The new test, which goes on sale Wednesday, joins another one that recently came on the market. Both analyze multiple genes in a biopsy sample and give a score for aggressiveness, similar to tests used now for certain breast and colon cancers.

Doctors say tests like these have the potential to curb a major problem in cancer care overtreatment. Prostate tumors usually grow so slowly they will never threaten a man's life, but some prove fatal and there is no reliable way now to tell which ones will. Treatment with surgery, radiation or hormone blockers isn't needed in most cases and can cause impotence or incontinence, yet most men are afraid to skip it.

"We're not giving patients enough information to make their decision," said Dr. Peter Carroll, chairman of urology at the University of California, San Francisco. "You can shop for a toaster" better than for prostate treatment, he said.

A study he led of the newest test the Oncotype DX Genomic Prostate Score is set for discussion Wednesday at an American Urological Association meeting in San Diego.

The results suggest the test could triple the number of men thought to be at such low risk for aggressive disease that monitoring is a clearly safe option. Conversely, the test also suggested some tumors were more aggressive than doctors had believed.

Independent experts say such a test is desperately needed but that it's unclear how much information this one adds or whether it will be enough to persuade men with low-risk tumors to forgo treatment, and treat it only if it gets worse. Only 10 percent who are candidates for monitoring choose it now.

"The question is, what's the magnitude of difference that would change the patient's mind?" said Dr. Bruce Roth, a cancer specialist at Washington University in St. Louis.

One man may view a 15 percent chance that his tumor is aggressive as low risk "but someone else might say, 'Oh my God, let's set the surgery up tomorrow,'" he said. "I don't think it's a slam dunk."

Also unknown: Will insurers pay for the expensive test without evidence it leads to better care or saves lives?

The newest test was developed by Genomic Health Inc., which has sold a similar one for breast cancer since 2004. Doctors at first were leery of it until studies in more groups of women proved its value, and the same may happen with the prostate test, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society's deputy chief medical officer.

The company will charge $3,820 for the prostate test and says it can save money by avoiding costlier, unnecessary treatment. Another test for assessing prostate cancer risk that came out last summer Prolaris by Myriad Genetics Inc. sells for $3,400.

Both companies can sell the tests without Food and Drug Administration approval under separate rules that govern lab diagnostics. Myriad Genetics has published nine studies on Prolaris involving more than 3,000 patients. Genomic Health has not published any results on the prostate test, another thing that makes doctors wary. Yet it has a track record from its breast cancer test.

About 240,000 men in the U.S. are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, and about half are classified as low risk using current methods. Doctors now base risk estimates on factors such as a man's age and how aggressive cells look from biopsies that give 12 to 14 tissue samples. But tumors often are spread out and vary from one spot to the other.

"Unless you can be sure your biopsy has hit the most aggressive part that's in the prostate, you can't be sure" how accurate your risk estimate is, explained Dr. Eric Klein, chief of urology at the Cleveland Clinic,who led early development of the Oncotype prostate cancer test.

For one study, researchers used prostates removed from 440 men. They measured the activity of hundreds of genes thought to be involved in whether the cancer spread beyond the prostate or proved fatal. A second study of biopsies from 167 patients narrowed it down to 81 genes, and researchers picked 17 that seemed to predict aggressiveness no matter the location in the tumor.

A third study used single needle-biopsy samples from 395 UCSF patients scheduled to have their prostates removed. The gene test accurately predicted the aggressiveness of their cancer once doctors were able to see the whole prostate after surgery.

Using one current method, 37 of the 395 men would have been called very low risk and good candidates for monitoring. Adding the gene test put 100 men into that category, said another study leader, Dr. Matthew Cooperberg of UCSF.The gene test shifted about half of the men into either a lower or a higher risk category.

"It went both ways that was the remarkable thing. In any category of risk it added independent information compared to the standard criteria we use today," Carroll said. "More work needs to be done, but, in my opinion, this is a very good start."

