Giglio Island, Italy - Engineers on Monday succeeded in wresting the hull of the shipwrecked Costa Concordia from the Italian reef where it has been stuck since it capsized in January 2012, leaving them cautiously optimistic they can rotate the luxury liner upright and eventually tow it away.

Never before has such an enormous cruise ship been righted, and the crippled Concordia didn't budge for the first three hours after the operation began, engineer Sergio Girotto told reporters. But after some 6,000 tons of force were applied using a complex system of pulleys and counterweights, "we saw the detachment" from the reef thanks to undersea cameras, he said.

Girotto said the cameras did not immediately reveal any sign of the two bodies that were never recovered from among the 32 who died Jan. 13, 2012 when the Concordia slammed into a reef and capsized after the ship's captain steered the luxury liner too close to Giglio Island.

Images transmitted by robotic diving vehicles indicated that the submerged side of the hull had suffered "great deformation" from all its time on the granite seabed, battered by waves and compressed under the weight of the ship's 115,000 tons, Girotto said.

The initial operation to lift the Concordia from the reef moved the ship just 3 degrees toward vertical, leaving the vessel some 62 degrees shy of being pulled upright. While a seemingly small shift, the movement was significant enough to be visible: A few feet of slime-covered hull that had been underwater became visible above the waterline.

Engineers were waiting for the operation's completion before declaring success: The entire rotation was expected to last as long as 12 hours, with crews prepared to work into the night if need be.

So far, "rotation has gone according to predictions," and no appreciable pollution from inside the ship has spewed out, said Franco Gabrielli, chief of Italy's Civil Protection agency, which is overseeing the operation.

As many as two shooters, including one in fatigues, killed at least four people and wounded eight others in a rampage at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, police said, spreading fear and chaos across the region as authorities tried to contain the incident.

Initial reports were marked by confusion, but by late morning, police said at least one of the shooters was "down." It was unclear whether that means the suspect was in custody, wounded or dead. They said that another suspect may have been pinned down in a building on the installation in Southeast Washington near Nationals Park.

Gunfire was heard shortly before 11 a.m., two and a half hours after the first shots were fired, an area where police believed that person was barricaded. Police were sweeping Building 197, the Naval Sea Systems Command Headquarters where the shooter was apparently holed up. The number of shooters still was unclear.

At least two police officers were shot. Police on the scene said one is a D.C. Metro Police officer who was shot twice in the leg and was evacuated on a helicopter that took off from a rooftop. The other was a base officer. The D.C. officer, a male, was concious at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and his chances for survival were good, hospital officials said.

Germany has granted temporary shelter to 5,000 Syrians and is urging other European nations to accept more refugees from Syria's civil war. The UN estimates that more than two million people have fled the conflict so far.

Germany is urging other European nations to consider taking in more Syrian refugees to help cope with the large number of people displaced by the country's conflict.

Interior Ministry spokesman Jens Teschke says Europe's most populous country "is leading by example" by giving temporary shelter to 5,000 Syrians as part of a special humanitarian assistance program lasting two years.

The U.N. refugee agency is seeking a total of 10,000 such places in 2013.

Teschke told reporters in Berlin that while Germany doesn't want to tell other countries how many Syrians to take in, Austria is receiving a similar number per capita.

An Egyptian journalist on Sunday appeared before a military court, accused of spreading lies about the army's campaign against militants in the Sinai Peninsula.

The court in the Suez canal city of Ismailiya adjourned Ahmed Abu Deraa's hearing to September 18.

Abu Deraa, who writes for the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, was detained on September 4 in north Sinai over published reports that army raids had hit a mosque and houses and also injured civilians.

Authorities say they are targeting "terrorists" in the peninsula that borders the Palestinian Islamist-run Gaza Strip.

A media shield law approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee defines a "real reporter" deserving of extra protection. Bloggers, "citizen journalists," and others cry "foul!"

In its attempt to define who's a journalist and who's not, is the US Senate trying to say that Thomas Paine, a corset-maker, wouldn't have deserved the same protections from government heavy-handedness as a newspaper publisher like Ben Franklin?

The first version of a media shield law that handily made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday defined for the first time what constitutes a "real reporter" deserving of extra protection versus what Sen. Dianne Feinstein called a "17-year-old blogger" who doesn't deserve a legal shield.

While Mr. Paine eventually edited magazines in the United States, he's best known for his pamphleteering days, when he self-published "Common Sense," one of the American Revolution's most poignant calls to arms. Modern bloggers often see themselves as the inheritors of the pamphleteering tradition, and many wondered on Friday whether Paine would be covered under the proposed law.

A small but surging share of Americans consider themselves 'lower class,' a surprise to some researchers and activists despite the bruising economy.

Chris Roquemore once thought of himself as working class. But it's hard to keep thinking that, he said, when you're not working.

The 28-year-old father said he sparred with his supervisors at a retail chain about taking time off after his mother died - and ended up unemployed. Since then, Roquemore has worked odd jobs and started studying nursing at Long Beach City College, trying to get "a career, not a job." All those changes, in turn, changed the way he thought of himself.

Reasons vary, but the trend is clear.

For Abby Johnson, the closing of a single Planned Parenthood center demonstrated her dramatic reversal from abortion clinic director to leading pro-life advocate.

But for pro-lifers throughout the United States, it marked another exhibit in a hopeful trend - abortion centers are shutting down at an unprecedented rate. The total so far this year is 44, according to a pro-life organization that tracks clinic operations.

None was more telling for Johnson than the mid-July closing of the Planned Parenthood center in Bryan, Texas. It came less than four years after Johnson, burdened by her involvement with abortion, walked out of that clinic as its director and into the offices of the Coalition for Life.

"Knowing that the former abortion clinic I once ran is now closing is the biggest personal victory of my life," Johnson said in a written statement after the announcement of the shutdown. "From running that facility, to then advocating for its closure, and now celebrating that dream ... it shows that my life has indeed come full circle."

In a shocking incident that would only show the lackadaisical attitude of the health workers, at least 114 children were hospitalised in Hooghly district after they were mistakenly administered Hepatitis B vaccine orally instead of pulse polio drops.

Six persons were suspended for the lapse. Angry villagers protested against the health workers and locked them up.

Sunday was pulse polio day so parents had taken their children to the polio booth at the Khatul village under Arambagh sub-division, official sources said.

One of the parents noticed that the health workers at the polio booth in Khatul village was giving Hepatitis B vaccine orally instead of polio drops and immediately informed the matter to the health workers and the villagers, sources said.

By then 114 children had already been given the Hepatitis B vaccine orally.

A report released by the US Department of Agriculture has revealed that the national average rate of American households reporting "food insecurity" was 14.7 percent between 2010 and 2012.

The figure is more than one percent higher than that for the previous three-year period.

According to the USDA data, Nevada has the highest rate of food insecurity in the US, with 16.6 percent of households reporting food insecurity. Nevada is followed by California, Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

People report "food insecurity" when they run short of food and are uncertain about where it will come from next.

The success of "Breaking Bad" has inspired all kinds of memorabilia, including a meth lab playset that's getting a lot of attention and a lot of backlash.

Chicago-based company Citizen Brick cooked up the Superlab Playset for super fans who need a fix. It's a Lego-like set modeled on the meth lab in the series and comes with figurines inspired by characters Walter White and Gus. This playset will set customers back $250.

Some people fear kids will get their hands on the playset with more than 500 pieces that's priced as a collectible. Citizen Brick has taken a lashing in the press, in particular by the 'Daily Mail,' for exposing children to drug dens and meth labs.