Colorado: Columbine tribute sought for victims

The first memorial to victims of the Columbine High School massacre was a simple bouquet of red tulips left next to a leafless tree just hours after the April 20, 1999, shootings.

On the fourth anniversary of the attack today, fund-raising has begun for the biggest memorial yet: a $3 million structure featuring a tribute to each of the 13 victims.

Organizers in Littleton hope the Columbine memorial will be built in time for the fifth anniversary.

In the worst school shooting in U.S. history, two Columbine students strode into the school, scattering bombs and gunfire. Twelve students and a teacher died before the gunmen committed suicide.

Oklahoma City: Families honor bombing victims

Families of the 168 people killed in the bombing of the Murrah federal building carried flowers and mementos Saturday to the spot where their loved ones died eight years earlier.

The explosion on April 19, 1995, tore the front off the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and gutted what remained, killing 149 adults and 19 children.

Several hundred people packed the First United Methodist Church for the ceremony, which included 168 seconds of silence at 9:02 a.m. — the time Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb exploded outside the building’s daycare center. McVeigh was executed in 2001 for the crime; codefendant Terry Nichols was sentenced to life in prison.

Florida: Shuttle director to leave NASA

Ron Dittemore, director of NASA’s space shuttle program, is expected to resign as early as this week and move to a new job in private industry, a government source said Saturday.

Immediately after the Columbia loss on Feb. 1, Dittemore took the lead role in explaining what the space agency knew before the accident and whether there was anything it could have done to prevent it.

Dittemore, 51, said in the days after the accident that took the lives of seven astronauts that he could not believe that foam debris falling off the shuttle’s external tank could have caused the tragedy.

Such an event now represents the leading theory of what happened.