglets hatched:

He's "like James Dean, a star dead before his time," according to The Local.

Spiegel Online says "the future had looked so bright for tiny Til."

Global Post somberly says that "an attempt to show a rare rabbit on TV took a tragic turn."

In a "blistering" 500-page report released this morning a special prosecutor concludes that Justice Department lawyers "intentionally withheld" information that could have bolstered then-Sen. Ted Stevens' defense during the Alaska Republican's 2008 trial on corruption charges, NPR's Carrie Johnson tells us.

There was a 14,000 decline in the number of people filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance last week, the Employment and Training Administration just reported:

"In the week ending March 10, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 351,000, a decrease of 14,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 365,000. The 4-week moving average was 355,750, unchanged from the previous week's revised average of 355,750."

The priest who was put on administrative leave by the Archdiocese of Washington following a much-talked-about incident in which he denied communion to a lesbian woman attending her mother's funeral, has issued a long defense of his action and has said the church isn't being candid about the reason for its decision to put him on leave.

The news that the U.S. Army staff sergeant who is suspected of murdering 16 Afghan civilians has been moved to a detention facility in Kuwait is sparking some small protests in Afghanistan.

Greg Smith is a fairly ordinary name — but it's now one that's all the talk of Wall Street after he quit his position at Goldman Sachs today in one of the most amazingly public ways:

With an essay in The New York Times that accuses Goldman Sachs of having a money-is-everything culture that is "toxic and destructive."

President Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron are due to hold a news conference at the White House just after noon ET.

We'll live blog as they speak, so check back as the time approaches and hit your "refresh" button every once in a while after they get started.

After two years of going with the wrong team to win it all, President Obama is counting on North Carolina — the team he correctly picked to win the 2009 NCAA men's basketball championship — to end up No. 1 this year.

As he has each year since taking office, the president spent time with ESPN going over his bracket for the tournament.

After Oregonian editorial page editor Bob Caldwell died Saturday, the report from the newspaper on Sunday said he had suffered a heart attack.

That does appear to be the 63-year-old journalist's cause of death. But the circumstances surrounding his last moments were considerably more complicated.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- 'Tragic Day For All Of Belgium': 22 Children Killed In Bus Crash.

-- In Afghanistan, Panetta Says Mission Continues.

Repair crews are working this morning to restore power to thousands of homes and businesses in Boston's Back Bay district, "after two transformers caught fire Tuesday night, knocking out power" and sending think black smoke billowing over the area, our colleagues at WBUR report.

There's been a horrible traffic accident inside a Swiss tunnel. At least 28 people — 22 of them children mostly around the age of 12 — were killed Tuesday night when the bus they were in crashed.