Earth Hour, the annual event that turns off lights as a statement for cleaner energy, marks its fifth year this Saturday. But a free-market think tank is trying to get some traction with its alternative: the Human Achievement Hour, when people are encouraged to leave lights on to show their appreciation for inventions "and the recognition that future solutions require individual freedom not government coercion."

In one corner is the conservation group WWF, which helped start Earth Hour in 2007 and expects that landmarks that will participate this year will include the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

In the other corner is the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which isn't expecting to match Earth Hour's reach but aims to make a point when they battle from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. this Saturday in time zones around the globe.

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"Gather with friends in the warmth of a heated home, watch television, take a hot shower, drink a beer, call a loved one on the phone, or listen to music," the institute says on its website.

"If you’re going to vote you need at least two choices," says Michelle Minton, the Competitive Enterprise Institute fellow who came up with HAH in 2009. "While I believe that a lot of people celebrating Earth Hour truly just want a clean and healthy environment for themselves and their families -- a completely reasonable opinion, which I share -- I felt their support was being used by the environmentalist movement to spread a message that is much less positive."

"Many environmentalists see humans as fundamentally destructive and want to force individuals to conserve," she adds. "Earth Hour is an attempt to convince lawmakers that the majority of the population wants them to clamp down on progress." 

As for the numbers, Minton figures "between 1,000-2,000 people knowingly celebrate Human Achievement Hour." The HAH Facebook page had nearly 200 people signed up as of Thursday afternoon.

About 60 people watched an in-house party during the hour last year, Minton says, and the event will be live streamed again this year. 

Earth Hour, for its part, says it has commitments in 135 countries -- and one International Space Station.

"Earth Hour will extend to the International Space Station for the first time," the organizers said in a statement. "Astronaut and WWF ambassador Andre Kuipers will experience Earth Hour watching over the planet for the the European Space Agency."

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LOS ANGELES – The young men who answer the phones at the National Veterans Foundation's hotline for troubled veterans speak with an authority that comes from having faced down the same demons that plague their callers.

All are combat veterans, having served up to four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and all have struggled with either PTSD or traumatic brain injury – the signature wounds of these conflicts – or both.

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For them, the story of Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians during his fourth combat deployment, triggers mixed emotions – horror over the senseless rampage but also empathy for a soldier who, in their view, apparently was pushed beyond the breaking point. But their more immediate concern is the impact it may have on the troubled voices on the other end of the phone lines they answer each day.

"One of the biggest issues we have … is the vets don’t get the jobs," said Apolonio Munoz III, 28, an Army veteran deployed during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 who works for the hotline while pursuing a social work degree. "[Employers] think they are whack-jobs and they’re all going to be cold-blooded killers, they’re going to come in and shoot up the place, which is not the situation."

Munoz and several other former soldiers who answer the hotline agreed to share with msnbc.com their thoughts on PTSD, the stresses of war and the news that Bales – a 38-year-old soldier with a clean military record – allegedly crept into an Afghan village at night on March 11 and slaughtered Afghan civilians, including women and children.

"It’s an absolute tragedy, and it never should have happened," Cameron White, 31, who served two tours of duty in Iraq with the Marines before leaving the military and becoming a college student and anti-war activist, said of the massacre in Kandahar province. He said he believes the killing were "a byproduct of a failed policy that continues to put traumatized troops out on the battlefield when they shouldn’t be there."

Their comments will likely presage parts of Bales' trial, in which the cumulative effects of combat deployments and the degree to which PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury) can be linked to violence will almost certainly play a role.

Bales, who has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder along with other charges, suffered a brain injury in Iraq but was not diagnosed as suffering from PTSD. His defense is expected to argue, however, that he suffered "diminished capacity" as a result of the injury and possibly undiagnosed PTSD. Bales, who is being held in detention at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has not yet entered a plea to the charges, but his civilian defense attorney, John Henry Browne, has indicated he expects to mount a vigorous defense based in part on his client’s mental state.

How staff Sgt. Bales lawyers are fighting for his life

Many experts also expect the defense to produce expert witnesses to testify about the effects on mental health of repeat combat deployments. But just as with PTSD and TBI, the record is incomplete, as the Iraq and Afghan conflicts mark the first time the U.S. has cycled soldiers in and out of combat so many times.

The latter issue resonates loudly with the former soldiers who answer the hot line.

'Yes, I killed Iraqis'
White said that his experiences in Iraq led him to believe that not even the most hardened soldier is immune to meltdown amid the repeated stresses of combat.

"I think when you say … 'that’s not me' or ‘that would never happen to me,' I think anybody that says that is just lying to themselves," he said. "… Something like that could happen to any one of us."

Another hot line operator, Freddy Cordova, 29, who served four tours in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, said the mental health evaluations he received between deployments were cursory at best.

In an evaluation after his first deployment, Cordova said he answered 'yes' to most of the combat-related questions: "Yes, I saw dead people. Yes, I saw dead Americans. Yes, I fired my weapon. Yes, I killed Iraqis. Yes, I killed the enemy." 

"I didn’t report that I was a threat to others, but I put that I would like to speak to somebody," he said. "What did the Army turn around to do? They just overlook it. Four months later, I’m in Iraq again."

Floyd "Shad" Meshad, founder and president of the National Veterans Foundation and a psychiatric social worker with 40 years' experience working with combat veterans, said he has repeatedly seen the effects to overexposure to the horrors of war.

"We know that soldiers, when they have seen too much combat, they will either implode – in suicide – or explode," he said. "The military just continues to send people back into combat like they were rifles, just kind of cleans them up and sends them back in. … I don’t want to say that everybody flips out like this, but a significant number do."

Meshad started his career as an Army mental health officer in Vietnam and was instrumental in developing a national network of community-based Veteran Centers, offering counseling, referrals and readjustment assistance, beginning in the 1970s. He has served as an expert witness in about a dozen trials for veterans facing the death penalty, he said, and appeared in court for hundreds of others facing lesser charges.

When Bales was identified as the suspect in the Afghan killings, Meshad rushed the soldier's defense team an advance copy of a new book published by NVF, "Attorney's Guide to Defending Veterans in Criminal Court."

But he said he fears that politics -- including the need to appease the Afghan government -- may outweigh the role of mental health factors in the court's ruling on the Afghanistan slayings.

"They are going to cook Bales," he predicted.

But even the mention of PTSD and Bales in the same sentence worries Matthew Friedman, executive director of the National Center for PTSD under the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

"It will be a terrible thing if people with PTSD were painted with a Sgt. Bales paintbrush. It’s just not appropriate," said Friedman, who has been involved in research and treatment of PTSD for 35 years and is also a professor of psychiatry, toxicology and pharmacology at Dartmouth Medical School. "There is evidence that some people with PTSD may exhibit irritable or aggressive behavior at times. There’s no evidence that this kind of indiscriminate violence is a symptom of PTSD."

And he said that Bales’ history before joining the military – which included financial fraud and an assault case in Washington state – signaled that he was a troubled individual.

Referrals and suicide intervention
The veterans working the NVF hot line have what most experts consider textbook cases of PTSD. They have struggled with anxiety, anger and hyper-vigilance brought home from the combat zone. For some, visiting a shopping mall is a daunting experience, as they find themselves constantly scanning for potential threats. Even as these men recover and pursue civilian jobs and studies, some yell in their sleep, dream about explosions or are startled by loud noises or a glimpse of trash along the road that looks like an IED.