However, Dr. Kevin McVary, chairman of urology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine and a spokesman for the Urological Association, said the test must be validated in more men before it can be widely used.

"It's not there yet," he said.

UCSF just got a federal grant to see how men choose treatments and whether this test might sway them.

"We throw all these numbers at them. Are they really going to make a better decision?" Cooperberg said.

Dean Smith, 60, a retired marketing executive from Mill Valley, Calif., is following his doctor's advice to monitor the cancer he was diagnosed with in March. He said a gene test may have made him more comfortable with that decision.

At least six of his friends suffered side effects ranging from urinary leakage to inability to have sex after having their prostates removed.

"I would suspect that having cancer and having to live with it would be very difficult for them," but it doesn't bother him, Smith said. "I will die from something other than prostate cancer, I guarantee you."

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The National Institutes of Health on Thursday halted a study testing an experimental HIV vaccine after an independent review board found the vaccine did not prevent HIV infection and did not reduce the amount of HIV in the blood.

The trial, started in 2009, is the latest in a series of failed HIV vaccine trials. The study, called HVTN 505, had enrolled 2,504 volunteers in 19 U.S. cities, and was looking at men who have sex with men and transgender people who have sex with men.

"This trial has provided a clear, swift answer about a specific vaccine strategy. It's not the answer we hoped for, but the search doesn't end here," Mitchell Warren, executive director of the nonprofit group AVAC: Global Advocacy for HIV Prevention, said in a statement.

"Researchers need to unpack the data from this trial to understand more about why this strategy didn't prevent infection," he said.

The review board has recommended that no further vaccinations be given. The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, which sponsored the study, said it would continue to follow study participants to further evaluate the trial data.

The HVTN 505 trial tested a two-part vaccine strategy designed to first prime the immune system and then provide a vaccine "boost."

The vaccine itself was based on a common cold virus that was used to sneak HIV genes into the body and grab the attention of the immune system.

So far, there are no vaccines approved to prevent infection with the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

Several HIV trials are still in the works or in planning stages, including a follow-up to a Thai trial which in 2009 showed a vaccine combination cut HIV infections by 31.2 percent. Although the finding was not strong enough to approve the vaccine, it offered the first glimpse that a vaccine could work.

Both of these vaccines - the one in the Thai study and the HVTN 505 study - are largely designed to train immune system cells known as T-cells to recognize and kill cells already infected with HIV.

Researchers are studying other approaches, including vaccines that activate powerful antibodies to prevent HIV from infecting cells in the first place.

Matthew Rose, a vaccine advocate for AVAC who participated in the HVTN 505 study, said he remains hopeful in the search for a vaccine.

"These results do not change the fundamental view that an AIDS vaccine remains critical to any long-term strategy to end the AIDS epidemic," Rose said.

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Vicki Allen)

Don't blow this out of proportion, . Cases of false tweets and news reports wreaking havoc on the markets are rare. In 2011, for instance, Apple shares dipped just 1 percent (and quickly rebounded) after a false report said that Apple founder Steve Jobs had died. And when a Twitter account impersonating prominent short-seller David Einhorn tried to "induce fluctuations" in Herbalife's stock in February, the company's value underwent "no noticeable change." Still, the AP episode "highlights the potential pitfalls of relying on social networks for tradable information," especially on the heels of the Securities and Exchange Commission's announcement that companies can use social media sites, including Twitter and Facebook, "to share market-moving company announcements."

The solution is better security, . The First Amendment "prevents the government from controlling what users say on Twitter," but regulators can make social media firms beef up their protocols. False information "has the potential to be damaging to more than the financial world." Just imagine: "If the hacked AP tweet had been more believable and not as easy to discredit — say, 'U.S. Navy moving into strategic positions around North Korea' — a global emergency could have ensued." The technology sector may disdain regulation, but "other kinds of information, such as financial and health-care data, are already strictly regulated by law." It's up to the consumer to decide what to trust on Twitter, but messages shouldn't be so easy to fake.

