Mark Memmott

The legal defense team for George Zimmerman, the man accused of second-degree murder in the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, has created a website, Facebook page and Twitter account to protest his interests.

A horrible car accident Sunday in the Bronx, which killed seven people from one family, happened on a "cursed" section of the Bronx River Parkway where six people died in a terrible 2006 accident, New York's Daily News reports.

Update at 6:08 p.m. ET. Man City Wins 1-0:

A header from Vincent Kompany was all it took for Manchester City to come out today against Manchester United.

As the AP reports, this match has been billed as the "biggest Manchester derby ever," and Kompany scored the winning goal during first-half stoppage time.

Our Original Post Continues:

Ohio officials have decided they will hand over five animals to the widow of a man who last October paralyzed a community by releasing 56 lions, tigers, bears and other exotic animals from his farm.

(The milestone was reached at 2:14 p.m. ET.)

With the addition of some steel columns, 1 World Trade Center has reached a height of symbolic importance.

At 1,271 feet (and growing) it is 21 feet taller than the observation deck on the Empire State Building.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- China, U.S. Rushing To Resolve Crisis Over Blind Activist Chen.

-- After Big Gain In February, Consumer Spending Rose Less In March.

A large 0.9 percent gain in consumer spending from January to February was followed by a more modest 0.3 percent increase from February to March, the Bureau of Economic Analysis says.

Personal income, meanwhile, was up 0.4 percent in March. It had risen 0.3 percent in February.

With Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner due in China for economic talks that start on Thursday, the U.S. and China are rushing to avert a diplomatic crisis over the fate of blind human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

"CIA drone missiles hit militant targets in Pakistan on Sunday for the first time in a month, as the United States ignored the Pakistani government's insistence that such attacks end as a condition for normalized relations between the two perpetually uneasy allies," The Washington Post writes.

Lehman Bros., the Wall Street giant, collapsed in September 2008 in the nation's largest bankruptcy and arguably kicked off a financial meltdown that helped drag the economy into the Great Recession.

"Major college football is on the verge of implementing a playoff, its own version of the final four — two semifinals and a title game," The Associated Press writes.

Or, as The Wall Street Journal reports:

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.2 percent annual rate in the first quarter of the year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

That's down from the 3 percent pace in fourth-quarter 2011, but is still better than the 1.7 percent growth for all of last year.

The first-quarter figure will be revised twice, in each of the next two months.

We'll have more about the report shortly.

Update at 8:47 a.m. ET. Behind The Numbers:

Space nuts here in Washington, D.C., had their fun last week when a jumbo jet carrying space shuttle Discovery buzzed the nation's capital.

The news overnight that the U.S. and Japan have reached an agreement to move about 9,000 U.S. Marines off the island of Okinawa means that slightly more than half of the Marines who have been stationed there will be heading to Guam and other places in the Pacific.

There were 388,000 first-time claims for jobless benefits last week, down just 1,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

And in another sign that the labor market's recovery remains sluggish, the agency said "the 4-week moving average was 381,750, an increase of 6,250 from the previous week's revised average of 375,500." That measure is said by economists to be a better gauge of the underlying trend in claims.

Convicted today of contempt for refusing to push for the reopening of a corruption case involving Pakistan's president, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was given a prison sentence that lasted just a few minutes.

"The ruling ... appeared to be a compromise," The Associated Press writes, "but could still mean problems for him because he has been convicted in a court. That means he could face dismissal from office in the weeks, or more likely, months to come."