NATIONAL BRIEFS

FLORIDA: Fired teacher kills boss

A teacher fired from a private school returned while school was in session Tuesday with a gun hidden in a guitar case and shot the headmistress to death before committing suicide, authorities said. No students were hurt. Officers responded to the Episcopal School of Jacksonville after receiving reports of a person with a gun, and the school was placed on lockdown. When they arrived, Dale Regan, head of the school, and the gunman were found dead.

SOUTH CAROLINA: Purity pledge found illegal

The Republican Party in a small, conservative county expects its candidates to lower taxes. They also expect them to not watch porn, be faithful to their spouses and not have sex outside marriage. The Laurens County GOP decided that anyone who wanted to run with the county party's blessing would have to sign a pledge and be approved by party leaders. The state party told them that was illegal. The 28-point pledge appeared to be at least in part a response to an extramarital affair by the county sheriff, who was also accused of driving his mistress to get an abortion in a county-owned vehicle. Where the county pledge went off the rails was a proposal circulated along with it that would have created a committee to screen potential candidates based on adherence to to the promises. The committee might have had trouble with the presidential primary. Newt Gingrich, who has been married three times and admitted to an affair with his current wife while married to his second one, got 42 percent of the vote in the county in January's primary.

CALIFORNIA: Cannon goes off, woman killed

A woman died Tuesday after a homemade cannon blew a projectile into a mobile home in Potrero. a remote San Diego County community. Two men, one of them the woman's husband, were tinkering with the cannon when it went off, said Capt. Mike Mohler of the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. It was not clear whether the projectile or the cannon blast killed the 33-year-old woman, he said.