"Other than self-restraint, which is in short supply these days, nothing much can be done to prevent any of this," . Social media sites will seek new means to "spread information, for better and worse, farther and faster than the Spanish flu." And unless regulators crack down on high-frequency traders, they "will go on using algorithms that turn milliseconds of information advantage into huge profits" — even if that information is wrong.

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LOS ANGELES, May 2 (Reuters) - After enduring a roller-coaster season described by Hall of Famer Earvin 'Magic' Johnson as "one of the worst" in franchise history, Los Angeles Lakers fans are scratching their heads over what may happen next.

Widely tipped as National Basketball Association (NBA) championship contenders after assembling a star-studded lineup for their 2012-13 campaign, the injury-hit Lakers were swept out of the playoffs in the opening round by the San Antonio Spurs.

It was the first time in 46 years they had been knocked out of the post-season in four games, a humiliating exit for a team many had predicted would challenge the record 72 games won by the Chicago Bulls during their landmark 1995-96 regular season.

Despite boasting a potent starting five including All-Stars Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, Los Angeles limped to an underwhelming 45-37 record as their ageing lineup succumbed to a spate of injuries.

Though they ended the regular season on a 28-12 run to book their place in the playoffs as the seventh-seeded team, that achievement came at a price with the inspirational Bryant ruled out of the post-season due to an Achilles tendon injury.

The Lakers were totally outplayed by the second-seeded Spurs in their first-round series, routed 103-82 in Game Four after center Howard was ejected following a second technical foul early in the third quarter.

"Dwight Howard that was a big No, No. Your teammates and the fans were counting on you," Johnson tweeted, before adding: "Dwight, I've been swept before but I never let my team down by getting kicked out of the game."

Johnson, who with fellow Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spearheaded the Lakers in the fabled "Showtime" era from 1979-1989, was not finished.

"I'm sooooooooooo happy the season is over. With the talent on this team this could go down as one of the worst seasons in Lakers' history!"

Johnson, along with many others, had expected much of the men in purple-and-gold after the off-season acquisitions of Howard and Nash beefed up a roster already bristling with quality and experience in Bryant and Gasol.

However Nash ended up missing 24 games because of a fracture in his left leg while Howard never appeared to recover fully from back surgery in mid 2012 while battling a shoulder injury and perceived tension between himself and team leader Bryant.

Forwards Gasol and Metta World Peace, along with backup guards Steve Blake and Jodie Meeks, were sidelined because of assorted ailments during a tumultuous season as the team failed to gel until the pressure was on to make the playoffs.

SHIFTED ROLES

Head coach Mike D'Antoni was widely criticised for an apparent inability to adjust his offense-minded style to fit a mainly old and slow roster, gifted Spaniard Gasol suffering the most as he was repeatedly shifted between multiple roles.

"It was a bit of a roller-coaster, obviously," D'Antoni said of his first season in charge of the Lakers.

"A lot of disappointment at the end. Due to a lot of circumstances, we started off slow and got us in a hole.

"The last 40 games, we played well. Disappointed we couldn't do anything in the playoffs - a lot of it due to injuries. We had ourselves set up to make a run, but we didn't do it."

The biggest question mark facing the Lakers ahead of next season is whether they can retain both big men, Howard and Gasol, as the team's luxury taxes will soar from $30 million to $85 million if they again have a $100-million payroll.

Howard, 27, will test free agency and is noncommittal about his plans. He can either re-sign with Los Angeles for five years and $118 million or opt for a four-year, $88-million deal with another team.

Gasol, 32, has been a frequent subject of trade rumors and, with a guarantee on his contract of $19.3 million for next season, said earlier this week that he understood the "business side" of the Lakers.

"There's a possibility I could be gone," he told reporters. There's a possibility I could stay. I'm prepared either way.

"I understand the challenges the franchise is facing and the decision they have to make in order to keep the team in the direction they want looking at the present and the future."

Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, fervently hopes the Lakers can go into next season with both Howard and Gasol.

"I want him here," Bryant said of Gasol. "He gives us the best chance to win titles. You bring Dwight back, then we're off and running. You saw how well they played together (at the end of the season). That puzzle finally got solved."

Bryant, who averaged 27.3 points and 6.0 assists during the regular season before he tore his Achilles tendon on April 12, felt the Lakers never had the chance to gel because of their alarming injury rate.

"It was crazy," he said.

"It was a constant process for us, but we finally figured it out. It will be great to bring the group back because we know what to do, and we know how lethal we can be." (Editing by Greg Stutchbury)

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - For futurists in Silicon Valley, the question is fundamental, almost philosophical: In the coming years, will the humble website still be the dominant way we interact with the Internet?

For David Rusenko, the 27-year-old founder and chief executive of global website builder Weebly, the answer is: Of course!

On Thursday, Weebly unveiled a refresh of its publishing suite, which allows people to simply drag and drop page elements like images and headlines onto a canvas to build a site. Using the new form, mobile versions of websites - a critical concern in a modern economy awash with smartphones - can be published simultaneously with desktop versions.

The San Francisco startup's update comes at a time of flux for the Internet industry, which has been grappling with the ramifications of users who are spending less time on the Web and more time within closed ecosystems like Facebook Inc's social network or the cornucopia of smartphone apps an economy valued at $25 billion in 2013, according to research firm ABI.

Yet Rusenko is not willing to accept any talk of the open Web's demise. He argues that Web pages, more than ever, carry more weight and meaning in an age of fleeting tweets and malleable Facebook identities.

"The picture is becoming clearer," Rusenko said. "Facebook has focused on the conversation, but not really on absorbing the Web into its walled garden."

For a lot of people, "their digital identity is their site," he added. "It's where they showcase their ideas and really put themselves out there."

Along with his Thursday relaunch, Rusenko unfurled a slate of new growth statistics and research data showing that his company, which has enjoyed healthy growth and now boasts a network of 15 million sites that have been visited by 100 million people.

Weebly's own extensive research showed that a majority of people would not trust a business that had no website, yet 58 percent of businesses do not have a Web presence, Rusenko said.

In 2006, Rusenko, a fresh-faced graduate of Penn State University, burst onto the Silicon Valley scene and garnered plaudits in national magazines with Weebly, which quickly rose in stature as the natural heir to GeoCities, the service that fueled a webpage-creating craze in the 1990s.

After the initial acclaim, Weebly has kept a lower profile while rivals like Wordpress, the professional-grade blogging platform, and Tumblr, the minimalist social blogging network, have captured more media attention, but not the consumer Web publishing market.

With its refresh, Weebly is now more oriented toward what Rusenko called everyday entrepreneurs looking to "start something": amateur food bloggers, teachers, or crafts enthusiasts who want to share their passion before potentially launching a small business.

Weebly has been in talks with a payment startup to provide an e-commerce platform for people wanting to sell goods, said Rusenko.

The company is also introducing planning tools that offer ideas and inspiration to help newcomers "identify their goals" and lay out their pages, Rusenko said.

The company, which has 70 employees, has been profitable since 2009, but accepted an undisclosed amount in funding from Sequoia Capital in 2011 to continue growth.

"At the end of the day these are doers, these are makers, and we want to help bring that dream to life," Rusenko said.

(Reporting By Gerry Shih; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks dipped in thin volume on Friday, though the market had a strong week overall despite a mixed bag of earnings and weak economic figures.

Shares of online retailer Amazon.com Incposted the largest daily drop in 15 months after the company reported results late on Thursday. It was Friday's biggest drag on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes.

Gains in shares of Chevron Corpbuoyed the blue-chip Dow industrials.

The market fell early after a negative surprise from the gross domestic product report, but the decline attracted bargain-hunting investors late in the session. Major indexes posted solid gains for the week.