Most of the time, experts say, the damage from repeated exposure to combat plays out in insidious ways. It contributes to divorce and substance abuse, and takes a toll on the mental health of children. According to the Center for New American Security, 18 vets commit suicide every day.

The NVF hotline has been fielding between 11,000 and 12,000 calls a year over the last several years. Four or five a month come from veterans, or even soldiers still in service, who are dangerously depressed and threatening suicide, Meshad said.

Most others are from frustrated veterans and family members who need help navigating the complex VA benefits process, in need of legal assistance, substance abuse treatment or job training. NVF employees pride themselves in walking them through every step, and then following through if they encounter problems.

Each week, NVF staff does rounds in a van to check in on homeless veterans – mostly older Vietnam era veterans who tend to cluster together in encampments after losing jobs and families to mental illness and addiction.

To these young veterans serving at NVF, the weekly workload highlights the need for more attention to the mental health of soldiers. In the case of the massacre in Afghanistan, they suggest, responsibility for that mental health lies with more than one individual.

"My reaction to Sergeant Bales … was shock," said Jose Castro, an Army veteran of both Iraq and Afghanistan. "But, you know, when certain things are ignored about an individual soldier… and people are … forced into situations that that aren’t healthy … (that) ultimately can lead to something like this. It’s bound to happen."

"What do you expect for a guy who’s been deployed four times? Losing buddies, getting hurt, being in firefights and so forth," agreed Army veteran Wendell Guillermo, 26.  "And whether or not the military wants to acknowledge it  … there is a breaking point."

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SANFORD, Florida -- The mayor of the city where Trayvon Martin was killed says he overruled police and prosecutors who opposed the release of tapes of 911 calls, telling them: “We're not here to hide anything.”

Jeff Triplett, who is a senior vice president at United Legacy Bank and part-time mayor of Sanford, said he took the decision after Martin’s family asked for the release of recordings of a call that shooter George Zimmerman made to police and 911 calls from neighbors who heard the confrontation.

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Police, prosecutors and the city attorney opposed releasing the calls because of the ongoing investigation, Triplett told Reuters.

“Everyone was saying to me, no, no, no, don't turn them over," he said. "I just continually asked, 'Why wouldn't we do this?'"

"I made that call to try to settle everything down a little bit, to let the family hear what transpired. We were being accused of a lot of things, or the police department was, so we can take the step to say, 'We're not here to hide anything,'" Triplett added.

World is 'watching'
Triplett was governs a population of about 54,000, 30 percent of whom are black and have long complained bitterly about police mistreatment.

"I ran for office to make a better Sanford. And this comes on your plate, and it's just amazing," 43-year-old Triplett told Reuters in an interview.

"The decisions I'm trying to make, I could be not only held accountable for them from the city side but from the nation and the world that's watching right now," he added.

Spike Lee apologizes to Florida couple, agrees to pay for retweeting their address

Martin's death has drawn international attention, spurred protests in American cities and prompted a federal review.

George Zimmerman's brother said late on Thursday that medical records will prove that his brother was attacked and his nose was broken by Trayvon Martin before he fatally shot the teen.

Robert Zimmerman Jr. told CNN's Piers Morgan: "We're confident the medical records are going to explain all of George's medical history," he said.  

Controversy surrounding the case deepened Thursday when surveillance video footage of George Zimmerman being led from a police car shortly after he fatally shot Martin appeared not to show any obvious signs of injuries or bloodstains.

The footage, obtained by ABC News, shows a handcuffed Zimmerman getting out of the police car unaided and walking into the police station.

In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Triplett has had a mixed reaction: he has been booed off a stage, defended by black community leaders, and lectured on racial justice by civil rights activists.

He described how, on March 16, he invited Martin's family and lawyers to his office at City Hall to listen to the 911 calls prior to the public release. Natalie Jackson, an Orlando civil rights lawyer, was also present.

Martin's mother weeps
Triplett played the calls on his office computer. Someone was heard crying for help. Martin's mother wept and ran from the room, convinced it was her son, Jackson said. Everyone was moved to tears.

"It was very emotional," Triplett recalled. "Obviously when you hear something like that, there couldn't be anything worse for a family member or a parent ... and to hear your own son, what transpired at the last second."

Police video shows George Zimmerman shortly after Trayvon Martin shooting

Not everyone approves of Triplett's actions. Sanford City Commissioner Patty Mahany said she thought he meant well, but that he had drawn more attention to the case and the calls could influence jurors in any trial.

"I think it stirred up a lot of anger in very well-meaning people who still don't have the whole story," Mahany said.

Meanwhile, a college newspaper has apologized for publishing a cartoon about the Martin case after it received complaints, according to a report in the LA Times.

The editorial board of the University of Texas at Austin's Daily Texan said its decision to publish the cartoon “showed a failure in judgment on the part of the editorial board”, adding that the cartoonist responsible, Stephanie Eisner, had left the paper.

Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

A serial killer who set up a torture chamber in his truck and kidnapped mostly female hitchhikers across the United States has admitted murdering a newlywed couple in Texas, according to reports.

Robert Ben Rhoades -- already serving a life sentence for the death of a 14-year-old girl in Illinois -- this week pleaded guilty in West Texas to killing Patricia Candace Walsh and her husband Scott Zyskowski, both in their 20s, the Deseret News reported.

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Prosecutors had agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for the pleas and Rhoades, 65, was given two life sentences, the News said.

The paper said Rhoades, a long-haul truck driver, was the subject of the book "Roadside Prey" by Alva Busch.

In his cab was "a type of dungeon with handcuffs on the ceiling," the News reported. In 1996, the Tucson Weekly, citing officials, said it was believed that Rhoades had been killing an average of three women a month by the early 1990s.

The Associated Press reported the couple, from Seattle, were hitchhiking to Georgia to preach the Christian gospel, when they took a ride from Rhoades near El Paso, Texas in early 1990.

FBI spokeswoman Shauna Dunlap said investigations concerning Rhoades were continuing.

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The latest episode in the adventures of Batman is now available for viewing on YouTube, thanks to the Montgomery County, Md., Police Department, whose officers pulled over a "Batmobile" March 21.

The car, a Lamborghini, showed only a bat symbol where the license plate belonged. When the Dark Knight showed officers the real plates inside the car and told them he was headed for an appearance for children at a local hospital, “they let him fly – after a picture or two,” police said as they released a nearly seven-minute dashcam video of the traffic stop.

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Police earlier posted still pictures of the traffic stop on their Facebook page.

Batman was revealed by The Washington Post to be Lenny R. Robinson, 48, a Baltimore County businessman who has been visiting sick children in Baltimore-area hospitals since 2001. Sometimes his teenage son, Brandon, goes along as Robin.

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A pair of South Florida TSA agents face criminal charges after police say they went on a drunken rampage inside a Miami Beach hotel room, throwing furniture out a window and wildly firing a gun, NBCMiami.com reported.

Jeffrey Piccolella, 27, and Nicholas Puccio, 25, are both charged with criminal mischief and using a firearm under the influence of alcohol or drugs in the Tuesday night incident at the Shelby Hotel, according to a Miami Beach police report obtained by NBCMiami.com.

