BRIEFLY [Topeka Capital Journal (KS)]

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Rep. Patrick Murphy had been a cautious defender of President Barack Obama's health care law for much of the last year, telling constituents in his swing-voting district that the far-from-perfect measure is critical to helping cover uninsured Americans.

Then the new health care law made its disastrous debut. The federal health care website repeatedly crashed, blocking millions from browsing insurance plans. Questions about its security mounted. And cancellation notices hit people who buy their own plans

Now the South Florida lawmaker -- one of nine Democrats representing districts Republican Mitt Romney won in 2012 -- is distancing himself from the administration and heeding GOP calls to delay key parts of the health care law, illustrating the Democratic Party's challenge as it fights to keep control of the Senate and retake the House next year.

NATION

NEW COLORADO? RURAL VOTERS APPROVE SECESSION IDEA: The nation's newest state, if rural Colorado residents had their way, would be about the size of Vermont but with the population of a small town spread across miles of farmland. There wouldn't be civil unions for gay couples, legal recreational marijuana, new renewable energy standards or limits on ammunition magazines.

After all, those were some of the reasons five counties on the state's Eastern Plains voted on Election Day to approve the creation of a 51st state in the first place.

Secession supporters know the votes were symbolic, designed to grab the attention of a Democratic-controlled Legislature.

POPE'S REP: U.S. BISHOPS SHOULDN'T PREACH IDEOLOGY: The Vatican ambassador to the U.S., addressing American bishops at their first national meeting since Pope Francis was elected, said Monday in Baltimore, they shouldn't "follow a particular ideology" and should make Roman Catholics feel more welcome in church.

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano noted the challenges from broader society to Christian teaching. He cautioned that the bishops' witness to faith would be undermined if they failed to live simply.

WORLD ECONOMY BEING SUSTAINED BY AID: Five years after a global financial crisis erupted, the world's biggest economies still need to be propped up. They are growing and hiring a little faster and creating more jobs, but only with extraordinary aid from central banks or government spending. And economists say major countries may need help for years more.

For now, thanks in part to the intervention, the world economy is improving. The International Monetary Fund expects global growth to rise to 3.6 percent in 2014 from 2.9 percent this year.

STUDY: PG-13 GUN VIOLENCE RIVALS THAT OF R MOVIES: Gun violence in PG-13 rated movies has increased considerably in recent decades, to the point that it sometimes exceeds gun violence in even R-rated films, according to a study released Monday.

Ohio State University and the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed gun violence in top- grossing movies, finding that the frequency of gun violence had more than tripled in PG-13 films since 1985. The PG-13 rating was introduced in 1984.

WORLD

SATELLITE HITS ATLANTIC -- BUT WHAT ABOUT NEXT ONE?: This time it splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean -- but what about next time? The European Space Agency said one of its research satellites re- entered the Earth's atmosphere early Monday on an orbit that passed over Siberia, the western Pacific Ocean, the eastern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

The 2,425-pound satellite disintegrated in the atmosphere but about 25 percent of it -- about 600 pounds of "space junk" -- slammed into the Atlantic between Antarctica and South America, a few hundred miles from the Falkland Islands, ESA said. It caused no known damage.

SYRIA REBELS RECRUIT AT REFUGEE CAMP: In a makeshift mosque in a trailer in a sprawling camp for Syrian refugees, a preacher appeals to worshippers to join their countrymen in the fight to topple President Bashar Assad. In another corner of the Zaatari camp, two men draped in the Syrian rebel flag call on refugees through loudspeakers to sign up for military training.

Rebels in the camp freely acknowledge recruiting fighters in the camp in a drive that has increased since the summer, trying to bolster rebel ranks in the face of stepped up offensives by Assad's forces just across the border in southern Syria. Recruiting is banned in Zaatari.

FROM WIRE REPORTS