Rolling Stone retraction a hot topic on campus

NEW YORK - The furor over a retracted Rolling Stone article may deter some rape victims from coming forward, but the national campaign to curb sexual assaults on college campuses will keep gaining strength, according to advocates who have been following the high-profile case.

The November 2014 article, purporting to describe a vicious gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house, was retracted by Rolling Stone on Sunday after the Columbia Journalism School issued a scathing critique of how the story was reported and edited. The critical report followed an announcement by police officials last month that investigators had found no evidence to back the claims of the alleged victim.

Advocates for victims of sexual assault, in interviews Monday, had mixed views on the legacy of the Rolling Stone article.

Alison Kiss, executive director of the Clery Center for Security On Campus, described on-campus sexual assault as an epidemic that needs to be addressed aggressively. The rate of false reports, she said, is between 2 percent and 10 percent.

Clinton expected to launch 2016 campaign soon

WASHINGTON - After months of anticipation, Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to launch her presidential campaign sometime in the next two weeks with an initial focus on intimate events putting her in close contact with voters.

Clinton wants to avoid soaring speeches delivered to big rallies, and the risk they'll convey the same cloak of inevitability that contributed to her loss in the 2008 Democratic primaries to Barack Obama.

The goal, according to people close to the Clinton organization, is to make her second run for the White House more about voters and less about herself, regardless of her place atop a field of candidates that currently looks far weaker this time around.

Clinton's initial events are expected to be held in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first states to vote in the presidential primary contest.

Kenya attack victims described as humble

NAIROBI, Kenya - He was a soccer player with a fighting spirit, a talented keyboard player with "golden fingers" who was intent on succeeding in life, his guardian said. But Bryson Mwakuleghwa, a 21-year-old student at Garissa University College in Kenya, never had the chance to make his dreams happen.

Mwakuleghwa was among 148 people who were killed in an attack by Islamic militants Thursday on the college in Garissa, near the border with Somalia, where the al-Shabab extremist group is based. On Monday, relatives of the dead converged on a funeral parlor in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, for the grim task of identifying the dead. Some grieved quietly, while others emerged from viewing bodies of lost family members in physical distress, wailing as Red Cross officials escorted and even carried them to tents for counseling.

Several mourners interviewed outside the Chiromo Funeral Parlour of the University of Nairobi spoke wistfully of those they lost, sometimes using the same words - humble, devout, studious and a role model - to describe youths who were trying hard to forge a career, leaving home and traveling many hours by bus to Garissa to take advantage of the education opportunities there.

Native American tribes stand firm on gay marriage

Even if a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this spring makes same-sex marriage the law, it would leave pockets of the country where it isn't likely to be recognized any time soon: The reservations of a handful of sovereign Native American tribes, including the nation's two largest.

Since 2011, as the number of states recognizing such unions spiked to 37, at least six smaller tribes have revisited and let stand laws that define marriage as being between a man and a woman, according to an Associated Press review of tribal records. In all, tribes with a total membership approaching 1 million won't recognize marriages between two men or two women.

Several explicitly declare that same-sex marriages are prohibited. And some have even toughened their stance.

The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma and the Navajo Nation, with about 300,000 members each, maintain decade-old laws that don't recognize same-sex marriage. Neither tribe has shown much sign of shifting.

White House ramps up spin on Iran nuclear deal

WASHINGTON - Facing deep skepticism on multiple fronts, President Barack Obama ramped up lobbying Monday for a framework nuclear deal with Iran, one of the toughest sells of his presidency. Yet critics from Jerusalem to Washington warned they won't sit idly by while Obama and world leaders pursue a final accord that would leave much of Iran's nuclear infrastructure intact.

The White House deployed Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz - a nuclear physicist - to offer a scientific defense of a deal that Moniz said would block all Iranian pathways to a nuclear weapon. He described the emerging deal as a "forever agreement," disputing skeptics who contend it would merely delay Iran's progress toward a bomb.

Under the agreement, Moniz said, Iran would agree - in perpetuity - to a beefed-up level of inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

- The Associated Press