J.C. Penney Cowas the S&P 500's biggest percentage gainer, up 11.5 percent to $17 after CNBC reported Goldman Sachs lined up a $1.75 billion loan for the retailer. The news added to previous gains a day after investor George Soros reported a 7.9 percent passive stake in the company.

"We traded off a decent amount after the GDP number but we didn't break any technical levels or really didn't get much momentum in the selloff past late morning," said Paul Zemsky, head of asset allocation at ING Investment Management in New York.

"I guess there was some bottom fishing. There was so much fear of poor earnings going into earnings season that this is still somewhat of a positive surprise."

The Dow Jones industrial averagerose 11.75 points or 0.08 percent, to 14,712.55, the S&P 500lost 2.92 points or 0.18 percent, to 1,582.24 and the Nasdaq Compositedropped 10.72 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,279.26.

For the week, the Dow gained 1.1 percent, the S&P added 1.7 percent and the Nasdaq rose 2.3 percent.

Of the 271 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings to date for the first quarter, 69 percent have beaten analyst expectations - above the 63 percent average since 1994 and slightly over the 67 percent beat rate over the past four quarters.

Eastman Chemicaldropped 5.1 percent to $68.97 a day after posting results, to lead percentage declines among S&P materials , which was the worst performing sector of the index with a 1.4 percent drop.

The S&P traded Thursday within a point of its historic closing high set earlier this month and the 1,593 level is expected to be technical resistance in the near future.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.5 percent rate in the first quarter, below estimates of 3 percent, heightening fears the U.S. economy could struggle to cope with deep government spending cuts and higher taxes that kicked in earlier this year.

Amazon.com shed 7.2 percent to $254.81 after it said revenue growth slowed in the first quarter as the company struggled overseas, but margins jumped on lower shipping expenses.

Chevron rose 1.3 percent to $120.04 after it posted earnings that beat expectations, even as lower oil prices bit into the profits of the second largest U.S. oil company.

The PHLX housing sector indexgained 1 percent, getting a lift from D.R. Horton Incafter the No. 1 U.S. homebuilder reported earnings. D.R. Horton shares closed at their highest in six years after an 8.7 percent jump to $26.60.

About 5.7 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.4 billion shares.

On the NYSE, roughly seven issues fell for every five that rose and on Nasdaq about three fell for every two advancing issues.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Co-writer-director Joseph Kosinski ("TRON: Legacy") digs all the way to the back of the refrigerator for "Oblivion," taking leftover bits of "The Matrix," "WALL-E," "2001," "Moon" and "Planet of the Apes," among countless other science-fiction classics, and putting them into a slick, shiny and state-of-the-art crock pot.

The results looks amazing, but most of the ideas that resonate will feel very familiar and more than a bit warmed-over.

You'll see one if not both of the movie's big twists coming, and while a case could be made that "Oblivion" will make the boldest anti-drones statement of any fictional film this year, it's a chilly movie that never draws you in enough to get fully invested in what's happening.

Tom Cruise opens the film with a head-spinning torrent of exposition, but it boils down to this: It's 2077. Sixty years earlier, alien invaders wrecked the moon, destroying much of Earth. What was left of the planet got trashed by nukes used to fight off the E.T.s, and now most of the population lives on a moon of Saturn.

The only people left on Earth are Jack (Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough, "W.E."), who live in a high-tech house in the clouds and whose memories were wiped five years earlier.

He goes out every day to repair the drones that scan the earth for the remnants of the alien Scavengers; she reports their progress to Sally (Melissa Leo, with a ludicrous twang) at Mission Control. Unbeknownst to Victoria, Jack still remembers meeting up with a mystery woman (Olga Kurylenko of "To the Wonder") at the Empire State Building back before the war.

He's also built a secret hideaway in the mountains, a lakeside cabin where he can shoot hoops, listen to old vinyl LPs and squirrel away the books he has found in his travels.

One day, Jack happens upon the top of the Empire State Building, which the Scavengers are using as a homing beacon; following the coordinates being sent out, he finds a crashed spaceship, but the passengers aren't aliens - they're humans. And one of them is the lady from Jack's dreams.

This discovery sets in motion Jack's new understanding of who he is and what has happened to Earth, and "Oblivion" might have worked better if it weren't so proud of these revelations that most audience members will figure out long before the characters do.

Kosinski is great with the doohickeys - Jack's transport, his fold-up motorcycle, that house of the future - but neither the plot nor the characters click the way they should. (And I say that as someone who actually liked "TRON: Legacy.")

Cruise has to spend most of the film playing a literal blank slate, but even after he starts filling in his own memories, the character remains as vague as ever. And poor Morgan Freeman, who turns up late in the film, gets saddled with some astonishingly clichd dialogue. (That YouTube reel of characters in dozens of movies saying the line, "You look like shit," just got three seconds longer.) M83's score is mostly effective, but even it feels unoriginal, like the love child of Daft Punk's "TRON: Legacy" music and the "Inception" BWAAAAH.

There's a weirdly sexist tinge as well, with the female characters being either nefarious or inert (not to mention a triangular big bad alien presence that could have been designed by Judy Chicago). "Oblivion" also indulges in one of those have-your-cake endings that are so popular of late; not to give anything away, but this is another movie that promises a gutsy, powerful denouement only to give the audience a reassuring wink and a high-five.

The stink of studio notes and focus groups pervades throughout, in fact - that awkward narration at the beginning shares information that Jack offers up again later in the film; one imagines a test audience complaining that they didn't understand what was happening, and the studio deciding to overlay all that clunky exposition up front. Just a theory, but I'd put five bucks on it.

If the dialogue and the concepts of "Oblivion" had been as fresh and powerful as its art direction, we'd really have something here. Instead, it's something borrowed packaged inside something new.

"I am sure that my kids were not involved in anything," said a tearful Zubeidat Tsarnaeva at a press conference in Russia on April 25. Tsarnaeva maintains that her sons have been set up, and has also suggested thatmight have been staged.

Regardless of the legal outcome of the case, such denial is not uncommon in the families of killers, experts say, though plenty of killers family members are also well aware of their relatives capability to kill. []

"In some cases, they deny the participation of their kids; in other cases, they say they were surprised," said Dean Alexander, director of the Homeland Security Research Program at Western Illinois University and a researcher of terrorists' family ties. "In other cases, they condemn."

Psychologists say the Tsarnaevs' reactions may also stem from circumstances unique to the case for instance, the family's history in the volatile Caucasus region, the parents' distance from the bombing and other personal factors.

Family dynamics

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was charged on April 22 for his role in setting offon April 15, killing three and injuring hundreds. Also allegedly involved was Tsarnaev's 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, who died after an overnight shoot-out with police on April 18.

After the FBI released photos of the suspects, the two brothers allegedly hijacked a car, leading police on a chase during which the alleged bombers threw . Tamerlan Tsarnaev, along with an MIT police officer, was killed in the subsequent shoot-out, but Dzhokhar Tsarnaev escaped.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was later arrested after being found wounded and hiding in a stored boat in Watertown, Mass. Authorities said that when Tsarnaev was questioned, he confessed to the bombings.

While the Tsarnaev parents have maintained their sons are innocent, other family members see the situation differently illustrating how variable reactions can be. The Tsarnaev brothers' uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, who had not spoken with the brothers since 2010, called the men "losers." According to Tsarni, Tamerlan Tsarnaev began adopting radical Islamist ideas and then influenced his younger brother.

"Dzhokhar is being used by his older brother. [Tamerlan] used him as his not even accomplice as some kind of instrument," Tsarni .

But very little research has focused on how families respond when a loved one goes bad, or why some family members may have more trouble than others accepting a perpetrator's involvement.