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Officers called to the hotel around 11 p.m. after reports of a gun being discharged from a second-floor room took the two agents into custody without incident, the report said. Each had a strong breath odor of alcohol and bloodshot and watery eyes, the report said.

See the original story, video at NBCMiami.com

On the ground outside the hotel room, officers found a radio, speakers, two lamps, a phone, an ice chest, a shattered vase and a bullet casing, the report said.

Piccolella admitted that the pair had returned to the room after having several drinks and started throwing the items out the window, the report said.

Piccolella said he had fired the gun out the window once, handed it to Puccio, who also fired once, and then got the gun back and fired three more times, according to the report.

One bullet struck a $1,500 hurricane-proof window at the Barneys New York at 832 Collins Ave., the report said. The hotel items were worth $400, it said.

Puccio denied any involvement in the incident, the report said.

The Transportation Safety Administration said both are part-time employees at Palm Beach International Airport and were not traveling on official business.

"TSA holds its employees to the highest professional and ethical standards. We will review the facts and take appropriate action as necessary," the TSA said in a statement obtained by NBCMiami.com.

Both Piccolella, of West Palm Beach, and Puccio, of Delray Beach, were being held on $5,500 bond, NBC Miami said.

Elvuyra Perez Gallego, visiting Miami from Spain for the first time, told NBCMiami.com she was scared when she came back to the hotel from a late night out and saw police blocking the street surrounding her hotel.

She said she has sat on the hotel patio many times this week to use her computer and socialize, and she doesn't like thinking about what could happen with a stray bullet.

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After a manhunt that took federal agents to Madagascar, a Seattle-area doctor known as "the Candy Man" for indiscriminantly writing painkiller prescriptions for hundreds of patients was sentenced to 12 years in prison Thursday and ordered to pay more than $1.2 million in restitution.

Antoine Johnson was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Tacoma, Wash., south of Seattle, for health care fraud, drug distribution and tax evasion. His mother, Lawanda Johnson, who was his office manager at four western Washington clinics, was sentenced to seven years in prison.

The FBI and the Department of Health and Human Services said Johnson wrote prescriptions for powerful painkillers for hundreds of patients without conducting thorough medical examinations.

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Agents raided Johnson's clinics and home in January 2009 after a two-year investigation. Johnson, then 38, fled to the island of Madagascar off the southeastern coast of Africa, but he was detained eight months later because his passport had expired and then turned over to U.S. custody.

Before the raids, two undercover FBI agents visited Johnson's offices posing as patients several times, according to affidavits in the case. Even though they didn't always see Johnson himself and and often weren't given medical exams, the agents walked away with prescriptions for powerful narcotic painkillers and other controlled drugs.

On one occasion, one of the agents arrived to find about 40 people in the waiting room and 50 to 60 others waiting in line outside. The agent said he overheard a woman talking on a cellphone report that Johnson hadn't yet arrived but that "as soon as he gets here, I will get it and I'll call you and we'll hook up. I got a hold of my people."

The agent also said he overheard some patients refer to Johnson as "the script doc" and others demanding "just give me my scripts so I can go."

A subsequent audit of Johnson's accounts revealed double-billing of Medicare, "upcoding" of diagnoses to allow him to charge Medicare higher rates and notations indicating that as many as two-thirds of the patients under review were being prescribed opioids, with many of them on multiple drugs, according to court records.

The day after the raids in 2009, Johnson told a very different story, however, alleging in an interview with NBC station KING of Seattle that he was the victim of racial profiling.

"Look at me. I'm black. I believe they're doing this because I'm a young, successful black man," he said at the time.

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RICHMOND HEIGHTS, Mo. – Officials at a St. Louis hospital on Thursday defended their actions in the case of a homeless woman who sought treatment for a sprained ankle and died in police custody after being arrested for refusing to leave the emergency room.

An autopsy determined that Anna Brown's death in a jail cell in September was caused by blood clots that formed in her legs and migrated to her lungs, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The newspaper also obtained surveillance footage of the woman's final moments. In the video, officers are seen carrying Brown into a jail cell. The cell door closes and Brown is heard moaning and crying.

Brown's family says authorities treated the 29-year-old mother of two unfairly and have hired a St. Louis-based lawyer, Keith Link. Link did not respond to telephone messages from msnbc.com on Thursday.

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St. Mary's Health Center says its staff followed medical guidelines and performed appropriate tests, acknowledging the “outrage being expressed in this tragic event.”

“Unfortunately, even with appropriate testing using sophisticated technology, blood clots can still be undetected in a small number of cases,” according to a statement released by St. Mary's Health Center on Thursday. “The sad reality is that emergency departments across the country are often a place of last resort for many people in our society who suffer from complex social problems that become medical issues when they are not addressed. It is unfortunate that it takes a tragic event like this to call attention to a crisis in our midst.”

Police have said officers had no way of knowing Brown's dire condition.

Brown went to three hospitals complaining of leg pain in the days leading up to her death, including her visit to St. Mary's that led to her arrest for trespassing. She was wheeled out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.

Brown had been struggling after a series of devastating setbacks, family say.

'Starting to  make progress'
A New Year's Eve tornado in 2010 destroyed Brown's home in north St. Louis home, the Post-Dispatch reported. She and her two children moved to Berkeley, a St. Louis suburb, and she lost her job at a sandwich shop soon afterward, the Post-Dispatch said.

According to the Post-Dispatch, her utilities were shut off because she stopped paying her bills, and after a child welfare agent who visited the home in April found a feces-filled toilet, burn marks on the floor where she had lit fires to keep warm and other distressing signs, Brown was arrested for parental neglect. Police reported at the time that she seemed confused, the newspaper reported.

Her mother, Dorothy Davis, received custody of Brown's children on the condition that Brown couldn't also live with them, and Brown's home was condemned, the newspaper reported. She lived in four homeless shelters from May until September, according to the Post-Dispatch.

Brown joined the St. Louis Empowerment Center, a drop-in center for the mentally ill, the newspaper reported.

"She was just starting to make progress," Kevin Dean, a peer specialist at the center, told the Post-Dispatch.

Dean and another staff member at the drop-in center recalled hearing Anna Brown say she hurt her ankle.

Davis, who said Brown called every day to check on her children, said she wants answers about her daughter's death.

"If the police killed my daughter, I want to know. If the hospital is at fault, I want to know," Davis told the Post-Dispatch. "I want to be able to tell her children why their mother isn't here."

This article includes reporting by The Associated Press.

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STRATFORD, Conn. -- A Stratford condo association has ordered a resident to take down a religious artifact that adorns most Jewish homes or face a penalty of $50 a day.

Barbara Cadranel said the controversy began earlier this year when board members at the California Condominiums asked her to take down her mezuzah, a prayer scroll in a small clear plastic case, that she has affixed to the doorpost of her home – as Jewish law commands.

See the original video and story at NBCConnecticut.com

"I'm bullied and I'm saddened and it's changed my whole existence here," Cadranel said.

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The board notified Cadranel that she is in violation of the condo by-laws because the mezuzah is not on the door but the doorpost, which is considered a common area. She said she now feels intimidated.

