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VIDEO: Today's Headline News from Associated Press

SANDY HOOK FAMILIES BRING EMOTION TO GUN DEBATE

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bringing their emotional advocacy to the national gun debate, families of those killed in the Connecticut school shooting are appearing with President Barack Obama and walking the halls of Congress to plead for stricter regulations.

 

They already have helped push through the nation's most restrictive firearms law, which Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, D-Conn., signed Thursday.

 

With no lobbying background and fueled by the power of their emotions, a group of Sandy Hook Elementary School families can take credit for helping shape the measure as it moved through the state Legislature.

 

Now they're trying to do the same in Washington, where gun legislation is facing tough resistance. Congress is returning from spring break, and Newtown, Conn., families plan to spend the coming week on Capitol Hill.

 

Their goal of their personal appeals is to speak to every senator who has yet to express support for the gun legislation, and to show how the Dec. 14 shooting has affected their lives.

 

CHURCH: PASTOR RICK WARREN'S SON COMMITS SUICIDE

 

LAKE FOREST, Calif. (AP) — The Southern California church headed by popular evangelical Pastor Rick Warren says his 27-year-old son has committed suicide.

 

Warren's Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif., says in a statement Saturday that Matthew Warren had struggled with mental illness and deep depression.

 

Warren is the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." In 2008, his church sponsored a presidential forum with Barack Obama and Republican John McCain. Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney had been invited to a similar forum last fall, but Warren canceled it, saying the campaign had become too uncivil.

 

Saddleback's website says that about 20,000 people attend weekend services at the church near Los Angeles.

 

SENATOR: NASA TO LASSO ASTEROID, BRING IT CLOSER

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator said Friday.

 

The ship would capture the 500-ton, 25-foot asteroid in 2019. Then using an Orion space capsule, a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for spacewalking exploration, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.

 

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said the plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth.