US, Ohio: Witnesses of the high-school shooting that killed one student and wounded four others tell the Cleveland Plain Dealer that schoolmate T.J. Lane is the alleged gunman. Read the chilling Facebook letter that Lane posted on Dec. 30, 2011. Plus, more breaking updates.

© ReutersPolice arrest TJ Lane

In a time long since, a time of repent, The Renaissance. In a quaint lonely town, sits a man with a frown. No job. No family. No crown. His luck had run out. Lost and alone. The streets were his home. His thoughts would solely consist of "why do we exist?" His only company to confide in was the vermin in the street. He longed for only one thing, the world to bow at his feet. They too should feel his secret fear. The dismal drear. His pain had made him sincere. He was better than the rest, allthose ones he detests, within their castles, so vain. Selfish and conceited. They couldn't care less about the peasents they mistreated. They were in their own world, it was a joyous one too. That castle, she stood just to do all she could to keep the peasents at bay, not the enemy away. They had no enemies in their filthy orgy. And in her, the castles every story, was just another chamber of Lucifer's Laboratory. The world is a sandbox for all the wretched sinners. They simply create what they want and make themselves the winners. But the true winner, he has nothing at all. Enduring the pain of waiting for that castle to fall. Through his good deeds, the rats and the fleas. He will have for what he pleads, through the eradication of disease. So, to the castle he proceeds, like an ominous breeze through the trees. "Stay back!" The Guards screamed as they were thrown to their knees. "Oh God, have mercy, please!" The castle, she gasped and then so imprisoned her breath, to the shallow confines of her fragile chest. I'm on the lamb but I ain't no sheep. I am Death. And you have always been the sod. So repulsive and so odd. You never even deserved the presence of God, and yet, I am here. Around your cradle I plod. Came on foot, without shod. How improper, how rude. However, they shall not mind the mud on my feet if there is blood on your sheet. Now! Feel death, not just mocking you. Not just stalking you but inside of you. Wriggle and writhe. Feel smaller beneath my might. Seizure in the Pestilence that is my scythe. Die, all of you.

US, Ohio - Just one day after a school shooting devastated Chardon High School in Ohio, a local teen was arrested after posting a new Facebook profile picture that showed him posing with an assault rifle.

The Portage County Sheriff's Office apprehended the 17-year-old Crestwood High School student on Tuesday morning, after several concerned citizens called in about the image.

Some of his posts also reportedly raised concerns.

Lt. Gregory A. Johnson of the Portage County Sheriff's Office told CBS Cleveland that the student had, on multiple occasions, posted status updates that celebrated school violence.

"I'm close to going on a stabbing spree," one post, written on Feb. 22, said. "I can't take some of these people anymore."

US: Cleveland - The teenage gunman suspected in a Monday shooting spree in the cafeteria of an Ohio high school that killed three students had a troubled childhood and at least one offense on his legal record, according to court documents viewed by two sources.

Court records also show that the family of T.J. Lane, 17, was involved in several disputes and incidents off and on over the boy's life.

Lane, who is being held pending charges in the deaths at Chardon High School, was sentenced to 24 hours of community service in 2009 after he was charged with disorderly conduct. He had come to the aid of his brother when he thought his uncle was assaulting the sibling. In the process, Lane hit his uncle and the uncle wanted to press assault charges, the documents viewed by the sources show.

A juvenile court judge in Chardon, Ohio ruled on Wednesday that the records of the charge against Lane could be released.

Records at the Clerk of Courts for Geauga County, where Chardon is located and where Lane and his family lived, also show that T.J. Lane's father Thomas was involved in several altercations over the years.

US: Missouri - A popular music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School in north St. Louis County recently was fired after church officials learned that he planned to marry his male partner of 20 years in New York, one of a handful of states where same-sex marriage is legal.

The teacher, Al Fischer, confirmed to the Post-Dispatch that he was fired Feb. 17 from his job of four years at the school. When asked to comment on his firing, Fischer declined and referred to a letter emailed to his students' parents shortly after his termination.

In the letter, Fischer tells parents of "my joyful news, and my sad news" - the former being his plans to marry his longtime partner in New York City, and the latter, "that I can't be your music teacher anymore."

Fischer's partner, Charlie Robin, executive director of Washington University's Edison Theatre, told the Post-Dispatch that the couple's relationship was in no way a secret at St. Ann and that Fischer was fired after a representative of the St. Louis Archdiocese overheard him talking to co-workers about his wedding plans.

US: Florence - Arizona executed an inmate Wednesday for killing and dismembering his adoptive mother while he was out of prison on furlough for another crime, despite a spate of last-minute appeals over his mental disabilities and how the state has changed and violated its own execution protocol.

Just before he was put to death, Robert Henry Moormann used his last words to apologize to his family and to the family of an 8-year-old girl he kidnapped and molested in 1972.

"I hope this brings closure and they can start healing now," he said. "I just hope that they will forgive me in time."

Moormann is the first Arizona inmate to be executed with one lethal drug, as opposed to the state's long-standing three-drug protocol.

The switch was made after corrections officials realized Monday that one of the three drugs had expired. In doing so, they violated their own new written execution protocol by giving Moormann only two days' notice of how he would be put to death instead of seven days' notice, as stipulated in the protocol.

Moormann appeared to move more than other inmates executed with the three-drug protocol. Unlike the other inmates, who appeared to fall asleep immediately, Moormann kept his eyes open during the entire execution.

The UN watchdog into the illegal wildlife trade on Tuesday voiced "grave concern" at a spike in African elephant poaching after nearly 450 of the animals were killed in Cameroon.

The head of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), John Scanlon, pointed at recent reports of mass poaching for ivory in Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park.

"This most recent incident of poaching elephants is on a massive scale," said Scanlon. "It reflects a new trend we are detecting across many range states, where well-armed poachers with sophisticated weapons decimate elephant populations, often with impunity."

CITES is offering African governments support to hunt down the criminals and to locate and seize the poached ivory. Potential transit and destination countries had been urged to remain extremely vigilant and to cooperate.

The CITES program on elephants revealed increasing levels of poaching in 2011.

"This spike in elephant poaching is of grave concern not only to Cameroon, a member state to CITES, but to all 38 range states of the African elephant," said Scanlon.

Andrew Schiff was sitting in a traffic jam in California this month after giving a speech at an investment conference about gold. He turned off the satellite radio, got out of the car and screamed a profanity.

"I'm not Zen at all, and when I'm freaking out about the situation, where I'm stuck like a rat in a trap on a highway with no way to get out, it's very hard," Schiff, director of marketing for broker-dealer Euro Pacific Capital Inc., said in an interview.

Schiff, 46, is facing another kind of jam this year: Paid a lower bonus, he said the $350,000 he earns, enough to put him in the country's top 1 percent by income, doesn't cover his family's private-school tuition, a Kent, Connecticut, summer rental and the upgrade they would like from their 1,200-square- foot Brooklyn duplex.

Syria's Interior Minister has announced that 89 per cent of those who took part in the referendum have voted in favor of a new constitution. The new law puts an end to five decades of one-party rule among other reforms put forward by President Assad.

Interior Minister Ibrahim al-Shaar announced the results of the referendum at a press conference on Monday.­

According to the minister, out of 14,580,000 Syrians eligible to vote some 8,376,000, or about 57 per cent, actually came to the polling stations and voted, RT's Maria Finoshina reports from Damascus.

Last-minute objections by Romania no obstacle to final decision by EU leaders later this week.

National ministers for foreign or European affairs today (28 February) recommended granting Serbia the status of a candidate for EU membership.

The decision will have to be approved by EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on 1-2 March, a step that is seen as a formality despite reservations from Romania.

Nicolai Wammen, the EU affairs minister of Denmark, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, said: "I'm pleased we've been able to recommend candidate status for Serbia."

"We look forward to confirmation at the European Council," he said. "Serbia is now on its way back into our European family."

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said after a meeting with Boris Tadić, Serbia's president: "Serbia deserves the candidate status. That has been for some time the opinion of the European Commission."

Barroso and Tadić met this afternoon before the ministers had concluded their meeting.