“I don't go down there when everybody gets their mail because I don't want to go through this,” she said.

Susan Reid, who lives across the hall from Cadranel, has an Easter display on her door. She is in favor of the board's decision for Cadranel to remove the mezuzah.

"Everybody has different religions and if we all start to put things (up), it looks unsightly," Reid said.

The fact that the mezuzah is on the doorpost, and not the door, means it is in a common area, something that is against condo association rules, according to Reid.

Video from inside the complex showed several common areas adorned with Easter eggs and other Easter decorations.

Despite her discomfort, Cadranel is not considering moving, nor is she considering taking down the mezuzah.

The Connecticut office of the Anti-Defamation League has joined Cadranel in her fight. 

“Saying a mezuzah cannot be hung is tantamount to telling a Jew that they need to move,” ADL spokeswoman Randi Pincus said.

“You’ve heard her side of the story, but believe me, it is not totally valid,” Jerry Lawlor, a member of the condo board, said. He would not elaborate.

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FRIDLEY, Minn. – An Anoka County, Minn., woman was jailed Thursday after throwing three 1-week-old pit bulls at her boyfriend, who allegedly broke her nose, police told the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

The man, David Peter Remme, 25, was arrested on suspicion of third-degree assault; the woman, Gabrielle Tywon Allen, 20, of Sping Lake Park, was held on possible charges of animal cruelty, the newspaper said. Both were in the Anoka County Jail on Thursday.

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Fridley police said the two argued in a parking lot outside an apartment building early Thursday. Allen allegedly hurled the three newborn puppies, which were huddled on the front seat of a pickup truck, at Remme after he punched her in the face, police said.

The pups landed on the concrete and appeared to be uninjured, police said.

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A couple accused of killing a beloved Vermont school teacher may have had sexual motivations, according to the county’s top prosecutor, and investigators noted finding condoms and wrappers where the body – which showed signs of a severe beating -- was found in a wooded area.

Allen Prue, 30, and his wife, Patricia, 33, were charged Wednesday with second-degree murder in the strangulation death of Melissa Jenkins, a 33-year-old single mother of a 2-year-old boy, Ty. The death of Jenkins, a teacher at St. Johnsbury Academy, has left the community searching for answers.

Caledonia County’s top prosecutor, State’s Attorney Lisa Warren, told the Burlington Free Press that the killing appeared to be “sexually motivated.” When msnbc.com contacted Warren’s office to further elaborate on her comment, a woman who answered the phone directed all calls to the local court office and said the state attorney would not be speaking about the case.

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According to an affidavit filed in Vermont Superior Court with the charge sheets, police found condoms and wrappers near where Jenkins was discovered. Lt. Jean Paul Sinclair, the Vermont State Police crime scene search team leader, said Jenkins’ feet were tied with white rope and that she had “severe bruising of her face, neck, upper and lower torso's and extremities indicating that she received a severe beating prior to her death.”

Sinclair also said some of the bruises had “unique patterns” that he described as being “checkerboard." He also noted she had bruises that were rounded, “like that of the toe of a shoe.”

In the police affidavit, authorities also outlined how they traced the phone that was used by the Prues to call Jenkins the night she disappeared, the fact she had called a friend worried about a “weird call” she got “from a girl and guy who used to plow her driveway,” and how the body was found.

Both Prues pleaded not guilty at their arraignment on Wednesday, but Allen Prue’s alleged confession is included in the affidavit. In it, authorities say he told them that he and his wife “got the idea to get a girl” but they didn’t “plan to get one forcefully.” He said his wife called Jenkins and told her their car had broken down and they needed help. When the teacher turned up, Allen Prue said, he strangled her and put her in the backseat of his car; then, his wife also strangled her.

They allegedly took the body to their home, where they stripped Jenkins and put her body – over which they poured bleach -- on a tarp. They also took off their clothes, which they put in the car with the body wrapped in the tarp. They later disposed of the body in the Connecticut River, and burned the clothes, the tarp and a blanket, the affidavit says.

If convicted, the pair face a minimum of 20 years in prison on the second-degree murder charge, but Warren has indicated that she may impose steeper charges, according to the Burlington Free Press.

Jenkins taught science and used to coach basketball at the prestigious St. Johnsbury Academy, which counts former President Calvin Coolidge among its alumni. The academy will hold a fundraiser on Friday to help raise money for the Melissa Jenkins Memorial Trust, The Caledonian-Record reported.

"The news of the recent arrests in the murder of Melissa Jenkins is, of course, good news for all who loved her," academy spokesman Joe Healy said in a statement, according to the newspaper. "We can now turn our full attention to healing from this tragic loss, celebrating Melissa's life and mourning her death."

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A widely used farm pesticide first introduced in the 1990s has caused significant changes to bee colonies and removing it could be the key factor in restoring nature's army of pollinators, according to two studies released Thursday.

The scientists behind the studies in Europe called for regulators to consider banning the class of chemicals known as neonicotinoid insecticides. In the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency told msnbc.com that the studies would be incorporated into a review that's currently under way.

A pesticide trade group questioned the data, saying the levels of pesticide used were unrealistically high, while the researchers said the levels used were typical of what bees would find on farms.

---

"Our study raises important issues regarding pesticide authorization procedures," stated Mikael Henry, co-author of a study on honey bees. "So far, they mostly require manufacturers to ensure that doses encountered on the field do not kill bees, but they basically ignore the consequences of doses that do not kill them but may cause behavioral difficulties."

"There is an urgent need to develop alternatives to the widespread use of neonicotinoid pesticides on flowering crops wherever possible," added the authors of the second study on bumble bees.

Last week, a coalition of environmental groups and beekeepers asked the EPA to suspend the use of the pesticide, which is widely used in flowering crops like corn, sunflower and cotton to combat insects.

The studies are the first to go outside the lab and into the fields, where the experts said they detected how the pesticide impacts bees as they collect pollen and pollinate flowers and crops.

Honey bee populations have been crashing around the world in recent years, and pesticides have been suspected, along with other potential factors such as parasites, disease and habitat loss, in what's known as Colony Collapse Disorder. In the U.S., some beekeepers in 2006 began reporting losses of 30-90 percent of their hives, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Combating Colony Collapse Disorder is hardly an esoteric exercise. The USDA notes that "bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables.

"About one mouthful in three in the diet directly or indirectly benefits from honey bee pollination," it adds.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, one study by British scientists looked at honey bees and the other by French scientists examined bumble bees, which unlike honey bees live in the wild but also are key pollinators.

In the bumble bee study, researchers concluded that colonies treated with nonlethal levels of the pesticide "had a significantly reduced growth rate and suffered an 85% reduction in production of new queens" compared to colonies without the pesticide.

"It was quite massive," researcher Penelope Whitehorn said of the reduction at a press conference Thursday. (Click here for audio of the news conference.)

"Bumble bees have an annual life cycle and it is only new queens that survive the winter to found colonies in the spring," the authors noted. "Our results suggest that trace levels of neonicotinoid pesticides can have strong negative consequence for queen production by bumble bee colonies under realistic field conditions, and this is likely to have a substantial population-level impact."

In the honey bee study, radio transmitters were attached to the back of bees to see how they foraged in conditions with and without the pesticide.

