HIGHLANDS, N.C. – Actress Collin Wilcox-Paxton, who portrayed the false accuser in the movie classic "To Kill a Mockingbird," died of brain cancer just months after the diagnosis. She was 74.
Her husband, Scott Paxton, confirmed Thursday that she died Oct. 14 in Highlands in the southwest part of the state. No funeral was held. Instead, the family held a service before her death.
"It's pretty special being at your own memorial," said her husband of more than 30 years.
She was diagnosed Aug. 11 with three brain tumors, he said.
The actress played Mayella Ewell in the movie based on Harper Lee's Pulitzer-winning novel. Her role as the young white woman who accuses a black man of beating and raping her in her home was brief but memorable.
She angrily breaks down as actor Gregory Peck, the defense attorney, suggests she lied to avoid being abused by her racist father. The black defendant is convicted anyway and later killed.
In the late 1950s and '60s, she had roles in several Broadway plays, making her debut in 1958 in the family drama "The Day the Money Stopped." While the production was short-lived, The New York Times said she "scatters little sparks of humorous vitality throughout her scenes."
She had guest appearances in many early television series, such as "Gunsmoke," "The Fugitive," "The Waltons" and "Little House on the Prairie."
Her roles in the 1990s included television series and movies that were filmed near her hometown in the North Carolina mountains. They included "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," which director Clint Eastwood filmed in Savannah, Ga., and the inspirational TV series "Christy," about a teacher in the early 1900s in remote Appalachia.
She is also survived by her three children and three grandchildren.

WASHINGTON – The Army made critical mistakes in tests of a new body armor design, according to congressional investigators who recommend an independent review of the trials before the gear is issued to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Government Accountability Office report says the Army deviated from established testing standards and concludes that several of the designs that passed would have failed had the tests been done properly.
The Army has ordered about 240,000 of the new type of bullet-blocking plate to be used in ballistic vests, but doesn't plan to rush the armor into combat. The Army says the plates will be stored until needed to meet future demands.
In a lengthy response to the GAO report, Defense Department officials reject the call for an outside look. The officials acknowledge there were a few problems during testing of the bullet-blocking plates. But these were minor miscues, they said, that don't shake their confidence in the overall results.
Given the military's opposition to an external review by ballistics experts, the GAO says Congress should decide whether such a step is necessary.
The report, requested last year by senior members of the House Armed Services Committee, is the latest study to call into question the Army's ability to oversee the production of a key piece of battlefield equipment.
In January, the Pentagon's inspector general faulted the Army for not properly overseeing a series of tests on an earlier model of the protective plates at a private ballistics laboratory.
The inspector general's audit recommended that nearly 33,000 plates be pulled from the Army's inventory of nearly 2 million because the inserts might not provide troops with adequate protection against armor-piercing bullets. The Army disputed the findings, but withdrew the plates as a precautionary step.
Stung by the inspector general's conclusions, Army officials dismissed the private laboratories they'd long relied upon for the tests and said they would do the vital job themselves at a military testing facility in Aberdeen, Md.
That proved to be a contentious decision, however. The testing companies and manufacturers of the plates insisted the private sector could do the trials better, faster and for much less money.
With the GAO report, which is to be issued publicly on Friday, that argument is sure to get new traction.
The testing at issue took place last year. Companies that passed were awarded contracts potentially worth $8 billion to manufacture an improved plate design.
The body armor used by most American forces consists of a ballistic vest with two large, specially hardened ceramic plates that protect most of the upper body from enemy bullets and shrapnel.
The plates and vests go through demanding tests during the design phase. Later, after production begins, sample plates are shot at on ranges to ensure there has been no deviation from the specifications. These so-called "lot acceptance tests" require a quick turnaround so manufacturers can keep their production lines moving.
The GAO says the Army's most significant departure from testing standards was the incorrect measuring of the amount of force a plate can withstand. Correctly calculating this is important because the depth of the indentation on the plate shows the amount of blunt force trauma to the soldier.
Army officials have maintained the criticism of their testing and oversight of body armor is overblown. They note that no U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan because their body armor was flawed and failed to protect them.
In the 25-page response to the GAO report, the Pentagon says the Army has made a heavy investment to ensure body armor testing is done carefully and accurately.
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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) –
A suicide car bomber tore through a police building in Pakistan on Friday, killing 11 people and exacerbating public anger over security breaches behind a wave of recent attacks.

Cash-strapped Pakistan, a nuclear power with a weak government presiding over 167 million people on the faultline of the US-led war on terror, has been battered by assaults that have left more than 170 people dead in 11 days.

A suicide car bomber unleashed further chaos Friday by blowing up a vehicle near a police investigations office in a garrison area of Pakistan's northwest city Peshawar, bringing down one side of the building, police said.

"I have counted 11 dead bodies and 13 wounded in the emergency unit. All the dead are civilians. Two are women. Among the injured, there is a four-year-old," said police official Mohammad Gul at the main hospital.

Ambulances screeched through the streets, sirens blaring as rescue teams rushed to ferry out the casualties. TV footage showed smouldering wreckage and a damaged brick wall.

"It was a suicide car bomb," said bomb disposal official Shafqat Malik.

The bomber targeted the police-run Central Investigation Agency (CIA) building in the military garrison area of Peshawar -- northwest Pakistan's largest city, on the fringes of the lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border.

Critics rounded on the civilian authorities for being unable to act on intelligence to prevent militants -- some in their teens -- from blasting their way into police offices on Thursday and trading fire for up to three hours.

At least 40 people died in a string of assaults on security buildings in Lahore, striking at the heart of the country's political heartland, and bombings in the northwest.

Residents in Lahore, the cultural capital of Pakistan with a secular elite, asked how militants could have penetrated so far and so easily from their sanctuaries in the deeply conservative tribal belt on the Afghan border. Related article: Obama signs Pakistan aid package

At least 10 attackers blasted their way into the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) branch in Lahore, a police academy in the suburb of Manawan and an elite commando school on the outskirts within minutes of each other.

Militants had already carried out bloody attacks on the Manawan academy in March this year and on the FIA building in March 2008.

"The second attack on Manawan was a major security lapse," a former MP of the district, Khalid Javed Ghukri, told AFP. "People are scared of coming out of their houses."

The press was also scathing over the security lapses that allowed attackers to reportedly climb a wall into the commando school on Thursday and besiege army headquarters in the garrison city Rawalpindi at the weekend.

"In times of war there can be no room for mistakes, especially ones that lead to death and destruction on this scale," wrote The News newspaper.

"The government must assess why authorities have repeatedly failed to pre-empt the strikes despite the existence of intelligence and why terrorists from the northwest have faced few problems in moving into fortified cities."

Interior Minister Rehman Malik conceded that government security forces were not adequately prepared.

"We are improving our capacities. It is true that our forces were not properly equipped for such situation. We have cut our development budget and diverted funds towards enhancing our capacity," he told reporters Thursday.

Police said dozens of people had been picked up in overnight raids in slum areas of Lahore and neighbourhoods populated by Afghans.

Although there was no formal claim of responsibility, suspicion has fallen on Pakistan's Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) movement and Al-Qaeda, as well as homegrown Islamist groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Jaish-e-Muhammad.

Officials have blamed militants from South Waziristan in Pakistan's tribal belt where the Taliban and Al-Qaeda are believed to have carved out safe havens and where an imminent military offensive is expected.