CLEVELAND — A 14-year-old suspended student opened fire in a downtown high school Wednesday before killing himself, and five people were taken to hospitals, authorities said. After the shooting, shaken teens called their parents on cell phones, most to reassure but in at least one case with terrifying news: "Mom, I got shot."

Mayor Frank Jackson said the three teens and two adults were hurt. He said the children were in "stable, good condition," and the adults were in "a little elevated condition."

The shooter was enrolled at the SuccessTech Academy alternative school but had been suspended Monday for fighting, said Charles Blackwell, president of SuccessTech's student-parent organization.

Blackwell said the shooter entered the high school, a converted five-story office building, and gradually worked his way up through the first two floors of administrative offices to the third floor of classrooms.

"Nobody knows how he got in," he said.

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House Democrats set up showdown with surveillance bill

WASHINGTON — House Democrats pushed their government eavesdropping bill through two committees Tuesday with only minor changes, setting the stage for a confrontation with the Bush administration.

President Bush said Wednesday that he will not sign the bill if it does not give retroactive immunity to U.S. telecommunications companies that helped conduct electronic surveillance without court orders.

Bush said the bill, which envisions a greater role for a secret court in overseeing U.S. surveillance of overseas communications, would "take us backward" in efforts to thwart terrorism.

The measure advanced by the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees left out the immunity provision Bush wants. Democrats also voted down Republican attempts to tailor the legislation more to the administration's liking.

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Iran's ex-nuke negotiator lambastes president's policies

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator delivered an unusually sharp rebuke to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's policies Wednesday, saying they are turning more nations against Iran and failing to fix the struggling economy.

The comments by Hasan Rowhani were the harshest yet against the hard-line president by a prominent figure in the Iranian leadership, and came after critics had grown muted in recent month as the government stirred up fears of conflict with the U.S. and warned against dissent.

The criticism echoed complaints early this year from conservative supporters of Ahmadinejad that his inflammatory rhetoric was needlessly goading the West in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program and that he hadn't fulfilled promises to improve the economy.

Rowhani was replaced as nuclear negotiator when Ahmadinejad came to office in 2005, but he remains a member of the Supreme National Security Council and sits on two powerful cleric-run bodies, the Experts Assembly and the Expediency Council.

Speaking to the pro-reform Moderation and Development Party, he did not directly mention Ahmadinejad, but was clearly referring to his policies. His comments were reported by the semiofficial ISNA and Mehr news agencies and confirmed to The Associated Press by people who heard the speech.

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Supreme Court clarifies treaties in Texas death penalty case

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, with a bit of dramatic flair in the packed courtroom Wednesday, whipped out his pocket-size Constitution and began reading to the lawyer from Texas the pertinent section on international treaties.

Treaties "shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every state," Breyer said, pausing briefly, "I guess it means, including Texas, 'shall be bound thereby.'"

His little joke aside, Breyer was probing a question at the heart of a complicated dispute over the role of international law and claims of executive power in the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder.

Why does Texas insist that it need not abide by the judgment of an international court, which by treaty the United States has agreed to follow, that ruled that Jose Ernesto Medellin must have a new hearing?

Despite his support for the death penalty, President Bush has intervened in the case on behalf of Medellin.

Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz told Breyer and his colleagues that the international court ruling has no weight in Texas and that Bush has no power to order its enforcement.

The justices engaged in a spirited discussion of who gets the final say in whether Texas courts must give Medellin a new hearing because local police never notified Mexican diplomats that he had been arrested, in violation of an international treaty.

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Giuliani, Romney focus criticism on each other

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney squared off over war, taxes and spending Wednesday, focusing on each other as they sought to turn the quest for the GOP presidential nomination into a two-man contest.

The former New York mayor held no public events a day after squabbling with the former Massachusetts governor over economic issues during a debate in Michigan. Instead, Giuliani dispatched aides and surrogates to accuse Romney of having a "Lawyers Test" for going to war.

Romney retorted that it was Giuliani who had been the lawsuit king as mayor.

A night earlier, Romney said in answering a question on whether he would go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran's nuclear facilities: "You sit down with your attorneys and tell you what you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what's in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat."

On Wednesday, Giuliani's campaign derided that response in a statement from Robert Natter, a retired Navy admiral who is a senior military adviser to the candidate.

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Study finds that humans to blame for increase in humidity

WASHINGTON — With global warming, the world isn't just getting hotter — it's getting stickier, due to humidity. And people are to blame, according to a study based on computer models published Thursday.

The amount of moisture in the air near Earth's surface rose 2.2 percent in less than three decades, the researchers report in a study appearing in the journal Nature.

"This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, a co-author of the study.

Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002. Higher humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research.

Humidity increased over most of the globe, including the eastern United States, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

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Bobby Brown recovering from mild heart attack in L.A.

LOS ANGELES — Bobby Brown spent a night in the hospital after suffering a mild heart attack, his attorney said Wednesday.

Brown had severe chest pains Tuesday night and was taken to two hospitals. He was admitted to Tarzana Regional Medical Center in the San Fernando Valley.

"This morning they did diagnose him as suffering from a mild heart attack ... they attributed (it) to stress and diet," said his attorney, Phaedra Parks, in Atlanta.

His father and brother stayed with Brown and he was released Wednesday morning in good condition, Parks said.

"He is in great spirits, he's doing very well," she said. "He's speaking with family members."

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State Department may phase out Blackwater in Iraq

WASHINGTON — The State Department may phase out or limit the use of private security guards in Iraq, which could mean canceling Blackwater USA's contract or awarding it to another company in line with an Iraqi government demand, The Associated Press has learned.

Such steps would be difficult given U.S. reliance on Blackwater and other contractors, but they are among options being studied during a comprehensive review of security in Iraq, two senior officials said.

The review was ordered after a Sept. 16 incident in which Blackwater guards protecting a U.S. Embassy convoy in Baghdad are accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians.

The shooting has enraged the Iraqi government, which is demanding millions in compensation for the victims and removal of Blackwater in six months. It also has focused attention on the nebulous rules governing private guards and added to the Bush administration's problems in managing the war in Iraq.