In brief: Shooting suspect found not fit for trial
OAKLAND, Calif. – A judge ruled on Monday that a man accused of killing seven people at a small Northern California Christian college is not mentally fit for trial.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Carrie Panetta temporarily suspended the case against One Goh after two psychiatric evaluations reached the conclusion that Goh suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
Alameda County Assistant Public Defender David Klaus said after Monday’s brief hearing that Goh’s condition causes him to have hallucinations and delusions and distrust people, including those trying to help him.
Goh is charged with seven counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in the April 2 attack at Oikos University in Oakland.
He has pleaded not guilty and remains in jail.
Authorities have said Goh, a former Oikos student, planned the killing spree at the school that caters to Korean immigrants after becoming angry with school officials over a tuition dispute.
Court rejects Obama policy challenge
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has turned away a challenge to President Barack Obama’s policy of expanding government-funded research using embryonic stem cells that scientists say may offer hope for new treatments for spinal injuries and Parkinson’s disease.
The court’s action brings a quiet end to a lawsuit that briefly threatened to derail all funding for such research.
A federal judge in Washington in 2010 ordered the National Institutes of Health to halt funding of the research, citing a long-standing congressional ban on spending for research in which “human embryos are destroyed.”
But an appeals court overturned that order and ruled last year that the ban applied only to research that destroyed human embryos so as to obtain stem cells.
President George W. Bush in 2001 had allowed limited research on several stem cell lines that were already in existence. Upon taking office in 2009, Obama went further and said NIH could conduct “scientifically worthy human stem cell research to the extent permitted by law.” Under guidelines issued by NIH, researchers can use stem line cells derived from donated frozen embryos that are no longer needed for fertility treatments.
Two researchers who work with adult stem lines brought the lawsuit. They appealed to the high court in the fall, but the justices denied the appeal.