NATION BRIEFS

WASHINGTON/Obama's anti-bully message

President Barack Obama says he was "shocked and saddened" by the recent suicides of several young people who were bullied and taunted for being gay. "As a parent of two daughters, it breaks my heart," Obama said in a video posted late Thursday on YouTube and the White House website. It's time, he said, for Americans to dispel the myth that bullying is "just a normal rite of passage." Anti-gay bullying has been in the spotlight recently after the suicides of several teenagers, including Tyler Clementi, 18, the Rutgers University freshman who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate secretly recorded him with another male student, then posted the video online.

CALIFORNIA/Shark kills body boarder

A body boarder bled to death Friday at a beach northwest of Los Angeles after a shark mauled his leg, authorities said, prompting officials to close three beaches through the weekend. Lucas Ransom, 19, was boogie-boarding in the surf line about 100 yards off of Surf Beach with a friend when a shark suddenly pulled him under the water shortly before 9 a.m., according to a statement from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department. Ransom's friend and others at the beach pulled him from the water, but the University of California, Santa Barbara, student had a severe wound to his left leg and died a short time later, the statement said. The type of shark that attacked Ransom was not immediately determined.

NEVADA/Simpson appeal rejected

The Nevada Supreme Court refused Friday to overturn O.J. Simpson's armed robbery and kidnapping convictions, rejecting a claim that prospective jurors were dismissed because they were black. Simpson attorney Yale Galanter planned to take Simpson's appeal to federal court after his 2008 conviction in the gunpoint heist in a Las Vegas hotel room was upheld. The court said all eight separate issues raised in the appeal - some alleging misconduct by prosecutors and the judge - were without merit. Simpson, 63, is serving 9 to 33 years at a state prison.