Mark Memmott

Bears are in the news again.

Tuesday, there was the guy in Los Angeles who was texting-while-walking and almost bumped into a 400-pound black bear. The close encounter with an ursine was caught on video.

Now there's this:

The two suspects in last Friday's killings in Tulsa of three African-Americans and wounding of two others were formally charged today with "three counts each of first-degree murder, two counts of shooting with intent to kill and five counts of malicious intimidation or harassment," the Tulsa World repo

After saying Thursday morning on The Today Show that she thought her son's death "was an accident," Trayvon Martin's mother went on other news broadcasts later in the day to say she only thinks the encounter between her son and George Zimmerman was accidental.

Still haven't filed your federal income tax return?

Since you may be a procrastinator, you may not have looked at the calendar lately. So we want to make sure you know that Sunday is April 15th.

But you also might not have realized that this year the deadline is the 17th.

Why?

The White House just posted word that President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama filed 2011 tax returns showing an "adjusted gross income of $789,674" and that they paid "$162,074 in total [federal] tax." That works out to about 20.5 percent of the AGI.

About half of the first family's income was from the president's salary. The rest came from royalties generated by his books. According to the White House:

One week from today, Chief Michael Maloney was due to retire from the Greenland, N.H., police department.

Thursday night, he was killed during a drug bust in which four officers were also wounded. The man authorities were trying to arrest, and a female acquaintance, were later found dead inside the home where the raid took place. Authorities believe they may have died in a murder-suicide.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Failed Missile Test May Make North Korea More Belligerent.

-- Syrian Activists Claim Regime Is Using Force To Break Up Demonstrations.

"When Chuck Norris has nightmares, Cory Booker turns on the light & sits with him until he falls back asleep."

That's just one of many funny tweets showing up this morning attached to the hashtag #corybookerstories.

The news that consumer prices rose a relatively modest 0.3 percent in March from February supports "the view the U.S. Federal Reserve has room to provide more support for the economy if needed," Reuters concludes. It adds that:

You can't say we haven't warned you about Friday the 13ths, and offered a tip for how to get over any fear of such supposedly scary days.

On Day Two of the fragile ceasefire in Syria, activists say that government forces have fired on some anti-Assad regime demonstrators in various parts of the nation.

Reporting from Beirut, NPR's Grant Clark tells our Newscast Desk that activists say security forces began massing outside mosques during Friday prayers, just before the start of protests.

Update at 1:15 p.m. ET, April 13: Since we first published this post, Sybrina Fulton has gone on other news programs to clarify her comments. We have a new post here, headlined "Trayvon's Mother: Encounter Was An Accident, Shooting Was Not."

Our original post:

We had steered clear of this topic the past few days because his posts certainly haven't been family-friendly material.

But now "The Fox Mole" who was filing dispatches for Gawker from inside Fox News Channel's operations in New York City has been uncovered.

There were 13,000 more first-time claims for jobless benefits last week than the week before, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

The agency says there were 380,000 such applications, up from 367,000 (a number that has been revised upward; previously, the agency had estimated there were 357,000 claims in the week ended March 31).

Claims had been running at the lowest pace since March and April 2008. At 380,000, the pace is the lowest since June 2008.

By charging George Zimmerman with second-degree murder rather than manslaughter, prosecutors have chosen a path that presents them with some steep legal hurdles, experts tell The Associated Press.

The early word from Syria is that "flashpoints of the 13-month uprising against President Bashar Assad were quiet Thursday ... suggesting a U.N.-brokered truce was starting to take hold and the regime was keeping a pledge to halt its assault on opposition strongholds," The Associated Press reports.

Florida state attorney Angela Corey, who is acting as a special prosecutor in the high-profile shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin, has scheduled a 6 p.m. ET news conference to "release new information" regarding the case, her office just announced.

If this doesn't make you want to put down that cellphone, we don't know what will.

Update at 4:45 p.m. ET. And With That, The Fun Is Over; Texts From Hillary Decides To Call It A Day:

Saying that "as far as memes go — it has gone as far as it can go," the Texts from Hillary guys have decided to stop adding to the blog.

As they say, "TTYL."

But we still suggest checking out our original post:

Seen Texts from Hillary yet?

After hearing that football coach Bobby Petrino had not only lied about who he was with when he had a motorcycle accident on April 1, but that he was also having an affair with that young woman, had paid her $20,000 and had arranged for her to get a job with the university, Arkansas Razorbacks fans are saying they agree with the decision to fire him.