The pesticide, the researchers concluded, impaired the homing ability of bees and exposed bees were two to three times more likely to die while away from the hive. That "high mortality ... could put a colony at risk of collapse" within a few weeks of exposure, especially in combination with other stressors, they noted.

"We were actually quite surprised by the magnitude," Henry told reporters.

CropLife America, a pesticides trade group, said in a statement that the studies "fail to account for the many real-world factors that impact bee and colony health, and the researchers used unrealistic pesticide dose levels that are not commonly found in practical field situations in agriculture." 

Dave Goulson, a University of Stirling researcher with the bumble bee study, countered that the scientific papers "are the closest studies to date to look at the real world situation."

A leading U.S. researcher said the honey bee study "did use a higher dose than we have seen in pollen and nectar."

That study is "not fatally flawed," added Jeff Pettis of the USDA's Bee Research Laboratory, "but the higher dose must be considered as being a factor in why they saw the loss of bees."

"The bumble bee study, however, used a very realistic dose and the effect on reproduction was the major finding," he told msnbc.com. "The bumble bee study was very convincing in my opinion in being realistic and showing a significant impact on reproduction."

CropLife America spokeswoman Mary Emma Young said the dose in the bumble bee study was "a high level, but not as excessive" as in the honey bee study, and that "similar studies on bumble bees did not show these effects, so more research may be needed."

In the honey bee study, the authors said they tested the bees at an "intensive cereal farming system" in France and used sublethal amounts of thiamethoxam, "a recently marketed neonicotinoid substance currently being authorized in an increasing number of countries worldwide for the protection of oilseed rape, maize and other blooming crops foraged by honey bees."

Goulson noted that EPA rules don't require pesticide makers to test the product as bees navigate over natural distances and yet that "is where the problems seem to start."

The EPA, contacted by msnbc.com, said it has "begun reviewing the two studies ... and they will be considered" as part of an ongoing process that reviews chemicals. Non-EPA scientists will weigh in at a special meeting in the fall, it added.

The prevailing view among most scientists and regulators is that "complex interactions among multiple stressors" are to blame, the EPA stated.  "While our understanding of the potential role of pesticides in pollinator health declines is still progressing, we continue to seek to learn what regulatory changes, if any, may be effective."

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The Mega Millions lottery hit $540 million on Thursday, and people endured long lines for a chance at winning the hefty jackpot – an amount that could rise as more tickets are sold for Friday’s drawing.

“I have never seen so many people inside one store,” Jessie Rae Vaglivielo, a clerk at Hallelujah Junction, a one-stop gas and convenience store in Honey Lake, Calif., near the Nevada border, told msnbc.com on Thursday. It was her fifth day on the job and she didn’t have time to talk -- she was selling tickets to dozens of people who had lined up.

---

Vaglivielo laughed when asked if she was going to buy a ticket. "No, I don't play," she said, adding "but there are a lot of people here who do, and I gotta go."

At a 7-Eleven in the Bronx, Leisa Aspes said she sold at least $1,000 in tickets during the morning rush hour on Thursday. She described conversations at the store as lively, bursting with dreams of winning.  

“That’s all people have been talking about all morning,” she told msnbc.com. “People are talking about what they would do if they won. I made sure to buy my tickets.”

Nobody matched all six numbers in Tuesday's regular draw, and the total jackpot has been growing since. With a $540 million total, the lump sum payment is estimated at $389.8 million, according to lottery officials. Winners can also take payments annually for 26 years.

Mega Millions raises tough question for job seekers

Mega Millions is is played in 42 states, plus Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Players pay $1 for a ticket and must pick five numbers from 1 to 56 plus a Mega number from 1 to 46 to win the jackpot. The odds of winning are 1 in about 176 million, according to the official Mega Millions website.

The largest Mega Millions jackpot ever won was $390 million in March 2007, when the prize was split between two tickets sold in Georgia and New Jersey.

This story includes reporting by msnbc.com's Sevil Omer.

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Strength. Resilience. Motivation. Confidence. Adaptability. Those are just some of the qualities military spouses mentioned when describing how their experience in the military -- by marriage -- should be attractive to prospective employers. I spoke with them at a job fair at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas, Wednesday, while reporting with photojournalist Erin Trieb. 

There was obvious pride in what they had learned from a life in the military; but there was also frustration. For many, moving from base to base, not just in the U.S. but also around the world, limited their career paths. With only a year or two in one place, they were often taking any job they could get, not following their passions or skills. Military spouses -- 95 percent women --  have an unemployment rate of 26 percent, according to the Department of Defense, over two times the national average for civilians.

---

According to job counselors at Ft. Hood, the military is making an effort to slow down transfers, to allow military families to stay in one place for at least three years. They are hosting job fairs and encouraging military spouses to add volunteer activities to their resumes. Military studies show that they volunteer at a rate four times the national average. They want to remind employers that even if a job history looks checkered, there are ways outside of a traditional job for people to learn leadership, team work and creativity. Melissa Brown, a military spouse who's family of four moved ten times within five states makes the point, "After 12 years as a military spouse, I can keep a team together." Meet more military spouses and learn about their story in the slideshow below.

More Hiring our Heroes, an initiative by NBC News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that aims to get veterans back into the workforce.

Learn more about job fairs for veterans.

Also, explore Erin Trieb’s ongoing Homecoming Project, an awareness and educational campaign using imagery to educate the public about PTSD and the struggles many service members face after coming home from war.  Funds raised from the campaign benefit local non-profit groups serving veterans.

Follow @msnbc_pictures

A storm system that could spawn twisters in the central U.S. on Thursday already did some damage overnight in Madison, Kan., where softball-sized hail smashed car windshields.

A twister nearly formed near the town just after midnight, the national Storm Prediction Center noted, but the biggest impact was from hail.

"That was a HUGE bow-hook, a monster funnel cloud," WxRisk.com, a private weather forecasting firm, posted on its Facebook page. "Hail in excess of 4.25 in. Slightly larger than softballs at times."

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The firm said one of three storm cells that moved through the town of 700 "produced monster-size hail for almost 30 minutes ... lots of reports of cars and structures being damaged due to the large hail. Tennis-ball hail, CD hail, Soft-ball hail, and even larger."

The dumping didn't, however, break any U.S. records. A hailstone that hit Vivian, S.D., on July 23, 2010, holds the record for largest diameter (8 inches) and for weight (1.938 pounds). A hailstone in Aurora, Neb., on June 22, 2003, has the largest circumference (18.75 inches).

Hailstone in Hawaii largest on record there

Large hail pounded other parts of Kansas overnight as well, and the forecast for Thursday had much of the region, including Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa and Missouri, with a high chance of severe weather, weather.com reported.

"We're getting into that time of year when we get severe thunderstorms just about every day," said Greg Forbes, weather.com's severe weather expert.

The storm system will trigger strong storms in the Ohio Valley on Friday, weather.com forecast. 

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FORWARD OPERATING BASE MASUM GHAR, Afghanistan -- In a natural amphitheatre high among the jagged grey peaks of Afghanistan's Panjwai district, the shock of a village shooting rampage is still settling over U.S. soldiers who served with accused gunman Robert Bales.

