NATIONAL BRIEFS

FLORIDA: Challenge to Obama's health reform

Crucial pieces of a lawsuit challenging the Obama administration's health care overhaul can go to trial, with U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson ruling Thursday in Pensacola he wants to hear more arguments over whether it's constitutional to force citizens to buy health insurance. U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said it also needs to be decided whether it's constitutional to penalize people who do not buy insurance with taxes and to require states to expand their Medicaid programs.

PENNSYLVANIA: 2 guilty of hate killing

A jury in Scranton convicted two men Thursday of a federal hate crime in the fatal beating of an undocumented Mexican, finding they attacked Luis Ramirez, 25, primarily out of hatred for Hispanic people. Derrick Donchak, 20, and Brandon Piekarsky, 18, were convicted of violating the civil rights of Ramirez, who died in July 2008 after a confrontation with high school football players in the former mining town of Shenandoah. The two could get life in prison at sentencing Jan. 24.

WASHINGTON: Tough audience for Obama

Going after the youth vote, President Barack Obama got a grilling Thursday from a mostly under-30 crowd of adults, who sternly challenged him across his economic and social agenda. The tone at the town hall was set when a woman identifying herself as a Republican asked Obama about his inability to foster his promised bipartisanship, and then a man disaffected with the state of the economy asked: "Why should we still support you?" A sharp question-and-answer session resulted.

Clinton condemns killing

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton assailed "the absolute barbarity" displayed by terrorists and criminals around the world Thursday, telling ABC's "Good Morning America" the U.S. government is doing everything possible to help the family of David Hartley, an American tourist who reportedly was murdered on a Texas-Mexico border lake. Clinton, traveling in Europe, said "the beheaded body of the brave Mexican investigator that just showed up shows what we're dealing with."