1. Memorial services are taking place today for some of the Virginia Tech students who died in Seung-Hui Cho's violent rampage. There was a day of mourning across Virginia for the victims yesterday. It included a moment of silence on the Virginia Tech campus at noon.

2. New photos of Fidel Castro. Pictures of the Cuban leader in meeting with the head of a visiting Chinese Communist Party delegation are the latest sign that Castro is becoming increasingly active more than eight months after having emergency surgery.

3. In Huston, NASA officials are trying to figure out how a contractor got past security with a pistol. William Phillips used the weapon to kill a co-worker before turning the gun on himself.

4. The dream trip into space is over for a billionaire software engineer who once won a junior cosmonaut contest. A Russian space capsule brought Charles Simonyi back to Earth today along with a Russian and an American who spent seven months in space.

WORDS IN THE NEWS

1. contractor : n-count
A contractor is a person or company that does work for other people or organization.

2. capsule: n-count
A space capsule is the part of a spacecraft in which people travel, and which often separates from the main rocket.