The soldiers of Tacoma-based 3/2 Stryker Brigade Combat Team were moving into areas inherited from Alaska-based troops, tracking their armored vehicles to memorize the mazy roads of southern province Kandahar, when more than a dozen people were shot dead in Belandai and Zangabad villages.

Bales' brothers in arms are perplexed and distraught by the March 11 slaughter, which has dragged U.S.-Afghan relations to new nadir, prompting President Hamid Karzai to demand a pullback of NATO forces from Afghan communities.

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"We are all talking about Sergeant Bales. I talk with some of the soldiers who served with him and they are all surprised. It saddens the friends of his, because my understanding is it was totally out of character," 3/2 Brigade Chaplain Major Edward Choi told Reuters at the unit's headquarters at Forward Operating Base Masum Ghar.

Afghan massacre suspect's wife: 'He did not do this'

The U.S. military last week lodged 17 charges of premeditated murder against Bales, a four-tour veteran, ahead of what is expected to be a long trial. In theory at least, the death penalty is on the table.

Popular leader
Bales had been a popular leader, Choi said, making the massacre even more bewildering. Comrades reject reports his marriage had been in trouble ahead of an Afghan deployment he was reluctant to undertake.

"That is not the case," said Choi, shrugging in frustration. "People that knew him, that dealt with him personally, said he was a great NCO (non-commissioned officer), cared for soldiers, was tactically and operationally professional, loved his wife and kids."

Choi, whose small plywood chapel overlooks a wide river plain and brigade command fenced by concrete blast walls, said some of Bales' comrades had been stressed by moving into a dangerous area that birthed the Taliban, and where its one-eyed leader Mullah Mohammad Omar still has a home.

Three-hour firefight: Afghan militants attack NATO convoy

Choi said he had no doubt multiple deployments were taking a toll on some of the fighting men. New rules governing elite units like the one Bales was assigned to guard, and wandered from in darkness on the night of the killings, were likely.

"When I speak to some of my leaders, our concern is lack of oversight. There are conventional soldiers attached to special forces who are well trained, off on their own, very mature and growing beards and doing their own thing," he said.

"When you take a 19 or 20-year-old conventional soldier and put him into special operations, they might not be able to handle it."

Captain Janel Schlaudecker, a combat stress counsellor for U.S. soldiers in Panjwai, including Bales' unit, said while there was no explanation for what led to the massacres, she had not noticed an impact on the wider stress levels of Bales' brigade, even among the far-flung infantry units.

"It's so hard to judge how they would respond to this. But they are used to going out there and eating next to nothing, if anything," Schlaudecker said.

"They are used to being under a lot more pressure and not having a lot of sleep. They are wired completely differently. They are lot more resilient."

PTSD: Having the courage to ask for help

Tensions over the incident are still high in Panjwai, an insurgent hotbed west of Kandahar city, and the scene of some of the war's fiercest battles. Scores of Canadian soldiers were killed there before the Americans took over in mid-2011.

U.S. authorities have given the victims' families cash compensation of around $50,000 for each person killed, but at a meeting with district elders this week, U.S. officers and advisers were confronted by angry Afghans demanding to know why more was not done to prevent such an atrocity.

"Local people are very angry. I get hundreds of calls from people who want this soldier tried here, in Afghanistan," said Panjwai radio journalist Abdul Karim, who also runs a curio shop from a shipping container, used by U.S. troops.

Fighting season
Some soldiers worry the massacre will undo hard-won gains over the past year, when insurgent attacks fell 40 percent, and turn sentiment against incoming units of Bales' 3/2 Strykers ahead of the summer fighting months.

The 2012 fighting season is the last which will be fought by NATO in surge-level numbers, as the end-2014 deadline for the exit of most foreign combat troops approaches.

US orders more security for troops in Afghanistan

Insurgents have already carried out small attacks as a bitter winter recedes, but U.S. commanders say this does not mean an emboldened Taliban have brought hostilities forward.

"I think the coming summer will be bad and the new guys are worried," said Staff Sergeant Robert Nelson, 37, a garrulous ex-Marine from Texas who runs the 'Mission One' base shop at Masum Ghar for the outgoing 1/25 Arctic Wolves, now packing to leave.

Colonel Todd Wood, the outgoing U.S. commander for the 25th Infantry Division, said patrols were brushing lightly over Belandai and Zangabad to avoid provoking more anger, but he did not think the massacre would make the fighting months worse.

"Right now it's probably still too early to tell," said Wood, a weathered, hyperactive Iraq veteran from Iowa.

"We've still got villagers that will point out IEDs (improvised explosive devices), we've still got villagers out there that will warn us of a possible attack ... that hasn't changed," he said.

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The FBI in San Francisco used a public relations program billed as "mosque outreach" to collect information on the religious views and practices of Muslims in Northern California and then shared the intelligence with other government agencies, according to FBI documents obtained by civil rights groups.

The heavily redacted documents, released after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, raise "grave constitutional concerns," said Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"In San Francisco, we have found that community outreach was being run out of the FBI’s intelligence division and was part of a secret and systematic intelligence gathering program,” conducted without any apparent evidence of wrongdoing," said Shamsi. "The bureau’s documentation of religious leaders' and congregants' beliefs and practices violates the Privacy Act, which Congress passed to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights."

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The Privacy Act limits sharing of personal information among government agencies and the length of time it can be retained. In this case, the information shared included religious beliefs and affiliations, which the ACLU argues is entirely out of bounds.

The ACLU is calling for the Department of Justice’s inspector general to investigate alleged violations of the Privacy Act in the San Francisco Division and determine the scope of such activity nationwide.

The FBI San Francisco defended its agents' actions, saying the information "was collected within the scope of an authorized law enforcement activity."

The ACLU of Northern California filed the FOIA lawsuit with the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper, leading to the release of the FBI documents on Tuesday.

Meant to foster trust
The documents indicate that FBI was keeping records of conversations and activities within mosques and other Muslim organizations from 2004 through 2008, information that was provided by employees engaged in the outreach programs.

The announced intention of the FBI outreach programs is to foster trust between law enforcers and members of the Muslim community so they can work together to fight crime and avert terrorism.

An earlier ACLU report on community outreach prompted FBI national headquarters to issue a release stating that its policy requires separate operations and databases for intelligence gathering and community outreach programs.

A large proportion of the information was labeled "positive intelligence," which indicates that the FBI intends to keep it in its intelligence database, the ACLU report explained.

Many documents were marked "secret," even though they appeared to include only mundane information. Some documents were marked "disseminated outside," but did not specify the recipients.

Among the findings contained in the FBI documents:

• A 2005 FBI memorandum from a meeting with a congregant at Islamic Center of Santa Cruz, documented his name and religious affiliation and detailed other worshipers' financial contributions to the center and community support for Islam.
• The subject of a sermon and congregants' discussions about a property purchase for a new mosque were gathered by FBI agents during five visits to Seaside Mosque in 2005.
• Documents based on four "outreach" meetings between FBI personnel and representatives of the South Bay Islamic Association note discussions about the Hajj pilgrimage and "Islam in general."
• Documents based on FBI contacts with representatives of the Bay Area Cultural Connections — formerly the Turkish Center Musalla — describe the group’s mission and activities, and the ethnicity of its members. A memo indicates the FBI searched for the cell phone number of one participant in the meeting in the LexisNexis records database and Department of Motor Vehicle records, obtaining detailed information about him, including his date of birth, Social Security number, address and home telephone number.

