Panel to probe shootings

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Tim Kaine said the independent panel would evaluate whether Virginia Tech reacted appropriately during the shootings and look into other issues including campus police tactics, academic free speech and the roles that professors and administrators have in identifying students who pose a risk.

The panel, which will include law enforcement and higher education experts and a psychiatrist, will begin its inquiry immediately.

At a press conference, Mr Kaine said he hoped that its recommendations would be available before the college term started again in the autumn.

The inquiry would be "as public and transparent as possible", he added.

Meanwhile, officials said the disturbing manifest and videos of Cho Seung-Hui delivering a snarling tirade about rich "brats" and their "hedonistic needs" had some marginal value to police, but they did not add much that investigators did not already know.

The self-made video and photos of Cho pointing guns as if he were imitating a movie poster were sent to NBC on the morning of the Virginia Tech massacre.

A Postal Service time stamp reads 9.01am - between the two attacks that left 33 people dead.

NBC said the package contained a rambling and often incoherent 23-page written statement, 28 video clips and 43 photos. "I just hate that a lot of people not used to seeing that type of image had to see it," State Police Colonel Steve Flaherty said.

University officials announced that Cho's victims would be awarded their degrees posthumously and that other students might have the option of ending their semester immediately.