Palestinian women hold pictures of loved ones during a protest calling for their release form Israeli jails in Gaza City, April 30 2007. Khaled Meshaal, the political chief of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas warned of a "big explosion" in the Middle East if Palestinian problems are not solved. Meshaal again deplored the embargo on direct aid to the Palestinian government that was imposed by the European Union and the United States last year after Hamas formed a cabinet alone following its clear victory in parliamentary polls.

AOL News has obtained two plays a classmate says were written by Cho Seung-Hui. Ian MacFarlane, the former classmate and current AOL employee, provided us with the plays. A note from Mr. MacFarlane and links to the works appear below.

What happened yesterday:

When I first heard about the multiple shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday, my first thought was about my friends, and my second thought was "I bet it was Seung Cho."

Cho was in my playwriting class last fall, and nobody seemed to think much of him at first. He would sit by himself whenever possible, and didn't like talking to anyone. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice before. He was just so quiet and kept to himself. Looking back, he fit the exact stereotype of what one would typically think of as a "school shooter" – a loner, obsessed with violence, and serious personal problems. Some of us in class tried to talk to him to be nice and get him out of his shell, but he refused talking to anyone. It was like he didn't want to be friends with anybody. One friend of mine tried to offer him some Halloween candy that she still had, but he slowly shook his head, refusing it. He just came to class every day and submitted his work on time, as I understand it.

A major part of the playwriting class was peer reviews. We would write one-act plays and submit them to an online repository called Blackboard for everyone in the class to read and comment about in class the next day. Typically, the students give their opinions about the plays and suggest ways to make it better, the professor gives his insights, then asks the author to comment about the play in class.

When we read Cho's plays, it was like something out of a nightmare. The plays had really twisted, macabre violence that used weapons I wouldn't have even thought of. Before Cho got to class that day, we students were talking to each other with serious worry about whether he could be a school shooter. I was even thinking of scenarios of what I would do in case he did come in with a gun, I was that freaked out about him. When the students gave reviews of his play in class, we were very careful with our words in case he decided to snap. Even the professor didn't pressure him to give closing comments.

After hearing about the mass shootings, I sent one of my friends a Facebook message asking him if he knew anything about Seung Cho and if he could have been involved. He replied: "dude that's EXACTLY what I was thinking! No, I haven't heard anything, but seriously, that was the first thing I thought when I heard he was Asian."

While I "knew" Cho, I always wished there was something I could do for him, but I couldn't think of anything. As far as notifying authorities, there isn't (to my knowledge) any system set up that lets people say "Hey! This guy has some issues! Maybe you should look into this guy!" If there were, I definitely would have tried to get the kid some help. I think that could have had a good chance of averting yesterday's tragedy more than anything.

While I was hesitant at first to release these plays (because I didn't know if there are laws against it), I had to put myself in the shoes of the average person researching this situation. I'd want to know everything I could about the killer to figure out what could drive a person to do something like this and hopefully prevent it in the future. Also, I hope this might help people start caring about others more no matter how weird they might seem, because if this was some kind of cry for attention, then he should have gotten it a long time ago.

As far as the victims go, as I was heading to bed last night, I heard that my good friend Stack (Ryan Clark) was one of the first confirmed dead. I didn't want to believe that I'd never get to talk to him again, and all I could think about was how much I could tell him how much his friendship meant to me. During my junior year, Ryan, another friend and I used to get breakfast on Tuesdays and Thursdays at Shultz Dining Hall, one of the cafeterias on campus, and it was always the highlight of my day. He could talk forever it seemed and always made us laugh. He was a good friend, not just to me, but to a lot of people, and I'll miss him a lot.

Click on the links below the read the plays. WARNING: the plays contain profanity and scenes with disturbing content.

- Read Play #1: 'Richard McBeef'

- Read Play #2: 'Mr. Brownstone'

From the folks at ThisJustin.com, on the campaign attack ads we covered earlier this week... pretty funny stuff.

Ian Waldie, Getty Images

Intensive Care patient Eva Cole, 3 months, is tended to by her mother Sophie at the Westmead Childrens Intensive Care Unit March 13, 2007 in Sydney, Australia. Each year, around 148,000 people are admitted to Intensive Care Units (ICU's) across Australia and New Zealand with 86% of adults and 97% of children surviving after being admitted. ICU teams care for people who are critically ill with major illnesses, and injuries such as heart attack, pneumonia, stroke, traffic accidents, burns, trauma, organ transplant and complicated surgery. The Intensive Care Foundation will in April hold an appeal to raise money and community awareness of the work achieved in ICU's across Australasia.

Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

Iranians pay their respects during a visit to a memorial site to those who died during the eight years (1980-88) of the Iran-Iraq war March 14, 2007, close to the border between the two countries. It is customary for Iranians to make the pilgrimage to the main battlefields in the last week of the Iranian year to remember the martyrs.

Philippe Desmazes, AFP / Getty Images

People walk through the memorial to the victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings outside Atocha station in Madrid, 12 March 2007. The memorial made of glass shards standing 11 meters tall has inscribed inside a selection of the messages left to those who died in the tragedy.

Finbarr O'Reilly, Reuters

Supporters of Mauritanian presidential candidate Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi attend a final campaign rally in the capital Nouakchott. The bedouin tents and camels featuring on ballot papers in Mauritania are part of a nomadic way of life in this Saharan Islamic state, where a presidential election on Sunday will restore civilian rule.

David Silverman, Getty Images

A Palestinian man strides past Israel's separation barrier where French artists from the "Face2Face" project have pasted giant posters March 6, 2007 in the biblical town of Bethlehem in the West Bank. The Face2Face project produces similar portraits of Palestinians and Israelis who do similar jobs, and then posts them alongside each other on both the Israeli and Palestinian side of the separation barrier. The authors say they hope their project will contribute to a better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.

See: More Phenomenal Photos

From the National Review Online:

Pork-barrel spending has been cut in half after skyrocketing for seven straight years, according to the latest CAGW (Citizens Against Government Waste) Congressional Pig Book. Here's how it happened, and why budget hawks shouldn't be ordering champagne for the victory party just yet.

In late November of last year, as the GOP was recovering from the pounding it took in the elections, Sens. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and Jim DeMint (R., S.C.) thwarted the lame-duck majority's attempt to pass nine pork-laden appropriations bills in its last remaining weeks. Republican spending barons like former House Appropriations Committee chairman Jerry Lewis (R., Calif.) were furious, because they saw the bills as their last chance to fund pet projects and trade favors. But Coburn and DeMint promised to bring the Senate to a standstill by putting every earmark to a vote, so the Republicans turned the task of funding the federal government for fiscal year 2007 over to the incoming Democrats.

Read the rest of the article

From Slate.com

Television news anchor and president of the United States aren't such different jobs, after all, and not just because until now they've been the exclusive province of old white men. These are the people who tell us what's happening in the world, what it means, and what we're going to do about it. They must be calm, personable, and handsome under lights. Diplomacy, intelligence, and genuine leadership abilities a plus.

It's not simply that both jobs are traditionally male. It's that both demand a certain stage presence-an intangible sense of authority, divorced from direct, measurable accomplishment.

- Read the rest of the article

- Latest: Couric's producer at CBS is out

What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

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