There is no indication that the subjects were informed that the information was being collected or shared with other law enforcement agencies, the ACLU said.

The FBI in San Francisco declined a request for an interview, but released a statement by Assistant Director Michael Kortan. In addition to stating that the information gathering abided by laws and agency rules, it indicated that it had adjusted its outreach program since the period covered by the documents.

"Since that time, the FBI has formalized its community relations program to emphasize a greater distinction between outreach and operational activities," Kortan said.

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Outreach to 'generate goodwill'
"FBI San Francisco dedicated a full-time, non-agent employee to community outreach efforts in the fall of 2007," said a second statement from Stephanie Douglas, FBI special agent in charge. "The community outreach program is designed to generate goodwill and foster relationships with a wide-range of groups in the communities we serve."

But documents still under analysis by the ACLU indicate FBI San Francisco continued to mingle outreach and intelligence gathering through 2011, according to Shamsi.

The documents undermine trust for genuine outreach programs, said Farhana Khera, executive director of Muslim Advocates, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that makes policy recommendations to lawmakers and leaders.

"I think the recent documents further underscore how well-intentioned community leaders who talk with the FBI are instead the targets of this broad, intelligence-gathering effort," she said. "It’s easy to see then how that community leader who had a conversation with an FBI agent finds himself being harassed when traveling or crossing borders."

"These documents are illustrating the actual experiences of American Muslims that we have been hearing for a number of years now," she added.  

The findings are the latest  from an ACLU examination of how the FBI has conducted surveillance in the wake of 9-11 and a campaign to expose cases that they say threaten civil liberties.

In FBI documents obtained through other Freedom of Information lawsuits, the rights groups has highlighted systematic surveillance of Muslim student organizations and individuals and what it considers anti-Muslim bias in training materials being used by the FBI —now the subject of internal FBI investigation, according to published reports.

'Count the mosques'
In a separate case, documents uncovered by The Associated Press revealed that the New York Police Department conducted an extensive surveillance campaign of the Muslim population there, keeping secret files on individuals, businesses, mosques and organizations. Those findings have provoked outrage from many Muslim and civil rights groups, which have called on the Obama administration to intervene.

Greater FBI scrutiny of Muslim communities goes back to shortly after the 9/11 attacks, when then FBI Director Robert Mueller instructed field offices across the country to "count the mosques" and set up investigative goals accordingly, according to an article by investigative reporter Michael Isikoff.

Rules governing FBI surveillance were relaxed in 2008 to give more leeway to FBI "assessments" — a stage of surveillance that takes place before the opening of a formal investigation. These more lenient standards, critics say, allow information gathering on individuals without probable cause.

Rights groups are asking the Department of Justice to restore stricter rules on surveillance and to prohibit racial and religious profiling in all cases.

"What we need is for the FBI to go back to the standards set after the Hoover-era abuses.… guidelines put in place that required the FBI to engage in surveillance only if there’s evidence of wrongdoing," said Khera of Muslim Advocates.

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Updated at 7:09 a.m. ET: Surveillance video footage of George Zimmerman being led from a police car shortly after he fatally shot teenager Trayvon Martin does not appear to show any obvious signs of injuries or bloodstains, but his attorney says the video is too grainy to be revealing.

The footage, obtained by ABC News on Wednesday, shows a handcuffed Zimmerman getting out of the police car unaided and walking into the police station where he was taken after the shooting in Sanford, Fla.

It was taken about four hours after the deadly incident. 

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In the video, there are no readily visible signs of injuries to Zimmerman's head or blood on his clothes. However, he is wearing a red jacket, which could obscure blood stains. Also, at one point, an officer pauses to look at the back of Zimmerman's head, which he claims was injured by Martin.

Appearing on NBC's TODAY on Thursday, Zimmerman's attorney Craig Sonner described the video as "very grainy." He also pointed out that Zimmerman had been "cleaned-up" and received first aid in the four hours between the incident and Zimmerman's videotaped arrival at the police station.

Sonner has previously said that his client suffered a broken nose and a gash to his head during the altercation.

 

Neighborhood watch volunteer Zimmerman, 28, who was released without charge, claims he shot dead the 17-year-old Martin on Feb. 26 in self-defense after the teen attacked him.

Eugene O'Donnell, of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the video shows "that it's beyond dispute that there are no serious injuries, physical injuries, he's not in a hospital."

"There's no bruising that's observable," O'Donnell told MSNBC TV's The Last Word. However, he added that "it's possible that there are injuries that are not seen in the video."

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Richard Kurtz, the funeral director who prepared Martin's body, was asked if there were any signs on his hands that he had punched someone.

"The only thing that I was able to see was the gunshot wound," Kurtz told The Last Word. "I could not see evidence like he had been punching somebody as the news media say he was punching ... It just did not add up to me."

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When Kevin Cunningham read about the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin early this month, he turned to a platform he was just starting to experiment with – social media – to add his voice to the few that were expressing outrage about a Florida police department’s handling of the case.

Little did he know when he started an online petition demanding that authorities prosecute the shooter, that it would garner more than 2 million signatures and help draw international attention to the 17-year-old’s shooting death on Feb. 26.

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“I decided to take the skills that I’ve been working on … and apply them to the situation and see how well it would work out, and it just went crazy on me,” said Cunningham, 31, of Washington, D.C., who created the petition on the Change.org website on March 8.

“What I’ve learned is that in social media, you don’t have to go through institutions anymore. … Any individual with any idea can make it work if they have (a) connection to the Internet,”  he added.

Video shows Zimmerman shortly after Martin shooting

Cunningham, a red-head who describes himself as the “super Irish” son of activist parents, said he learned about the Martin case when he read a story posted on a listserv for Men of Howard, an informal, secretive fraternity that he joined while attending the historically black Howard University as a law student.

When he suggested starting an online appeal calling for prosecution of the shooter, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, the proposal was met with both support and skepticism from other subscribers.

“At Howard, they tell us as soon as we get there, ‘If you’re going to be a lawyer, you’re either a social engineer or a parasite on society.’ … that’s how I think about life, is to be a social engineer, and that’s what my parents always were trying to be," he said.

When Cunningham launched the appeal, others in the fraternity posted it to their social networks. Later, current students and other alumni shared it, too.

'Made me feel very good'
On the first day, Cunningham believes the petition got 100 signatures. Then it quickly reached the 1,000 mark as it spread to Florida, California and beyond. Cunningham said he noticed that some of the signers identified themselves as family members or friends of Martin.

“You could tell there ... was a lot of people who knew him and liked him,” he said. “It definitely had an impact on me … it made me feel very good about what I had done, what we had done.”

Zimmerman has admitted to shooting Martin. His representatives have asserted he acted in self-defense, but the incident has sparked outrage in many quarters because Martin was unarmed and, according to critics of police handling of the case, may have been targeted because he was black.

When the number of signatures on Cunningham’s petition crested 10,000 after a few days, Change.org contacted him about transferring it to Martin’s parents, who had begun making media appearances to speak on behalf of their slain son.

Cunningham said he was happy to do so, noting several times in an interview with msnbc.com that he had wanted to remain behind the scenes.

