COLUMBUS, Ohio — A judge is ready to classify as sex offenders two Ohio high school football players convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl last year.

The hearing by Judge Thomas Lipps today in Steubenville is a possible first step for the two teen defendants to be transferred from a state juvenile detention center to a facility that works with sex offenders.

Lipps sentenced Trent Mays and Ma'Lik Richmond in March to time in the juvenile detention system after convicting them of raping the West Virginia girl after an August party celebrating a successful football team scrimmage.

Lipps has said he thinks the boys should be placed in Lighthouse Youth Center-Paint Creek in southern Ohio. The state Youth Services department says extensive evaluations would precede any transfer.

ST. LOUIS — An argument inside a St. Louis home health care business escalated into gun violence Thursday when a man shot three other people before turning the gun on himself, police said.The shooting occurred at AK Home Health Care, one of several small businesses inside the Cherokee Place Business Incubator. The shooter gunned down another man and two women before turning his semi-automatic handgun on himself, Police Capt. Michael Sack said.Authorities said the shooter either owned or was a co-owner of the small business and his three victims were employees.“We don't know if this was a thing that carried over into today or was initiated today,” Sack told reporters. Police said surveillance video showed what appeared to be a verbal dispute, followed by gunshots penetrating an inside wall. An employee of another business in the building heard gunshots and called police.

PHOENIX — Ending a six-month legislative session, Arizona lawmakers endorsed a key element of President Barack Obama's health care law in a huge political victory for Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, after a lengthy fight over Medicaid expansion that divided the state's Republican leadership.The expansion that will extend health care to 300,000 more low-income Arizonans came after months of stalled negotiations and political maneuvering as Brewer pushed the Medicaid proposal through the Legislature.She secured her victory Thursday after lawmakers passed Brewer's $8.8 billion state budget that included the Medicaid expansion provided under the Affordable Care Act. The Legislature's Republican leadership labeled Brewer a puppet master, but Brewer remained undeterred as she prepared to sign the measures into state law.