"There's a lot of literature on the effects of parental incarceration, for example, on children, but there isn't the opposite," said Priscilla Dass-Brailsford, a trauma psychologist at Georgetown University Medical Center.

For parents, acceptance can be the hardest. Ten years after the mass shooting at Columbine High School, the mother of shooter Dylan Klebold wrote andescribing what it was like to find out her son was one of the killers.

"It took about six months for the sheriff's department to begin sharing some of the evidence explaining what happened that day. For those six months, Dylan's friends and family were in denial," Susan Klebold wrote in the essay. "We didn't know that he and [fellow Columbine shooter] Eric [Harris] had assembled an arsenal of explosives and guns. We believed his participation in the massacre was accidental or that he had been coerced. We believed that he did not intend to hurt anyone."

As she came to terms with how wrong she and her family had been, Klebold was overwhelmed with grief and guilt. She second-guessed every parenting choice, even questioning whether she should have told her son she was proud of him, fearing those words made him feel pressured. []

"It was impossible to believe that someone I had raised could cause so much suffering," she wrote.

Shock and denial

The Klebolds stayed quiet and isolated after the Columbine shooting, whereas the Tsarnaev parents have been outspoken, participating in press conferences and speaking to the media.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva has even gone so far as to entertain , saying she's seen theories that the blood shown at the scene near the Boston Marathon finish line was actually red paint.

Much is still unknown about the Tsarnaev family, Dass-Brailsford told LiveScience, but the media interactions suggest defensiveness and denial. 

"When you think about a mother with one child in the hospital and the other dead in the morgue, she's just lost two children. That's the place I go to as a trauma psychologist," Dass-Brailsford said. "She's just lost two children. The only way she can cope with it is by denial."

The family's history may also contribute, Dass-Brailsford said. Father Anzor Tsarnaev is Chechen, and Zubeidat Tsarnaeva is Avar, both minorities in the conflict-torn Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. Oppressed people tend to be suspicious of government authority, Dass-Brailsford said, which could explain some of the Tsarnaevs' skepticism about the bombing.

Another unusual aspect of the case is the parents extreme distance from the site of the bombings, said Nancy Berns, a sociologist at Drake University in Iowa who has researched . Being in Russia, so far away, could make it easier to remain in denial, Berns told LiveScience.

The media attention likely isnt helping, either. Loved ones of victims or perpetrators of violent deaths often lack the luxury to grieve in private, Berns said.

"They're often having to try and make sense of it in the public eye, through interviews, through people asking them questions," she said. "I am hearing that process unfold for them."

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Rain and lightning in the morning brought play to a halt for 80 minutes after more than two hours were lost due to poor visibility on Thursday.

South African Jbe Kruger, Swede Alex Noren and England's James Morrison were a stroke behind the clubhouse leaders.

Former British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen, the highest-ranked player in the field, was three shots off the pace after completing a first-round 69 and returning for a second of 71.

Ormsby, who won his maiden professional title in India this month, compiled a five-under-par 67 after returning in the morning to complete a first round of 70.

Starting on the back nine, Ormsby picked up four shots to reach the turn in 32 but made a bogey on the second hole.

He shot back into contention, adding to more shots on the seventh and ninth to come home for a total of five-under 137.

"My game's in pretty good shape, I had the last two weeks at home practising so it was nice to come out here and keep the form going," Ormsby, 33, told reporters at the Blackstone Golf and Country Club.

"I three-putted (the second) just before the suspension and on the third and fourth I struggled for the speed of the greens straight out of the blocks.

"I was a bit tentative and left a couple short but then made two bombs in the last three."

Arnond compiled a blemish-free first round of 68 and added three more birdies with a lone bogey in his second for a 69 and the share of the lead.

"The conditions were not easy, and the pins were kind of tough, especially with the wind blowing. So I'll take what I can get," the 25-year-old said. (Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly in Mumbai; editing by Ed Osmond)