He also played down his role in the petition’s explosive growth, saying the number of signers when he transferred it to Martin’s parents was “not even a rounding error” compared to where the number stands now.

“At the same time, I feel like I did kick the stone that turned into the snowball that caused the avalanche,” he said.

Grateful for a stranger's gesture
Martin's parents expressed gratitude.

"When we heard about the petition, we were overwhelmed that someone we didn't know would take the time and effort to raise awareness about our son," said his mother, Sybrina Fulton. 

"From the beginning, our only goal has been getting simple justice for our son," added his father, Tracy Martin. "The fact that more than 2 million people have signed this petition shows there are still a lot of good people in this world."

Transferring a petition on Change.org is extremely rare, said Megan Lubin, a spokeswoman for the website, where nearly 100,000 petitions have been posted since it began operations in 2007.

“Trayvon’s parents were very quickly becoming the face of the national story. It was really their story that was speaking to folks … and I think the decision was made to reach out and see if they would be interested in leading the campaign,” she said.

Congressman escorted from House after wearing hoodie in Trayvon Martin tribute

Lubin noted that an average of 15,000 petitions are started on the site every month, “so for a petition to climb this fast and to grow to this size is truly remarkable.” She attributed the growth in part to “celebrities who have made it their sole mission over their social media pages …to call for folks to sign this petition.”

“It goes directly to the story and Trayvon’s parents,” she added, “but it also demonstrates … the incredible power of the platform and social media in general.”

Website's largest petition ever
The petition became the largest in the website’s history last week, surpassing the number of signatures on one launched last year calling for a law to make it a felony for a guardian not to notify authorities of a child disappearance within 24 hours, in the wake of the Casey Anthony case.

Cunningham’s effort was one of the dozens, if not hundreds, of efforts to publicize the case online that helped to keep the conversation going about Martin “even though there (weren't) a lot of big developments in the case” prior to the release of the 911 tapes, said Kelly McBride, senior faculty for ethics at The Poynter Institute.

“It gave all of those people who were motivated a place to point to and say, ‘Here do something, you know, sign this,’ and it also … became like a central blog for who was making interesting comments on the case,” said McBride, who spoke with Cunningham for a column tracing how the story evolved on social media.

Lubin said it’s up to Trayvon Martin’s parents to decide what to do with the petition.

“The point of Change.org is so that people feel empowered and able to start something at any time and it has to be their campaign,” she said. “ Our role is very much … helping people achieve that goal.”

Cunningham, who works as a social media coordinator for a Palestine children’s charity, KinderUSA, said he “fell in love” with social media during the Egyptian revolution and was inspired by the activists he encountered in the virtual world.

He was particularly moved by the story of Khaled Said, whose death at the hands of police was credited with helping trigger the Egyptian uprising that toppled the government of Hosni Mubarak.

“I thought that this could be a similar situation where the death of the one person could be the thing that triggers us to re-look at our society,” Cunningham said. “I think we need to revolutionize the justice system, for sure, and maybe our culture as well.”

Asked whether he thought people might be surprised to learn that a white man was responsible for the petition demanding justice for a black teenager he had never met, Cunningham said he didn’t “believe in black and white.”

“The only race I believe in is the human race,” he said.

PASADENA, Calif. -- A 911 caller has been arrested after Pasadena police say his false armed robbery report led officers to shoot and kill a 19-year-old college student they believed to be a suspect.

Pasadena Police Chief Philip Sanchez told reporters Wednesday that a deadly chain of events was set into motion after officers responded to a 911 call claiming a laptop had been stolen by two armed men.

Caller Oscar Carrillo allegedly told officers that two suspects were armed with handguns on Orange Grove Boulevard at Raymond Avenue.

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The phone call put officers on alert and led them to believe Kendrec McDade was armed when they saw him about two blocks from that location Saturday night, Sanchez said.

"The actions of the 911 caller set the minds of the officers," Sanchez said.

McDade ran from officers until an officer used the police cruiser to block McDade's path in an alley and rolled down his window, Lt. Phlunte Riddle said.

McDade allegedly made a motion at his waistband and the officer opened fire. A second officer who was chasing McDade on foot also opened fire, Riddle said.

Football standout
McDade, who was less than 10 feet away from the patrol car when the officer opened fire, died of his injuries at Huntington Hospital. The Citrus College student was a football standout at Azusa High School.

In an interview Monday with detectives, Sanchez said Carrillo admitted that he made up the story about the gun to speed up the officers' response. Detectives now believe McDade and the other person, a juvenile, were unarmed, Riddle said.

Carrillo was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter in connection with McDade's shooting, Sanchez said.

The other suspect, a juvenile, has been charged with two counts of commercial burglary, one count of grand theft and one count of failure to register as a gang member as a condition of his probation. He remains in custody.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson, of Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable, said there were "a great number of questions unanswered" in the case.

"The bottom line is this young man was not armed when he was shot dead," he told the Los Angeles Times.

Joe Scherf, head football coach at Azusa High, also told the Times that McDade was "a good kid who was never in trouble."

The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

On FOX Orlando Wednesday evening, the father of the man who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, said Martin attacked his son, saying, "You're gonna die now, or you're gonna die tonight."

“George was going to the store, and he saw someone in his community that he did not recognize as living there,” Robert Zimmerman, a retired judge, said.  “Because there had been a lot of break-ins in the area, he thought that was suspicious that someone would not be walking on the street or the sidewalk, but they'd be walking right behind the townhomes.”

Robert Zimmerman said that his son, George Zimmerman, 28, then called a non-emergency number to report this stranger. He lost sight of the teen as he looked for an address to report to police, Robert Zimmerman told the FOX affiliate.

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“It’s my understanding that at that point Trayvon Martin walked up to him, asked him, ‘Do you have a – beep – problem?’ George said ‘No, I don’t have a problem’.”

The elder Zimmerman said that as his son started to reach for his cell phone, Martin, 17, punched him in the nose, knocking the larger man to the pavement.  

“Trayvon Martin got on top of him and just started beating him, in the face, in his nose, hitting his head on the concrete,” Robert Zimmerman said.

That’s when Martin spotted George Zimmerman’s gun, Robert Zimmerman said.

“Trayvon Martin said something to the effect of, ‘You're gonna die now,’ or ‘You're gonna die tonight,’ something to that effect.”

When the interviewer asked about Martin’s girlfriend, who said that he told her that he was being followed, Robert Zimmerman said he didn’t believe her.

He replied: “I don't believe she was on the phone with him, and I find it very strange with the publicity involved with this that all of the sudden, after three weeks, someone would remember that they were on the phone. I believe the FBI and others investigating this will find that that did not happen.”

The family of a 13-year-old witness told Al Sharpton Thursday morning a different perspective. Although he did not witness the shooting, he heard it and said that he heard crying and that when the gun went off, the whining ceased.

Zimmerman, a self-declared neighborhood watch volunteer, fatally shot Martin on Feb. 26 in what he called an act of self-defense. Within weeks, the story started drawing nationwide attention and Sanford, Fla. Police were accused of bungling the investigation for not arresting Zimmerman.  

Zimmerman, meantime, is in hiding. His father told FOX Orlando that he is not doing well.